#jami attenberg
Nine Books To Read Right Now: YA for People Who Don’t Read YA (but also still want to know what it’s about)
It seems like the YA buzz and controversy have continued over into 2015, and I’ve been seeing a lot of lists of “YA Books for People Who Don’t Read YA” and I’ve gotta say that I’ve been rolling my eyes a lot. Don’t get me wrong - I want people to read books that I love. I know the definition of YA is fluid, for the most part, but I’m pretty sure To Kill a Mockingbird wouldn’t be sold as YA, there’s a distinct line between middle grade and young adult, and there are books beyond The Giver and The Fault in Our Stars.
Herewith I present you nine of my favorite YA books published in the last decade or so, in no particular order. These aren’t necessarily superstars of YA, and not all of them are straight contemporary lit. Below I’ve listed the book, a short summary, and who I recommend it for.
Feel free to reblog and add on! I know I didn’t get everything and I know I haven’t read everything that could be on this list, so I’d love this to be collaborative.
Click below the cut!
The Walls Around Us - Nova Ren Suma
Violet, an eighteen-year-old dancer, is days away from the life of her dreams when something threatens to expose the shocking truth of her achievement. Within the walls of the Aurora Hills juvenile detention center, there’s Amber, locked up for so long she can’t imagine freedom. Tying their two worlds together is Orianna, who holds the key to unlocking all the girls’ darkest mysteries.
What really happened on the night Orianna stepped between Violet and her tormentors? What really happened on two strange nights at Aurora Hills? Will Amber and Violet and Orianna ever get the justice they deserve—in this life or in another one?
For fans of…Lauren Beukes, Shirley Jackson, Kelly Link
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before - Jenny Han
Lara Jean has never openly admitted her crushes, but instead wrote each boy a letter about how she felt, sealed it, and hid it in a box under her bed. But one day Lara Jean discovers that somehow her secret box of letters has been mailed, causing all her crushes from her past to confront her about the letters: her first kiss, the boy from summer camp, even her sister’s ex-boyfriend, Josh. As she learns to deal with her past loves face to face, Lara Jean discovers that something good may come out of these letters after all.
For fans of…Emma Straub, Jean Kwok, Rainbow Rowell
Lies We Tell Ourselves - Robin Talley
In 1959 Virginia, the lives of two girls on opposite sides of the battle for civil rights will be changed forever. Sarah Dunbar is one of the first black students to attend the previously all-white Jefferson High School. An honors student at her old school, she is put into remedial classes, spit on and tormented daily. Linda Hairston is the daughter of one of the town’s most vocal opponents of school integration. She has been taught all her life that the races should be kept “separate but equal.” Forced to work together on a school project, Sarah and Linda must confront harsh truths about race, power and how they really feel about one another.
For fans of…Zadie Smith, Harper Lee, Octavia E. Butler
The Miseducation of Cameron Post - Emily M. Danforth
When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl. But that relief doesn’t last, and Cam is soon forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone (as her grandmother might say), and Cam becomes an expert at both.
Then Coley Taylor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship — one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, ultrareligious Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to ‘fix’ her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self — even if she’s not exactly sure who that is.
For fans of…Cheryl Strayed, Jeanette Winterson, Alison Bechdel
Theo is better now.
She’s eating again, dating guys who are almost appropriate, and well on her way to becoming an elite ballet dancer. But when her oldest friend, Donovan, returns home after spending four long years with his kidnapper, Theo starts reliving memories about his abduction—and his abductor.
Donovan isn’t talking about what happened, and even though Theo knows she didn’t do anything wrong, telling the truth would put everything she’s been living for at risk. But keeping quiet might be worse.
For fans of…Jodi Picoult, Maria Semple, Misty Copeland
Addy Hanlon has always been Beth Cassidy’s best friend and trusted lieutenant. Beth calls the shots and Addy carries them out, a long-established order of things that has brought them to the pinnacle of their high-school careers. Now they’re seniors who rule the intensely competitive cheer squad, feared and followed by the other girls – until the young new coach arrives.
Cool and commanding, an emissary from the adult world just beyond their reach, Coach Colette French draws Addy and the other cheerleaders into her life. Then a suicide focuses a police investigation on Coach and her squad. After the first wave of shock and grief, Addy tries to uncover the truth behind the death – and learns that the boundary between loyalty and love can be dangerous terrain.
For fans of…Liane Moriarty, Tana French, Paula Hawkins
All the Rage - Courtney Summers
The sheriff’s son, Kellan Turner, is not the golden boy everyone thinks he is, and Romy Grey knows that for a fact. Because no one wants to believe a girl from the wrong side of town, the truth about him has cost her everything—friends, family, and her community. Branded a liar and bullied relentlessly by a group of kids she used to hang out with, Romy’s only refuge is the diner where she works outside of town. No one knows her name or her past there; she can finally be anonymous. But when a girl with ties to both Romy and Kellan goes missing after a party, and news of him assaulting another girl in a town close by gets out, Romy must decide whether she wants to fight or carry the burden of knowing more girls could get hurt if she doesn’t speak up. Nobody believed her the first time—and they certainly won’t now — but the cost of her silence might be more than she can bear.
For fans of…Roxane Gay, Alice Sebold, Laurie Halse Anderson
Everything, Everything - Nicola Yoon*
This innovative, heartfelt debut novel tells the story of a girl who’s literally allergic to the outside world. When a new family moves in next door, she begins a complicated romance that challenges everything she’s ever known. The narrative unfolds via vignettes, diary entries, texts, charts, lists, illustrations, and more.
For fans of…Emma Donoghue, Jami Attenberg, Jenny Offill
Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight - she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s thug.
When she first meets Prince Po, Graced with combat skills, Katsa has no hint of how her life is about to change. She never expects to learn a new truth about her own Grace - or about a terrible secret that lies hidden far away.The Graceling Trilogy as a whole really is required reading here.
For fans of…Erika Johansen, Diana Gabaldon, Naomi Novik
There you have it! Some of my recent favorites - what are yours?
Thanks to the indispensable reelbrains,dancinginodessa, and ellewceefor their help figuring out these comparable titles.
*Everything, Everything isn’t technically on sale until 9/1/15, but I still thought it was important enough to go on this list!
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I took Mazie with me on a trip to Staten Island yesterday, and as we were on the ferry going past all of the southern tip of Manhattan, I wondered what she would think of the way the financial district has developed and crept up toward her beloved neighborhoods.
She probably wouldn’t think much of it, if I had to guess.
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I’ve always wanted a sister. I think this is true of every girl who grew up either alone, or with brothers (probably especially, in that case). There was always something so magical about having what seemed like a built-in friend and support system, especially when they were so close in age. As a late-twenty-something now, though, sisterhood doesn’t seem as far as it once did.
In the last couple of years, I’ve been ravenously reading books about sisters and adult women friends, friends whose lives are so enmeshed that they are the family that you create. Books like Rufi Thorpe’s The Girls From Corona Del Mar, Emily Gould’s Friendship, and Kirsty Logan’s The Gracekeepers are all books that spring to mind. Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and sequel depend so thoroughly on the three sisters, something so unexpected that I loved.
Thorpe recently wrote a piece for The Toast, “What Writing a Novel Taught Me About Female Friendship,”in which she says:
I was just trying to write about young women by using my own experience, and in my experience, young women have best friends and those relationships are some of the most profound and abidingly meaningful of their lives. But it turned out that speaking about the bond between young women was a cliché. Everyone assured me this was so.
Maybe writing about best friends, or sisters, isn’t about being a cliché. Maybe it is, as Thorpe writes later, about the human condition, what all novels are at some point boiled down to. I think it is.
None of the friendships or sisterships in these books are without tragedy. This furiously complicated and fiercely beautiful relationship relies on a level of tension that only works when there exists a certain push and pull, a quasi-rivalry that is present only in siblings.
And then there’s Jami Attenberg’s Saint Mazie, a book that so purely distills this sister relationship. When I picked up this book, I didn’t know it was significantly about sisters. Sure, it’s about Mazie Phillips-Gordon and the people who knew her. But to me, the pure heart of part one of this book is the relationship of the Phillips sisters, and how they cobbled together their lives in the midst of hard times.
Through everything that happens to them, including finding out that their mother is dying, almost certainly from their father’s abuse, the Phillips sisters hold each other closer, tighter. When they have nothing else, they have each other and the family they’ve created. Rosie, Mazie, and Jeanie are, at the core, all pieces of the same puzzle, no matter how much heartbreak there is between them. Family is always a two-sided coin, though, and the other side holds all of their secrets, everything they keep from each other until it’s no longer possible to hide. And, oh, the secrets they keep.
Attenberg doesn’t write these sisters as a cliché. They’re strong but still second-guess themselves, reckless but mostly well-intentioned, sensible and smart but with moments overtaken by emotion. They’re human. They’re real. Like every set of fully-fleshed women I know or have read about, they hold tight to each other until they can’t. The Phillips sisters held tight until they couldn’t, until Jeanie couldn’t.
But if there’s one thing I know about sisters and family, it’s that they almost always come back, even if it’s not how you expect.
“If Mazie was the wild sister, then Jeanie was the free one.” Wild and free don’t sound so different to me, almost like they were two parts of a whole.
The dog barking woke her up and she cursed its little yappy mouth while reaching for the light switch. It couldn’t have been later than four in the morning and what was the little thing doing making so much noise, there better be a good reason. And yes, there it was, the clock ticking on the wall, it showed the time: 4:45. Dark and empty outside, except for the noise of the dog barking, filling the air with its rancor, filling her stomach with sickness, filling her mouth with hot angry words. She cursed Mrs. Thomson, cursed the shitty duplex with its blistering walls and thin cheap windows, cursed the fact that she was thirty-four and still had to wake up to this kind of shittiness, and worse yet, had to do it alone in a twin-sized bed without a companion who she could cling to and whine to and generally float with in this sacredfuckedup situation. She imagined roasting the dog on a spit and then felt the hot dizzy feeling of shame because, after all, she loved animals, she even loved this dog most of the time, but her brain ached and her stomach hurt and she just couldn’t deal with this bullshit right now, it was goddamn 4:45 in the morning.
(The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg, pg. 93)
She did not look at the man sitting below her because she was aware that he was staring up at her, like a dog, and she wasn’t sure what he looked like, but he was probably god awful, probably had a goatee or some fuzzy facial hair, and she could feel his glance on her. She knew he was watching her not because she could see him out of the corner of her eyes but because there was that prickly knowledge that comes whenever somebody is watching. She had been completely unaware of everybody around her, full of the music, just watching the sight in front of her, when she knew, just knew in that way that always presents itself. She could feel him looking at her and she wasn’t sure if it was a friendly look or leering, it really didn’t matter because it was unwelcome all the same, so she stared ahead and purposefully scrunched her forehead hoping that he would see that she was too enraptured in the music to notice or care for his presence.
(The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg, pg. 92)
First you hear that Jami Attenberg has a new novel in the works, and you think: yes. Then you see the book cover, and you think: YES.
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