Book Review: The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr

Take the regular struggles of being a teenager, add the eyes of the entire professional music performance community, plus an intense family pride in excellence and it’s no wonder that piano prodigy Lucy Beck-Moreau cracked under the pressure.  Now, months after her very visible exit from music, Lucy’s brother is in need of a new piano teacher.  Will Devi is able to bring out the best in Gus’s playing, but also in Lucy.  Lucy has to navigate her complicated family dynamics (particularly her grandfather’s stern judgment), the tentative friendships she still has, and her growing attachment to the married Will as the joy of making music begins to reawaken her soul.  Zarr deftly captures what it feels like to be moved by music, down in the deep part of your soul.  Describing the artistic spirit is indeed an elusive task.  Lucy’s journey is reminiscent of gradually un-clenching a fist, and her self-rediscovery is marked with moments of Zarr’s clever and clear insight.  However, moments are all we get.  The principal character is tragically dull for the first third of the book.  The relationship that develops between Lucy and Will is understandable at times, but more often concerning, considering that he’s a 30 year old married man accepting the emotional baggage of a teenage girl.  While the finale finds Lucy confidently facing the future, the penultimate action sounds discordant and forced.  Zarr certainly gave herself a difficult task with this story of emotion and intangible things, but Lucy’s tale falls short of what it could be.

I read this book months ago, when it first came out.  I absolutely loved Sara Zarr’s previous novel, How to Save a Life, and I had high hopes for The Lucy Variations.  Fairly disappointing, but I won’t lose faith in Sara Zarr.

Book crafting: Page garland!

If you love books, you probably loooooooove books.  As in, physical books – the treasured codex.  The thought of writing in your precious tomes makes your heart turn over, let alone tearing out a page.

Well, of all the things I learned in library school, I’m most amused by the fact that “the treasured codex” was decidedly knocked out of its ivory tower.  Write in them, tear them apart, color on them, especially for the sake of crafting.  They’re just things after all.

Fairyland

I saw this quote while browsing on Pinterest, and I had to share it.  Only after I’d posted it on Facebook did I realize I didn’t know the quote’s authenticity.  Silly me!  I hate unattributed quotes!

A quick search on Google turned up an essay by C.S. Lewis called “On Three Ways of Writing for Children.”  Wouldn’t you know it, the website Catholic Culture has the whole thing online!

(I kind of love that a Catholic website has the full text of an Anglican writer.  Yeah, we claim him as “practically Catholic.”)

The whole essay is amazing, especially for those who work with children.  But I especially loved this jab at adults who look down on the things of childhood:

To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But the on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development: When I was ten I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

G.K. Chesterton has written quite a bit on the importance of fairy tales, as has Tolkien, which really really really makes me want to research all three and prepare a talk… for some Catholic group… I haven’t really figured that part out yet.  But one of my friends said he’d “totally go to that talk,” so I think I’ll try to make that happen.

Happy reading!

Nomad Life

Literally – my life in a pile.

August 14th is moving day for the city.  Apparently, the only system that can work for a whole college town is for all year-long leases to begin on August 15th and end on August 14th.  Landlords have one day to clean and fix their units.  I don’t know how they do it.  Students are essentially homeless for a night.  It can cause problems.

My lease ended like everyone else’s, and my roommates and I left our lovely pre-Depression-era brick house, with its wood floors, gas stove, and 2,000+ square feet.  Rather than move back in with my parents, I decided to stay where I was.  I can stick with my part-time job and be near my friends and community.  All of my big furniture and things that I just didn’t need (kitchen stuff, alas!) went home with my parents, and I boiled my possessions down to a single pile.  Thank goodness it all fits in my car!  Except for my bike – that requires a special trip to move, but I wasn’t about to part with that.

While I look for jobs, I’m staying with friends and depending on the generosity of others.  It’s an extremely humbling experience, independent woman that I am, to depend on others.  I’m learning to ask for help, but also to know that people cannot always help at the moment I ask.  I must always try to remember that a situation is almost never as dire as I perceive it to be.  Which is a very good lesson to learn.

Welcome!

Well, hello there!  Every blog needs the obligitory initial post – you have to start somewhere after all.  I’ll keep this short and sweet, since the probability of anyone seeing this beyond this week is small.

If you’d like to know approximately who I am or where I am in life, check out the About page.

On this blog, expect to see many book or audiobook reviews for children’s and young adult literature.  I’m also in the midst of a project at work to recategorize the picture book collection – quite the trend in youth library services! – and it seems to me that Library Land needs more discussion of the project’s gritty details.

Really, it’ll all be a bit scattered until I settle into career stability.  In the meantime, I’ve got plenty to share, and I hope you’ll join me for an enjoyable time!