Review: The Water Wars by Cameron Stracher

Opening lines of the book:

“The year before he joined the Reclamation, when he was still seventeen, my brother Will set a new high score at the YouToo! booth at the Gaming Center.”

Why I read it:

I’m curious about dystopian fiction and this particular future sounds all too plausible. Plus I scored a signed copy of this book at BEA last year.

What it’s about:

In a future where water is incredibly scarce, fifteen-year-old Vera and her older brother Will befriend the mysterious Kai, the son of a driller. When Kai disappears under suspicious circumstances, the siblings set off to rescue him.

What I thought:

I found the beginning of The Water Wars by Cameron Stracher quite slow, and it didn’t help that Kai rubbed me the wrong way from the start: when Vera first sees him, he spills the last remaining drops of a glass of water into the dust. In a world where water is so scarce that men will kill for it, this gesture seems both foolhardy and arrogant. The pace of the book picked up when Vera and Will went looking for Kai, but unfortunately, the story didn’t have enough tension for me. Vera and Will get themselves into some serious situations, but I never felt like they were in any real danger, which diminished my enjoyment of this book. Stracher also makes the mistake of summarizing some of the action (via Vera, who is the book’s narrator), rather than showing us what is going on.

Favourite quotes:

“When he was a boy, there were still green fields and blue lakes. Kids played sports outside, like baseball and football, that existed now only on the screens. You could lie in a tub filled with warm water for no reason except to relax. It seemed foolish and wasteful and wonderful—to live as if the sky were endless and time itself had no measure.” (p. 31)

“A new beginning, I thought. Without hunger, thirst, or war. A river could be like a time machine: Step into the same place and it was already changed. But I wondered if there could ever be enough water to start again.” (p. 33)
 
Final thoughts:

Although the world Stracher creates is all too believable, the story he tells unfortunately is not. While the book was interesting enough to keep me reading (to find out what was going to happen), I found the ending simplistic and disappointing. I can’t recommend this book.

Thank you to Sourcebooks for providing me with this book to review.
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Other reviews:

365 Days of Reading • At Home with Books • Book Chatter • Books and Literature for Teens • Daemon’s books• Linus’s Blanket • Luxury Reading • novel novice • Presenting Lenore • Reading Addict • Reading Nook • Reading with Tequila • Rhapsody in Books Weblog • Squeaky Books • thebookbind • The Future Fire • The Literary Life of the Well-Read Wife

Interview with the author: Presenting Lenore
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Review: The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel

Thirteen-year-old Moxie Roosevelt Kipper, the main character in The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel, feels that she’s never been able to live up to her wacky name, so on the eve of going to a new school, she decides to reinvent herself. But should she become a Mysterious Earth Goddess (MEG), a Hale and Hearty Sports Enthusiast (HHSE), a Detached, Unique, Coolly Knowing Individual (DUCKI) or an Assertive Revolutionary Activist (ARA)? Instead of picking one new personality, Moxie opts to mould herself to her audience—and keep her “square-headed music habit” to herself—with predictably disastrous results.

I could identify with Moxie’s desire to reinvent herself: I tried the same thing when I went to high school, except that my solution to the “weird name” dilemma was to change my name rather than my personality. However, this was short-lived: on the first day of classes, the only girl who knew me in the whole school shrieked out my new name in the hallway and I knew instantly that I wasn’t destined to become a Laura (my middle name). In any case, it was easier to be an Avis in my English high school than it had been in my French elementary school.*

But back to the book. Although I found the girls Moxie met at school to be a bit stereotypical, the two teachers in the novel, Mr. Tate and Mrs. Hay, are engaging, fully developed and quirky characters—not surprisingly, they were my favourites. Mr. Tate, her piano teacher, gives Moxie some of the best advice I’ve ever heard when he tells her he wants her to tackle Variation 28 of the Goldberg Variations by Bach (which is apparently “the iceberg to the Titanic of many a hopeful virtuoso”**). He says:

[To tackle Variation 28], you have to leave the comfort of those ten pieces you play perfectly and be willing to get messy. Be comfortable with the sound of your own struggle as you try to work it out, even if it sounds like you’re practicing with mittens on. Let it be a work in progress. The only way you’re going to learn how to play it is to learn how not to play it first.** (pp. 67-68)

This is sound advice whenever you’re learning something new, especially if you’re a perfectionist, as I am, and hate making mistakes.

Unfortunately, I found that a few of the plot twists were fairly predictable and some of the embarrassing things that happen to Moxie were a bit over the top (I especially didn’t like the physical comedy situations she found herself in, but then I’ve never been a fan of physical comedy). However, they may appeal more to younger readers (this book is intended for ages 10 and up). In any case, the payoff at the end of the book more than makes up for any of the book’s shortcomings: it is simply brilliant (and brought tears to my eyes). The Reinvention of Moxie Roosevelt is a fun book that doesn’t take itself too seriously but manages nonetheless to impart an important message about the value of being yourself.

Thank you to Tina at Bookshipper for giving me this book to read.

*In French, the word avis means opinion, advice or notice (and is pronounced ah-vee).

**The quotes in this review were taken from an ARC and may not be exactly what appears in the final book.
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Other review: 5 Minutes for Books (scroll down) • Booknut • Bookshipper • Semicolon (scroll down)
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Review: Piece by Piece: Stories about Fitting into Canada edited by Teresa Toten

Piece by Piece: Stories about Fitting into Canada edited by Teresa Toten is a collection of 15 stories (including one graphic essay and a spoken-word poem) targeted at young adults. Its contributors hail from all over the world: China, Croatia, England, Grenada, Hungary, India, Iran, Jamaica, Japan, Lebanon, Russia, South Africa and the U.S. About a third emigrated to Canada as children; most, however, moved here as adults. (Only one is a second-generation Canadian.)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Here are my thoughts on a few of the essays:

In “Snapshots from the Fringes,” Rachna Gilmore shares the story of how a beloved book—Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery—had a profound impact on her life. This story brought tears to my eyes, perhaps because I also read the Anne books as a teenager—and can identify with feeling a sense of both belonging and not belonging in PEI, which I visited every summer as a child (my father grew up there).

“A Caravan of Words” by Rachel Manley is probably my favourite essay in the book because it’s about cats and words and Montreal (even though she doesn’t love Montreal as I do)—and the anecdote about how Manley became the official Jamaican interpreter in Toronto is absolutely priceless!

The hardest essay to read was “You’re Not from Around Here, Are You?” by Linda Granfield, who came to Canada from the U.S. to go to university and found that Canadians didn’t live up to their reputation for being polite and tolerant. Instead, she found that anti-American sentiment was rampant—during the Gulf War, she felt she was living in fear in her adopted country. While I don’t want to belittle her experience, and I know firsthand the pain of being excluded based on your cultural background, I was uncomfortable with the fact that she used the word “racism” to describe this type of discrimination. At the same time, this piece made me squirm in recognition: anti-Americanism is unfortunately alive and fairly socially acceptable in Canada.

The weakest piece in the book was “Under the Armpit of Noah,” the spoken-word poem by Boonaa Mohammed. Perhaps it’s because I’m not generally a fan of spoken-word poetry—and no doubt the piece would have a greater impact if it was performed—but I found it didn’t sustain my interest in the same way the other stories did.

Finally, I had to wonder why the story “Shadow Play” by Rui Umezawa was included in this anthology. Although Umezawa now lives in Toronto, this essay is not about Canada at all—it takes place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin!

Exoticism, like accents and ethnicity, is something we often think only other people or places have—especially if we are white and North American. But in fact, everyone has an accent and an ethnicity—and every place can be exotic if seen from the outside, as evidenced from the stories in Piece by Piece. At the same time, a book like this is also a reminder that anyone can be an outsider, and most if not all of us have felt like outsiders at some point in our lives.

Other reviews: Movable Hype • Quill & Quire • Rover • Sal’s Fiction Addiction • Spin Me I Pulsate • What If?

You can also read an interview with the editor: Torontoist

Read Teresa Toten’s introduction to the book (and her powerful story): “My Piece”

Thank you to Penguin Canada for sending me this book to review.

Sister Wife by Shelley Hrdlitschka (a review)

Sister Wife by Shelley Hrdlitschka is told from the alternating points of view of three teenagers living in the polygamous community of Unity: rebellious Celeste, a 14-year-old girl who is about to be “assigned” to an older man and become a sister wife; virtuous Nanette, Celeste’s younger sister; and Taviana, a young woman who was rescued off the streets by one of the men in the community. This is an interesting device because it allows Hrdlitschka to explore what it would be like to live in Unity from three very different points of view. For the most part, I enjoyed the book: I sympathized with Celeste’s plight and was curious to find out what would happen to her. I particularly loved how Hrdlitschka used the inuksuks to introduce Celeste to another way of looking at the world. Unfortunately, I also felt that Hrdlitschka tried too hard to be non-judgemental, which made the book both less interesting and less realistic. The last chapter in particular seemed to be suggesting that polygamy is just another lifestyle choice that works for some and not for others, which is a dangerous message in my opinion.* In addition, the denouement of Celeste’s story didn’t strike me as particularly realistic. Having said that, I’m still going to recommend Sister Wife, with reservations, to readers who are interested in polygamy, if only because I want to know what you think of the ending!

For other reviews, visit these blogs:
Abby (the) Librarian • A Patchwork of Books • Becky’s Book Reviews • Book Addiction • Bookshelves of Doom • Maw Books • S. Krishna’s Books • Teen Book Review • The Book Zombie

Thank you to Cindy at Cindy’s Love of Books for giving me this book to read.


This is the sixth book I review for the New Authors Challenge.


*I’m not suggesting that polygamy is inherently wrong, only that being married off to an older man at the age of 15 is not a lifestyle choice. It actually isn’t a choice at all.