“The Falconer’s Knot” by Mary Hoffman and other books with FALCONER in the title

HOW did I end up looking at THREE books with “falconer” in the title?! I was chatting with my sister-in-law…  She mentioned a book she enjoyed and all I could remember later was that one word. So I went on line with my local library and reserved recent fiction that sounded promising. 

I’ve been hungry for “fun fiction”, but only one book interested me enough to finish. 

The Falconer’s Knot by Mary Horrman was by far the best of these three books. Young Adult fiction with a sunny take on life, set in Italy, which the author plainly loves. Teenagers Silvano and Chiara are sent to a monastery and convent respectively, by families with problems to solve. Neither has a scrap of religious vocation. Murders take place and the two must solve them to avoid unfair accusations. The ending of the book is like a Shakespeare comedy. Love overcomes all! This is the kind of book that makes me want to call my travel agent. I’ve never visited Italy!

The other two books didn’t catch my fancy. One was YA steampunk, the other adult historical fiction (usually a good category for me) . 

Just to make this even sillier, my sister-in-law now denies offering me any such advice! So, who WAS I talking to? SiL went through her recent reading and found only ONE related title, a “cozy mystery” called The Falcon Always Wings Twice by Donna Andrews. Sorry, I have my standards. I simply won’t read a book based on that bad a word play. Unless I’m REALLY desperate. 

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“A Bone from a Dry Sea” by Peter Dickenson

Okay, call me absent minded! I overlooked the fact that this is my second Young Adult book by Peter Dickenson. See review dated April 23, 2021. It shares the slightly didactic character that shows up in much YA literature (imho). 

I had to force my way through most of this book. There are two plots, both involving young females. An English teenager goes on a paleontology expedition with her father and finds a (potentially important) bone. The other plot tells us how the bone ended up where it was later found. 

Issues of racism and sexism arise, but are not handled in depth. The scientists in this book are portrayed as unpleasant, quarrelsome egotists. I feel that this stereotypical representation feeds the anti-science attitudes that are making our lives so difficult now. If scientists are a bunch of jerks, it’s easier to reject their recommendations measures like vaccination. I’m not saying scientists are all “nice”, but gratuitous fictional portrayals of scientific infighting aren’t helpful.

There’s a real and intellectually interesting controversy behind this book, the question of whether human evolution included an aquatic stage. Why Dickenson chose this as the basis for a YA novel baffles me. But, as I’ve said before, I usually don’t like “fictionalized” versions of real and important people and events. That a bias of mine.

The best part of this book was a BIG plot twist near the end. I totally didn’t see it coming, and I found it completely believable. Yes, life does throw the occasional major league curve ball. (Nobody got killed.) The book ends without telling us how the “victim” will choose to put his life back together. 

This book should be examined in courses on Science and Society.

If you want a non-fiction look a major scientific squabble, read Noble Savages by Napoleon Chagnon, cultural anthropologist. I remembered Chagnon as I read Dickenson’s imagined description of the lives of early pre-humans. Chagnon made enough behavioral observations to speculate about questions like how many people can live in a “tribe” before it ends up splitting into two tribes, a possibility Dickinson hints at in A Bone from a Dry Sea. 

Another non-fiction account of science and scientific controversy is The Double Helix by James Watson, about the structure of DNA. Later editions include his apology for his dismissive, sexist comments about distinguished chemist Rosalind Franklin. 

I wish the fun and excitement of science showed more clearly in Dickenson’s books. Field scientists have crazy adventures! 

“Son” – part 4 of “The Giver Quartet” by Lois Lowry

I discovered Lois Lowry when I worked as a substitute teacher in my local K-8 school district. A substitute doesn’t do grading and administrative work like a regular teacher, so during my “down” time, I read whatever was around. Later, I made a conscious decision to keep reading Young Adult fiction, in order to know what my teenaged friends were enjoying. I categorize these books as fantasy because of their (unexplained) supernatural elements.

The Giver grabbed my attention. 

The setting of The Giver is dystopian, a community where contentment is achieved by conformity and the suppression of emotions. The Giver is the first in a four book series. Son is the last, and I found it satisfying. It portrays personal growth and the (endless) battle between good and evil. Great plot! Half way through Son, I realized I had NO IDEA how the book would end.

An aspect of this book that I liked was its emphasis on preparation. If you are determined to do something difficult, can you prepare? Two contradictory scenarios play out. In one case, a young woman trains for years in order to surmount a physical/psychological challenge. Another teenager invests his time and effort in building a boat. Total failure. Soon after, he faces his enemy hastily and poorly prepared, but triumphs in a contest of wills. 

Lois Lowry wrote more than forty books, some of which have been adapted to film or stage, and The Giver was made into an opera. (I can’t imagine this.) I look forward to reading her memoirs. 

“Eva” by Peter Dickinson

This book was loaned to me by a friend, who asked for my opinion of it. Sometimes this means my “scientific” opinion, since I am a scientist. I earned a Master of Science in Chemistry in 1973.

My academic degree is no particular help in evaluating this book, but I have relevant informal experience. I’m married to an ecologist well versed in evolution, who taught an undergraduate course called “Animal and Human”. That course focused on the research of Jane Goodall and other primatologists. Our home bookshelf includes works by Goodall, Frans de Waal and others. I particularly like de Waal’s Good Natured – the origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals.

Back to the book… Eva is a 13 year old girl who suffers devastating physical injuries in an auto accident. Her (less damaged) brain is transplanted into the body of a young female chimpanzee. (No, I don’t think will happen in my lifetime, despite rapid advances in neuroscience.) Against all odds, Eva survives, the first (and only) member of a new life form. Everything about Eva is novel and much is unexpected – to her, her family and the doctors and scientists who made her treatment possible.

Eva turns out to be more chimpanzee than human. She feels more at home in a chimpanzee colony called “the pool” than with her parents or school friends. Their habitat destroyed by human overpopulation, all surviving chimps live in “the pool”, a zoo-like urban setting where chimps face one of three fates. Some are sold to corporations or universities for research. Others are kept in a zoo, for the (paying) public to see and appreciate them. The luckiest ones live mostly undisturbed in a private compound, observed (remotely) by scientists who want to understand their biology and behavior. Even that is not a “good” or “natural” life for a chimpanzee, and they have lost skills, including the ability to forage for food. Eva, the daughter of one of the scientists, played with chimps as a child and felt positive towards them. This helps her survive the shock of “waking up” in a chimpanzee body.

Eva wants a more natural setting for herself and the other chimps, and, against the odds and at great risk, she gets it. A chimp colony is established (in Madagascar). Eva attempts re-teach chimps “wild” life skills and to import a few human behaviors into the colony (tying knots, for example). She breeds only with chimps she considers intelligent and socially cooperative. She dies (of old age) hoping “her” chimp descendants will thrive in the future at a time when humans seem doomed. 

My opinion? Highly entertaining. Dystopian fiction, however, is not a genre I like. It can be cynical and broadly antisocial (imho). Is Eva anti-science? Borderline. If you’re looking for “bad” scientists, you can find them. I don’t consider this a trivial issue. Not while climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers show up in my own community. If we reject science across the board, we humans are doomed, and may destroy other species as well.

This book was published in 1989.  Peter Dickinson died in 2015. It is categorized as Young Adult fiction. Dickinson doesn’t talk down to his readers. If anything marks it as YA oriented, it’s the emphasis on plot (over character, setting or reflection) and the brisk pace. One category of YA is “dystopian YA fiction”. Eva might qualify. The future world depicted is overcrowded, polluted and gloomy.

If someone wants to critique the portrayal of chimps in Eva, I suggest they check the publication dates of the books mentioned above to see what information was available to Dickenson when he wrote Eva. I think, overall, that he did a good job. 

Jane Goodall wrote Reason for Hope in 1999. She is now 87 years old. You can check her out at www.news.janegoodall.org. She still has hope.  

“Lovely War” by Julie Berry

“Lovely War” by Julie Berry

This book is marked YA for Young Adult, a category that troubles me because most of the young adults I know read all kinds of books.

For starters, I hate the title of this book. War is not lovely. I’m often accused of being overly literal… And we are often told we need to read/think/live outside our “comfort zones” in order to grow/learn/whatever. Was this title an intentional manipulation? I’m not in the mood for such.

This book is a romance about World War I. It is interestingly framed by a “trial” among Greek gods, the Olympian crowd – Aphrodite, Apollo, etc. The interventions of gods into the lives of mortals are interesting.

Fine! But is it necessary to be so didactic? I don’t think the reader needs to be told (in 12 pages of historical notes) what to think about war, race, gender, ageism, etc. The Bibliography (14 titles) is quite sufficient for the reader who wants to go deeper into that time period. Doesn’t Julie Berry realize that her readers can find supporting/interpretive/analytic material with a few keystrokes?

Right now, a wrenching romance about World War I is not what I need. Maybe I’ll finish this book later.

I just want someone to tell me a good story!

“Away with the Fairies” and “Unnatural Habits”, Phrynne Fisher Mysteries by Kerry Greenwood

My concentration was greatly impaired by the onset of the Corona pandemic, so I didn’t charge through these books as fast as I normally would. But they were great fun and provided the distraction I needed. Phrynne Fisher is entertaining, and Greenwood has assembled a robust collection of supporting characters.

Greenwood is an Australian author with a law degree and thirty or more books to her credit, of which I have read half a dozen. Recurring themes are feminism and social justice. In Unnatural Habits, Greenwood takes on the Catholic church. Unlike most writers in the mystery genre, her books include bibliographies, which is good because some plotlines strain credulity, and it’s worthwhile to learn what stimulated Greenwood’s imagination.

Unnatural Habits also includes an Afterword, in which she describes her uncanny personal experience in a convent she used as a setting. On its grounds, “…I walked into the most dreadful concentrated suicidal despair I have ever felt. Someone had stood at that window and really wanted to die. I ran.” How many authors share something like THAT?! Out of curiosity, I Googled Abbotsford Convent, now a conference/cultural center. It looks decidedly unhaunted, and is sorrowfully announcing temporary closure due to Corona virus. But where are the nuns? Not a habit in sight!

Ms Greenwood also writes Young Adult novels and science fiction. I’ll give them a try.

“The Last Dragonslayer” and “The Song of the Quarkbeast” by Jasper Fforde

We all need to read something silly now and then! This is some of the best silliness available.

These two books are part of Jasper Fforde’s Chronicles of Kazam. They are listed as “for young readers” and have received awards as such, but the Library doesn’t have them marked as YA (Young Adult). Who cares? I love a good dose of fantasy now and then.

The setting of these stories is vaguely dystopic – a future Britain in which magic happens, but VERY unpredictably. The fifteen year old protagonist is a foundling, an orphaned child working out a period of indenture to pay for her Spartan but survivable upbringing in the vaguely demented convent of an unspecified religion.

In a way, our heroine’s life is what many teenagers would want – REAL work and responsibility mixed with challenge and adventure, and accompanied by friends.

I knew I was going to like these books when our heroine announced that she’d had a driver’s license since age 13, because the driving test was based on maturity, not age! Wouldn’t THAT be a nice innovation??

Anyway, when you need something to read in the doctor’s waiting room or on a train, check out Jasper Fforde. He’s also written The Thursday Next Series for adults, which takes place in The Bookworld and involves lots of time travel.

“The Book of Dust – Volume One – La Belle Sauvage” by Philip Pullman

This book is a (sort of) prequel to Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy.

Pullman wrote this trilogy between 1995 and 2000. JK Rowling wrote the seven Harry Potter books between 1997 and 2007. Each series was oriented towards young people and each generated a well developed alternate (fantasy) world and world view.

People (like me) who raised kids born from, say, 1975 to 1995 were likely to find themselves immersed in one or both of these literary bonanzas and their associated alternate worlds. What began, for many families, as read aloud frenzies, later evolved into pitched battles over who got to read an eagerly awaited, newly released book first. Adults have been known to stay up until all hours with The Deathly Hallows or The Amber Spyglass.

Two copies of La Belle Sauvage (released October 19) turned up at our now all-adult Thanksgiving family gathering. Serious discussion was devoted to which alternative world is more compelling, Hogwarts or Lyra’s Oxford. Pullman beat Rowling by a narrow margin. None of us could resist the idea of having a daemon.

What’s a daemon? In Pullman’s alternate world, every human has an animal “familiar” which reflects aspects of his or her personality. In classical Greek mythology, a daemon is a “natural spirit which is less than divine”. (Loosely paraphrased from Wikipedia.) In Pullman, a child’s daemon changes animal form from moment to moment – an adult’s is fixed. A person’s daemon provides loving companionship, support, insight… To be separated from one’s daemon is unbearably painful. Pullman makes this complex conceit feel natural.

La Belle Sauvage is a fantasy/adventure story written for young adults. There is nothing condescending about it. The protagonists (a boy of 11 and a girl of 14) living in a place rather like Victorian Oxford, are drawn into adult conflicts that mix politics, religion, science and philosophy. They end up guarding a baby in the midst of a natural disaster. It’s the battle between good and evil, narrated with flair and energy. I couldn’t put it down.

Like the Harry Potter series, Pullman’s books have been labeled a “bad influence” on young minds. “Anti-religious” is one of the claims.

Read La Belle Sauvage! If you haven’t read the Dark Materials trilogy, go for it. I’m planning to order some of Pullman’s other books, and will report on them soon.

“This Monstrous Thing” by Mackenzi Lee

This book (signed by the author, no less) was given to me as a cast off. It had been received as a door prize… Talk about low expectations! I was pleasantly surprised. It kept me entertained.

“This Monstrous Thing” falls into two categories where I seldom read – fan fiction and (so help me) “steampunk”!

I get the point of fan fiction. If you enjoy and deeply admire a book, you may want to extend, re-tell or enlarge upon it. A friend of mine created his own version of Homer’s Illiad. It was good. Lee builds on Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus) by Mary Shelley. Often described as the first work of science fiction, Frankenstein is a tale worth careful consideration. What does it mean to be human? What do we, as citizens and family members, owe to one another? When does science overreach itself?

I don’t know ANYTHING about steampunk! Falling back on my usual source (Wikipedia), I see that it is a “subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy” with 19^th century underpinnings. Amazon will sell you steampunk costumes as well as books. Mackenzi Lee asserts (in her Author’s Note) that steampunk must invoke an altered past. The alteration she offers is the use of clockwork (gears, springs, etc.) to replace human limbs and organs in seriously injured people. It makes for a good story!

Since this falls in the category of Young Adult fiction, one can ask what lesson it teaches. I would sum it up as follows: if you harm a loved one, it makes sense to go to great lengths to make things right.

Why do I ask that question about YA fiction? Maybe because I question the existence of the YA category. Adolescents can and do read REAL books! Some YA fiction is strained and didactic. Some has broader appeal. “This Monstrous Thing” has enough narrative energy to transcend the YA fiction label.

“The Laughing Sutra” by Mark Salzman

I’m creating a new category for this book, which I read about 15 years ago, long before I had this blog. The category is

ADULT BOOKS THAT TURN OUT WILDLY POPULAR WITH KIDS!

Certainly Mark Salzman’s first book, the nonfiction Iron and Silk, an account of his time in China, was intended for adults. So when I came across his novel The Laughing Sutra, I expected the same. And initially, it was adult fiction. In fact, kind of scary. We witness a murder. But that was just a prologue… As I read on, and got to know the characters, I was amused and entertained, and wondered what my eleven year old son would think.

Hsun-ching and Colonel Sun are an unlikely pair of adventurers. Hsun-ching is a orphan, raised by an quiet, old monk. Colonel Sun is confused, wild, strong and lives for excitement. They join forces to seek a sutra (religious poem) wanted by the old monk.

When these two make it to the USA, the intercultural confusion blossoms into hilarity.

I started reading this book to my 11 year old, but the six year old was also captivated! We cackled our way through to the amazing climax, when Hsun-ching and the Colonel try to re-enter mainland China. (At that time, no one re-entered China. The border guards weren’t ready…) Colonel Sun became part of our family repertoire, like the characters in “Ghostbusters” and other favorites. He was at least as real to us as Superman or Johnny Appleseed. Who wouldn’t want Colonel Sun for a companion? I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you the source of the Colonel’s amazing powers.

So read “The Laughing Sutra”. I also liked Salzman’s next (and entirely entirely different) novel, “The Soloist”. I hope he keeps writing.

So far, I haven’t been able to think of another adult book that worked so well with kids. Any nominations for my new genre? I’m curious.