Book Review: The Hidden Staircase

Back before cell phones existed and women were apt to sit anxiously at home by the phone waiting for news, Nancy Drew went zipping through her Midwestern town in her sporty blue convertible – from the scene of a burglary or a supposedly haunted house to the local police station – to deliver the evidence she had found in person. Refreshingly, the police appreciated her independent, take-charge nature: “The way you’re building up clues, if you were on my force, I’d recommend a citation for you!” Captain Rossland of Cliffwood tells her in The Hidden Staircase.

And though at the beginning of the mystery, he is apt to tell Nancy things like, “I doubt that there is anything you can do. You’d better leave it to the police,” Captain Rossland soon learns to take advantage of Nancy’s many talents, imploring the “girl detective” to question the suspects that the police have been able to break. “You may not know it, but you’re a very persuasive lady young lady. I believe that you might be able to get information out of both Harry and Greenman, where we have failed,” he tells her.

Of course, Nancy responds with modesty but agrees to try – and succeeds in obtaining a confession from each of the suspects within minutes. She’s both humble and shrewd – both a proper lady and a feminist, in other words. The popular concept of feminism today would consider that to be a bit of a paradox, but I don’t see why intelligence and heroism can’t be paired with good fashion sense and a “feminine” appreciation of beauty. If Nancy Drew (and Buffy Summers, of Vampire Slayer fame) can be both a hero and a traditional “girl,” why can’t we all?

And this is one of the reasons that I love Nancy Drew novels – because somehow, Nancy manages to be it all and makes it look easy. Of course, the ease with which Miss Drew stumbles upon clues, receives the indulgence of the police, and obtains confessions is a bit difficult to swallow if you’re older than ten or eleven. When I reread the Nancy Drew novels now, I have to adopt a determination to ignore all the unlikely scenarios and plot holes, not to mention a willingness to accept all the one-dimensional characters. But when I’ve had a hard couple of weeks and I need a break from “real literature” – stories about people living in poverty-stricken parts of the world or dealing with heartbreak of one kind or another – I pick up a Nancy Drew. She’s at least as good as a super-hero, and maybe even better – she has time to don a gay party frock and attend sorority dances and other high society events in between excursions to haunted mansions and exotic locations. She’s Bruce Wayne (Batman) for the feminists out there who are looking for a good time.

In The Hidden Staircase, which is the second Nancy Drew mystery story and was originally published in 1930, Nancy even gets to solve a case for her father, who is a prominent lawyer, and rescue him after he has been kidnapped by his enemies! After she traipses all over an American Colonial estate, searching for hidden passages and burglars, she discovers where the swindlers have hidden her father. And after he recovers from being drugged and held prisoner, the supportive Carson Drew isn’t embarrassed that his daughter has had to save his skin: “It’s a real victory for you!” Nancy’s father praised his daughter proudly. So you can see that Nancy is lucky enough to live in a world where men respect her and acquiesce to her higher intelligence and innate capabilities. Forget romance stories -- this is my kind of wish fulfillment novel!

Book Review: The Tombs of Atuan

I was not sure what to expect when I picked up The Tombs of Atuan; I had just re-read and reviewed Le Guin’s first Earthsea novel The Wizard of Earthsea when a friend warned me that this second novel in the series veered off in a very different direction. He didn’t give me any further explanation, though – he left me to discover The Tombs of Atuan for myself. And I’m extremely glad that I decided to read the second Earthsea novel sooner rather than later because I really enjoyed this Newbery-winning book, even more than I expected that I would.

While The Wizard of Earthsea is in many ways a quest narrative that follows Ged, a young wizard who must hunt down the dark shadow that he has loosed into the world through his own act of foolish pride, most of The Tombs of Atuan is not about a physical journey. Although Ged himself is essentially on another quest in this novel, he only plays a secondary role – the book is centered on the Tenar, a young priestess who guards the treasure that he is seeking.

Tenar was taken from her family when she was only five years old and trained in the ways of the Nameless Ones. The dark forces whom Tenar serves are silent rulers of not only their ancient above-ground temple, set in the midst of a religious complex, but also rule the mysterious underground labyrinth of which Tenar is put in charge. Because she has been separated from her parents and raised by other priestesses and religious acolytes, this dark world is all that Tenar knows – and so she eagerly accepts the labyrinth as her own domain. When the wizard Ged violates the sanctity of the underground caverns on his quest to regain possession of a powerful amulet, she is furious that he desecrated the sacred domain of the Nameless Ones. But she is also fascinated by Ged, whose presence makes her realize that there is more to the world and to life than just the darkness that she inhabits.

I could sympathize with Tenar more than I could with Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea, although that had little to do with the characters themselves or the situations that they were in. Le Guin’s writing style is different in The Tombs of Atuan than in A Wizard of Earthsea and readers are given a lot more insight into Tenar’s emotional state and thoughts than they are given in The Wizard of Earthsea. Therefore, Tenar is a very sympathetic character despite the fact that her plight as a young, isolated priestess will be initially unfamiliar to modern readers. It soon becomes clear, though, that her position amongst other priestess who are vying for political power in the religious compound is comparable in many ways to other forms of isolation and competition amongst females. And because Le Guin’s writing illuminates the emotions of her characters in The Tombs of Atuan, even Ged becomes a more sympathetic character than he seemed in A Wizard of Earthsea.

As Le Guin explores Tenar’s isolation and confusion, the narrative becomes a distinctly feminist tale – something else that appeals to me personally. The young priestess is given no choice as to whether or not she will serve the Nameless Ones; she is trapped in a role that should theoretically give her more power than the other women in her society and even the other priestesses, but her position has become merely a formality. The god-kings of Kargad no longer truly believe in the power of the Nameless Ones and so they do not bother to consult with the high priestess regarding warfare and other matters of political importance. The god-kings and their acolytes only worship and honor the Nameless Ones through traditional rituals but are not spiritually devoted to these dark powers, and so the idea that Tenar has any real power of her own is an illusion. She is at the mercy of the priestesses of the god-kings.

The Tombs of Atuan is not, however, about debunking the existence of spiritual forces in a Fantasy setting. The Nameless Ones, though virtually silent for many generations, show themselves to be very real at the end of the novel. The major truth that Tenar must realize, then, is not that dark forces are false, but rather that she does not have to be trapped in the role that society has placed upon her – she does not have to serve the Nameless Ones and can choose another path for her life.

I found the underground setting of The Tombs of Atuan to be a fascinating way to articulate the ways that society can isolate women and turn them against each other as they vie for any power that might allow them a bit more freedom than is traditionally afforded to other women in their society. Tenar’s complicated relationship with the labyrinth itself gives the reader a lot to think about, as does the surprising revelation that despite their silence, the Nameless Ones remain an incredibly powerful force. The decisions that Tenar eventually makes near the end of the novel give an empowering but realistic picture of the challenges that women face when they decide to reject traditionally acceptable roles. But rest assured that despite its feminist storyline, The Tombs of Atuan remains a very entertaining novel as well. The conflict between darkness and light, as well as Tenar’s more personal inner conflict, will draw any reader into the story and keep them engrossed until the last pages.

Additional note: after this novel, I have no doubts that I want to continue reading Le Guin’s other books – so come back for reviews of the next several Earthsea novels, as well as several others that are sitting on my shelf.

This review participates in my Focus on Fantasy Reading Challenge. To find out more about the reading challenge and contest, view my original Focus on Fantasy Post.

Book Review: Prisoners in the Palace

I picked up Prisoners in the Palace: How Princess Victoria became Queen with the Help of Her Maid, a Reporter, and a Scoundrel by Michaela McColl based on the recommendation of Khy over at Frenetic Reader, who reviewed this book in January. I have to admit that I didn’t like it quite as much as she did, but I agree with her assessment that “even those who are not typically fans of [historical fiction] will enjoy this one.” In fact, that is a good way to describe this story: enjoyable. Entertaining. It’s a combination feminist social justice/spy novel, fun despite it’s flaws.

It must be said, though, that the novel commits the cardinal sin of historical fiction, which I’ve mentioned a couple of times before: the tendency to dress up characters in period costumes but allow them modern attitudes and language. I recently wrote up a review of The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, which is an entertaining enough novel that I was able to completely forgive its contemporary language, especially because the attitudes of the characters were more or less appropriate for the turn of the century. Prisoners in the Palace, however, is set in Victorian England – and while some of the young women’s attitudes make sense, the way that they are presented is far too contemporary (and often relies on clichés, as well). Princess Victoria’s longing for independence and eventual resoluteness of character makes sense for a young girl in her position – over the course of the novel, she evolves from a spoiled, sheltered young girl into a young but resolute, self-sufficient queen. The way that Liza, the main character of the novel, is characterized and speaks/thinks is really what is most problematic for me.

Liza serves as a vehicle for the novel to discuss the ways that women – lower-class women in particular – were often at the mercy of men, monarchs and other royals. Having found herself deeply in debt after the deaths of her parents, Liza has fallen from the gentry and into the working class. Instead of attending her own cotillions and balls, sixteen-year-old Liza must put aside her hopes of “coming out” into society and instead become a ladies maid, only able to observe the glittering world of the gentry from a distance. Luckily, she is engaged as Princess Victoria’s new maid, so she’s got it fairly cushy. But then she becomes a witness to what has happened to the last young lady who held her position at Kensington Palace – Annie was also Princess Victoria’s ladies maid, but was impregnated by the controlling and abusive Sir John, cast out on the street, and had to become a prostitute in order to survive.

Liza’s feminist sensibilities are of course offended (as they should be), but her impulsive actions are a bit too bold to be realistic. The novel is able to explore the inequalities that women in Victorian England faced quite effectively through plot – but even so, it annoyed me that feminism of the 1970s came so easily to Liza of the 1830s. Every author who is going to write a novel about women set in Victorian England really out to read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, which presents some very forward feminist thinking for end of the Victorian Era and the beginning of the Modernist Period – but while Woolf and other feminists were growing more and more bold, there was still a degree of hesitancy, uncertainty about their attitudes. There was still a sense of propriety and proper femininity that they could not fully shed. Women had a sense of injustice, but most of them weren’t fully able to express it quite so directly and boldly as Liza often does throughout the novel; women of the Victorian Era had been raised by parents and in a society that still held to a much different mentality.

But despite the novel’s too-modern feminist mentality and prose full of contemporary clichés, the story works quite well. I found myself enjoying the novel, gobbling it up like candy at the movie theater. Liza isn’t hired to simply be Princess Victoria’s maid, but a spy for Victoria and her governess the Baroness as well – so while Liza is concerned with her own survival and the sordid fate of her predecessor Annie, she is also involved in Victoria’s emotional and political dealings, which have international consequences. Even though it might be a bit cheesy that the political fate of England rests in Liza’s hands at one or two points during the novel, if you buy into the story, it’s a fun and complex intrigue – it kept me riveted until 1 a.m.

Additionally, I want to express my appreciation for a romance that didn’t take center stage. In her review, Khy noted that “Liza and Will's relationship [was] realistic in that it wasn't all "omg looove!!" immediately, but [was] often tossed aside amidst the drama, only to be brought up again and discussed every once in a while.” I actually liked this, because it showed that Liza was well-aware that other things besides romance had importance to her survival and identity. She was equally determined to work her own way out of debt, avoid the fate of the impregnated and cast-aside Annie, remain loyal to Princess Victoria, and find her own happiness with a husband – once she figured out exactly who it was she wanted to marry and what kind of a life she really wanted. It was important at the end of the novel that she chose Will because she was comfortable with the lifestyle of a working (non-gentry) man, not that she was settling, which shows that she understands the importance of real-life concerns and doesn’t simply idealize “true love.” It was also important that Will both cherished and respected her, and allowed her the room to consider their relationship from different angles. For the most part, this is the kind of romantic relationship that we want for our feminist heroines.

It was ultimately the combination of the feminist character (despite the historical inaccuracies) and spy plot that kept me riveted, and while I can’t forgive Prisoners in the Palace quite as whole-heartedly as The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, I still recommend the novel to most readers. Unless they share my pet peeve, then readers will likely be just as engrossed in the plot, whether they are interested in Victorian historical fiction, feminist stories or just plain old spy novels. I’d even say this one might merit 3 1/2 stars.

March is Women's History Month, and this post participates in my Women's History Month Reading Challenge.

Women's History Month: Some Additional Historial Fiction In My Mailbox

As I’ve noted several times already on the blog, March is Women’s History Month, which I have chosen to celebrate by reading several YA historical fiction novels featuring female characters. I even set up a Women’s History Month Reading Challenge so that others could join me and share their reviews with each other. I’ve posted two reviews celebrating Women’s History Month so far, for the novels The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly and The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare.

Even though I already own plenty of unread novels that meet this criteria, stacked up on my desk and waiting for me, of course I couldn’t resist surfing around to find some additional books. But if I don’t get to them within the literal month of March, I’ll just continue to celebrate Women’s History in the weeks following! I ordered a couple of books that I hadn’t heard of until recently, and a few classic favorites from my childhood as well.

The Green Glass Sea and White Sands, Red Menace by Ellen Klages. The Green Glass Sea won the Scott O’Dell award for historical fiction, a list which I just recently discovered. The novel is about Dewey and Suze, two girls who spend a year in Los Alamos as their parents work on the atomic bomb, the secret gadget that is supposed to end World War II. Dewey, interested in mechanical projects herself, disregards typical gender roles and Suze is a trouble maker of sorts, and so the two misfits form a friendship in the tense atmosphere of the secretive scientific community. White Sands, Red Menace is the sequel to The Green Glass Sea, and follows Dewey and Suze in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where Suze’s father begins working to develop rockets for the U.S. government following the resolution of World War II.

I’m interested in the ways that these novels foreground questions of women scientists – something that’s pretty rare to find in novels, YA or adult fiction (other than straight-up Sci Fi). I can count on one hand the (well-written) books that I’ve read about women scientists and/or girls that are interested in science: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate and Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondatjee are the only two that are springing to mind at the moment (feel free to share more with me in the comments section!). Gender and ethics questions are posed in both novels; both teen and adult characters are unaware at first how the atomic bomb will ultimately be used, and as they learn more about the device, they struggle with that grim reality. Suze's mother puts her chemistry career on hold and her relationship with her husband grows rocky, mostly because of their different positions regarding the atomic bomb. One reviewer wrote that the novels “nail… the uncertainty that many Americans experienced after the truths of Hiroshima began to surface,” which seems like an ambitious and admirable topic for a YA novel. On a smaller scale, Dewey and Suze are required to take home economics instead of shop – so it sounds like the author Klages has carried these themes of gender, science and ethics throughout the novels on many levels. I’m looking forward to checking out these books, which don’t seem to have gotten much attention in the blogosophere.

Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek, and By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingles Wilder. I read the entire Little House series when I was young, but it’s been so long that I can hardly remember exactly what they were all about. My most distinct memories of these novels are actually the sensory descriptions, particularly of food preparation – curing meat in the smokehouse, canning fruit and freshly baking pies. I also remember Laura’s rapturous account to the general store and her chance to pick out the material for a new dress from amongst the bolts of flowered fabric, and her happy memories of a warm, family-filled Christmas celebration. My memories aren’t too far off, according to reviewers: “Every chapter divulges fascinatingly intricate, yet easy-to-read, details about pioneer life in the Midwest in the late 1800s, from bear-meat curing to maple-tree sapping to homemade bullet making.” So these novels are indeed heavy on the sensory details that stick with you, at least if you’re as fascinated with food as I am.

Most of the plots, however, are lost to me now, but I think the novels are pretty basic, focusing first on survival while Laura’s family is living in a log cabin in woodsy Wisconsin, then as they set out for Kansas in a covered wagon, searching for a new home. They end up living near Plum Creek for a time, then moving again, this time to the wilderness of the unsettled Dakota Territory. Laura’s Pa builds their homestead, works the railroad, and provides for his wife and daughters despite the hardships of pioneer life. Again, what I remember most about these stories is the way that after every hard day of work, every challenge, Pa Ingalls played the fiddle to sooth his daughters to sleep. I must have honed in on all the creature comforts as I read these novels instead of dwelling on the difficult homestead tasks that I would have found less relevant when I was a young and very spoiled little girl. I’m interested to see what pops out at me when I re-read them at age twenty-seven (although I’m still pretty spoiled and dislike manual labor intensely, so I’ll likely still enjoy all the sensory descriptions more than anything else).

The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich

My idea to re-read the Little House books actually hit me because I ran into this novel, with the opening description that reads: “Nineteenth-century American pioneer life was introduced to thousands of young readers by Laura Ingalls Wilder's beloved Little House books. With The Birchbark House, award-winning author Louise Erdrich's first novel for young readers, this same slice of history is seen through the eyes of the spirited, 7-year-old Ojibwa girl Omakayas…” I love Erdrich’s adult novels and I think it will be really awesome to read The Birchbark House (and its sequels, once I get my hands on them) in conjunction with the Little House books.

The summary of the novel on Amazon includes some of the background about Omakayas herself, but also about Erdrich’s detailed prose: “The sole survivor of a smallpox epidemic on Spirit Island, Omakayas, then only a baby girl, was rescued by a fearless woman named Tallow and welcomed into an Ojibwa family on Lake Superior's Madeline Island… Readers will be riveted by the daily life of this Native American family, in which tanning moose hides, picking berries, and scaring crows from the cornfield are as commonplace as encounters with bear cubs and fireside ghost stories… [this is a] poetic, exquisitely wrought narrative.” From this description, it sounds like The Birchbark House will include a lot of the same sensory details as Laura Ingalls Wilder’s novels, so I’m looking forward to a very rich reading experience when I sit down with all of these books!

Book Review: The Witch of Blackbird Pond

The sign of a good historical novel: when the reader is aware of the setting as being significantly different than her own contemporary landscape, and yet feels that at some point while reading, the setting itself fades away and almost ceases to matter because the characters themselves are timeless.

This is exactly the feeling that I get whenever I read The Witch of Blackbird Pond, the Newbery Award-winning novel by Elizabeth George Speare. This novel may be set in colonial New England and include detail about Puritan attitudes and witch hunts, but these things are secondary to the emotional reality of the main character Kit Tyler. I closely identify with Kit, a young woman raised in warm, sunny Barbados who must move to Puritan New England to live with her uncle, aunt and cousins when her grandfather dies. She finds herself quite the fish out of water – she is a headstrong, impulsive, educated and outspoken young woman amongst the prim, reserved and pious seventeenth century New Englanders. She is unaccustomed to doing even light housework, but in Connecticut, she must do her fair share of the chores; her delicate hands become covered in calluses and her fine silk dresses go months without wearing. The contrast between her carefree life in Barbados and her new lifestyle of constant labor is astounding, and it is very difficult for Kit to adjust. She longs to escape the harsh New England winter and return to her balmy island home. Having moved from one climate to another, as well as having shifted roles several times in my life, I can certainly appreciate how truly difficult such a change would be for a spoiled girl like Kit (and like myself).

My ability to sympathize with Kit was further heightened during my latest re-read of the book because like Kit, I recently lost my grandfather. Like the young protagonist in The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, Kit was very closet to her grandfather, who educated her and encouraged her to think for herself. Her homesickness mingles with her grief; these are emotions with which I am all too familiar. Though Speare never goes on too much about Kit’s emotions, it is clear that she misses her grandfather, and while most readers can sympathize to some degree with her heartache, this element of the story struck me particularly hard at this moment in time.

But despite all the grief and difficulties that Kit faces in the novel, The Witch of Blackbird Pond is not a distressing story – merely an engrossing one. Kit is a resilient young woman, determined to make a place for herself somewhere in the world. She is realistic, hard-working, and intelligent; she knows that she must learn to curb her impulsive actions and adapt to the ways of the local New Englanders in order to survive. She is willing to adjust herself in many ways – and yet she is not willing to compromise with regards to certain things. She refuses to leave or betray her friends, including an old woman that most of the village believes to be a witch. When this leads to Kit herself being accused of witchcraft, she still will not betray another young friend of hers, even though the testimony of her friend would likely set her free. Ladies, this is the kind of tenacity and integrity that we want in our female protagonists!

A few readers have commented that the story is fairly slow, so I feel it is important to note that the novel is more about Kit’s emotional upheaval and does not linger on the witch hunt and trial scenes too long – and yet it is Kit’s willingness to stand up for her own opinions and values time after time that make the novel exciting in its own way. Such a stubborn stance would have actually put a young woman like Kit in great danger at that time – which is why she ends up on trial for witchcraft and faces the serious danger of being maimed, cast out of the community, or even killed. But Kit admirably holds her own in this situation, exemplifying the kind of friendship and commitment that readers can appreciate.

Moreover, readers should find the combination of Kit’s realistic expectations and firm values to be an excellent example of what it is like to be a feminist in the real world. Women didn’t always have (and many still don’t have) the luxury of building a career instead of attending to the housework. Circumstances often limit women – even very capable, intelligent women. In many ways, this story is about learning to accept your circumstances while finding the most agreeable way to cope with them. Kit may not be able to change her reality of the need to labor daily beside her uncle, aunt and cousins in the harsh New England climate, but she can work to earn the respect of her family and build friendships with those in the community with whom she feels a true kinship. She then honors those bonds to the best of her ability, a trait that is truly admirable.

The novel isn’t all about compromise and suffering, though; Speare ends the novel on a happier note for Kit. I don’t want to give too much away about the novel, but rest assured that the story doesn’t end with Kit on trial for witchcraft. Sometimes I dislike a too-happy ending because it is unrealistic to have everything perfectly sewn up, just as it ought to be. Yet in this case, I’m all too willing to forgive Speare the indiscretion of a neat conclusion because it’s just so satisfying to see a character achieve happiness when you identify with them so closely.

March is Women's History Month, and this post participates in my Women's History Month Reading Challenge. To join the challenge, all you have to do is read and review one or more books, then link back to my original Reading Challenge post by leaving a link to your post in the comments section.

Book Review: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate

I think I’ve mentioned this (briefly) on the blog before: one of my pet peeves about certain works of historical fiction is when a writer sets his or her novel in a specific time period, includes all the correct historical details with regards to food, clothing and cultural traditions such as work habits and holiday celebrations, but main character is written with a much-too-modern attitude. Especially with novels about young girls and women, the tendency of many contemporary authors is to give their protagonist a modern feminist mentality, but while many girls and women chafed at their traditional female roles throughout history, they didn’t think in quite the same way as “enlightened feminists” at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century.

Many authors of historical fiction need to do a little more research – they shouldn’t only look into what kinds of corsets and gowns women had to wear, what chores they had to perform, what little education they were given – but what the women of those times actually had to say about these things in their letters and diaries. Then they need to stretch their imagination farther in order to articulate a character’s dissatisfaction with traditional gender roles – without adopting contemporary attitudes and expectations.

That’s my little soapbox speech for the week, but the truth is that the main character of Jacqueline Kelly’s Newbery Honor Book The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate commits the atrocious sin of speaking and thinking in contemporary ways – and I loved this novel anyway. In other words, I’ve finally come across a novel that I’m willing to forgive for its historical inaccuracy because it’s so wonderful in so many other ways. Calpurnia Tate is the story of a young Texan girl living on a cotton plantation at the turn of the century who chafes at traditional female activities and duties and longs to study insect and animal life. While I was initially interested in the fact that the protagonist is interested in science (which I feel is somewhat unusual – please correct me if I’m wrong), this element of the story turned out to be only one of many reasons to love Kelly’s novel.

First of all, Calpurnia Tate is quite funny. I don’t tend to laugh too much when I am reading historical fiction, except when it comes to Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and its sequels. I’m trying to recall any other historical novels that have made me chuckle as much as Kelly’s novel and I’m coming up blank. Calpurnia and her grandfather are both intelligent, very quirky characters that do and say amusing things and find themselves in some entertaining situations. The novel was much lighter reading then I thought it would be from the summary, which pits inquisitive and intellectual Calpurnia against her mother and the world of traditional feminine domesticity.

But despite its humor, the novel does justice to the serious topic of a scientific-minded young woman who is expected to set aside her interest in biology and research in order to learn how to bake pies and knit stockings. As Calpurnia realizes that her chances of becoming a scientist are slim, her feelings of discontent, despair and isolation are realistically portrayed (other than the contemporary speech) and struck me right to the heart. I may not be a scientist at heart, but most people can understand or at least sympathize with the pain of being forced into a role that makes you terribly unhappy. In some ways, this is a similar tale and a similar heartache to that of Maddy in Jennifer Connelly’s fabulous novel A Northern Light, but I really enjoyed the more unusual aspect of Calpurnia Tate that the protagonist was interested in science. Like Gary D. Schmidt’s Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, the main character is exploring the concepts in Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species and finds herself at odds with the more traditionally-minded members of her community. No one understands poor Calpurnia – no one except her grandfather.

And it is Calpurnia’s relationship with her grandfather that is the final and shining reason that I loved this novel. Grandfather Tate is a gruff, distracted old man who hides away in his library and his lab; his grandchildren find him quite intimidating. Yet when Grandfather discovers a budding scientist in his only granddaughter, the two develop a special relationship. They go hunting for bug and plant specimens together, and he teaches her about all the scientific wonders of the world. He cultivates her interest in not only botany and insect life, but in all kinds of knowledge, giving her a copy of The Origin of the Species and access to his collection of Charles Dickens novels. When Calpurnia demonstrates clever business acumen, though, his reaction is one of disappointment – it is obvious that he wants her to become a scientist. He teaches her the scientific method and includes her in his experimental attempts to distill a new type of liquor from pecans. The two discover a new type of plant, which they submit to the Smithsonian Institution to be cataloged and christened with the family name, since they are the plant’s discoverers. They share many interests and activities, and they understand each other in a way that no one else seems to understand either of them.

While Calpurnia’s interest in science is what makes this novel unusual and interesting, it is her relationship with her grandfather that made it particularly poignant for me. I recently lost not only my grandpa, but also my grandmother, both of whom were very special to me. Consequently, this novel hit on many of my emotions. I found myself chuckling – even laughing out loud sometimes – and insisting that I read a few sentences to my husband every once in a while. Then, minutes later, I found myself sniffling a bit.

Clearly, because Kelly was able to entertain me in such a way, I have to forgive its lack of historically accurate speech. In truth, the attitudes and ideas that are communicated are not that far from what a young girl might have felt at the time – it is really only how those ideas are communicated that strike me as inaccurate. But in the overall picture, it stopped mattering to me as I fell in love with this novel. I recommend this even for those who don’t normally enjoy historical fiction and I am much indebted to MJ over at The Woodland Library for her excellent review of this novel, which inspired me to go out and get myself a copy of this book.

This post participates in my Women's History Month Reading Challenge. It's easy to participate - just read and review a historical fiction novel (YA or not) with a female protagonist, then leave me the link to your review on my original Reading Challenge post.

Women's History Month (In My Mailbox and Reading Challenge)

March is Women’s History Month, and so I thought I’d make an extra effort to read some historical fiction with female characters, in addition to reading the six Aussie Y.A. novels for my Six Books in Six Weeks Challenge. So I ordered even more (not that I really needed any more) young adult novels with girls and/or women at the center of the plot.

Even though we’ve all got our own tottering TBR stacks, I’d like to invite everyone to participate in a little mini-reading challenge: read and review at least one historical fiction novel this month that’s centered around a young woman. Grab the badge I’ve made, then link your review back to this post. I’d love to hear about more novels that celebrate Women’s History!!

Meanwhile, here’s what was in my mailbox this week. I’m really excited about these books, although I’m not sure how many of them I’ll actually get to in the month of March…

Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George: After reading and reviewing The Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell, I’m on a roll with Newbery-winning female-survival stories. This novel is about Miyax, an unhappy Eskimo orphan who has already been married off at the age of thirteen. She runs away from her husband’s parents’ home in Alaska, hoping to reach her pen pal in San Francisco, but becomes lost on the tundra and must rely on a pack of wolves to survive. Another coming-of-age-in-the-wilderness novel may or may not hit me as positively as O’Dell’s novel, but I’m interested to give it a try.

The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly: Even though this novel is a Newbery Honor book, I have to admit I wasn’t drawn to it from the description/summary that I read when it first came out: “As the only girl in an uppercrust Texas family of seven children, Calpurnia, 11, is expected to enter young womanhood with all its trappings of tight corsets, cookery, and handiwork…” This sounds a lot like every historical novel about a young girl that I’ve ever read, in which the author tries to insert a modern feminist mentality. This is a pet peeve of mine because it can often feel like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole – while many girls chafed at their traditional roles even back then, they didn’t think in the same ways that we “enlightened feminists” do now at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century. But I’ve recently read a few other descriptions of Calpurnia Tate that made it sound a lot more 1) interesting and 2) relevant to me at this moment in my life, including MJ’s excellent review over at The Woodland Library. It turns out that Calpurnia’s escape from the world of corsets is into the pages of Darwin’s Origin of the Species, which awakens in her a desire to be a scientist. The Darwin comes to her courtesy of her grandfather, with whom she develops a special relationship – which is where the personal relevance pops up. I recently lost my grandpa, with whom I was very close, and so I’m looking forward to reading about another loving relationship between grandfather and granddaughter even more than the storyline about scientific exploration.

Prisoner in the Palace: How Princess Victoria became Queen with the Help of Her Maid, a Reporter, and a Scoundrel by Michaela McColl: This novel came to my attention thanks to Khy over at Frenetic Reader, who reviewed McColl’s book in January. I must admit that while I love period fiction that was actually written during the particular period in which it was set (Austen and Dickens, for example), I’m not usually keen on Victorian historical fiction. But Khy’s opening caught my attention because it’s SO true. She wrote, “I adore historical fiction but often don't read it because of how absolutely dry it can be. Good historical fiction is really good, but bad historical fiction is so, so bad.” She goes on to say that, “Prisoners in the Palace falls into the former category [of well-written historical fiction]” and so since she insists that it’s not dry and that “even those who are not typically fans of the genre will enjoy this one,” I became more and more interested in this novel about a young girl who becomes both a servant and a spy for Queen Victoria. When I found a copy for cheap, the deal was sealed, and McColl’s novel joined my TBR stack.

The Girl in Blue by Ann Rinaldi: When Alex over at The Children’s War reviewed Rinaldi’s Civil War feminist novel, a couple of things immediately caught my eye about the character and the plot. Sixteen-year-old Sarah Wheelock is from Michigan, which is where I grew up, and once she joins the Union Army disguised as a boy, she ends up in Washington D.C., a city that I called home for five years just after my husband and I got married. So not only am I interested in the story of Sarah’s Civil War undercover intrigues, which are apparently based on the true story of Sara Emma Edmonds, I’m also looking forward to reading about familiar locations.

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery: Okay, I admit that I already own a copy of this novel because it is one of my childhood favorites. In fact, I own all eight books in the series (Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island...). But I have wanted to pick up a nicer edition for quite some time, and I’ll use this occasion to re-read Montgomery’s classic novel about the plucky Canadian orphan who turns the lives of Mathew and Marilla Cuthbert – and indeed, the whole town of Avonlea – upside down. I laugh out loud every time I read Montgomery’s series, which is actually pretty rare for me. And oh, that Gilbert Blythe. Be still my beating heart.

If you have any other good suggestions for Women's History Month Reading, post them in the comments section!

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In My Mailbox was started by The Story Siren and has spread to over two hundred participating blogs. Bloggers show off books that they have purchased/received (not necessarily in the mail literally), before they actually read and review them in order to share their enthusiasm and catch the interest of their followers. If you’re looking for something new to read, surf through some of mailboxes of this week’s participants, which will be linked to the Story Siren’s March 6 post.

Book Review: A Northern Light

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly came highly recommended from several other book bloggers and had also won the Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature, so my expectations were high. And in case you don’t read my entire review, let me be clear from the start: it more than met my expectations.

Donnelly’s protagonist is actually the most believable feminist character that I’ve read in a very long time. A poor sixteen year old from the Adirondacks, Mattie is a gifted aspiring writer who is faced with a difficult choice: keep the promise that she made to her deceased mother that she would help her pa take care of her younger sisters, or accept a scholarship to study writing at Barnard College in New York City. Her decision is complicated even further by an unexpected romance with a local farm boy, who is physically attractive to Mattie and gives her the attention that she craves, but doesn’t understand her desire to get an education and become a writer. Mattie’s love for her family, her longing to be loved by a man, and her desire to be a writer are all extremely important to her, and so she is tortured by the idea that she must choose between these things.

Too often, feminist narratives (whether works of fiction or non-fiction essays) declare that a woman should prioritize her career without acknowledging that loved ones are/should also be an important consideration. By portraying Mattie’s struggle to decide whether or not to leave home, Donnelly addresses a conflict that is still extremely relevant to women today, whether they are writers or aspire to another type of career.

It was, however, Mattie’s love of reading and desire to be a writer that made her character particularly interesting and sympathetic to me personally. As an avid reader and aspiring writer myself (as many of you are as well), I was thrilled that Donnelly was able to accurately portray the kind of ache that so many artists and authors feel, as students and lovers of the written word. And Mattie is not an idealistic young artist, either – she sees the world for what it really is and yearns for literature that will be honest with its audience. An experience with one of her schoolteachers disheartens her because the woman wants her to be disingenuous, to portray the world as beautiful and carefree, but the sixteen year old Mattie has already witnessed too much unfairness and death:

“Look around yourself, Mathilda,” she said. “at the trees and the lakes and the mountains. At the magnificence of nature. It should inspire joy and awe. Reverence. Respect. Beautiful thoughts and fine words.”

I had looked around. I’d seen all the things she’d spoken of and more besides. I’d seen a bear cub lift its face to the drenching spring rains. And the silver moon of winter, so high and blinding… but I’d also seen the dark of things. The starved carcasses of winter deer. The driving fury of a blizzard wind. And the gloom that broods under the pines always. Even on the brightest of days.

Mattie yearns to express the truth of what she sees, which is something that many people do not want to hear. She also yearns to be loved for her honesty, something that most people cannot bring themselves to love. So, she is caught between her desire for family and education, love and artistic integrity.

Two of Mattie’s friendships influence her decision of whether or not to attend Barnard in the fall. The first is with another one of her teachers, a married woman living under her maiden name because her poetry has been banned – as Mattie discovers more about her teacher’s identity, her desire to pursue her own education grows despite the fact that it seems quite impossible for her to go to school in the fall. Her friendship with Weaver, a young African American man who is planning to attend Columbia University to become a lawyer, also stirs Mattie’s heart and urges her toward the exciting, unknown life of a college student.

But it is ultimately Mattie’s connection to a young woman, drowned at the resort hotel where Mattie works over the summer, that motivates Mattie to make a decision regarding her future. As Mattie ponders the situation of the dead girl, she is forced to face the idea that love and loneliness can be both pleasurable and painful. She realizes that no matter what she chooses, there will be difficult consequences – and the novel does not offer easy solutions to Mattie’s quandary or simple resolutions to its various subplots, either. This is why this novel is so important; it is satisfying in its unsatisfying-ness, in its refusal to simplify anything. Being a feminist – and a human being – is an extremely complex thing, and this novel is beautiful in the way that it portrays the difficulties of learning to be an unselfish but independent woman.