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Archive for Holidays

Before I Fall

May21

Title: Before I Fall

Author: Lauren Oliver

Genre: Magical Realism YA

Length: 117,000 words, 470 pages

Read: May 16-17, 2011

Summary: Very very good.

ANY CHARACTER HERE

This is one of the best YA books I’ve read in a long while. Part Groundhog Day, part The Source Code, part Judy Blume, part The Lovely Bones — all itself.

We start with a high school girl, Sam, who dies in a car accident, and is doomed(?) to repeat the last day of her life again and again. Seven times to be exact. Sound like a recipe for repetition? It’s not.

First of all the writing is lovely. Really lovely. I’ve read perhaps 50+ first person girl narratives in the last year alone and this one had the best voice. It’s fairly well tied with Mary E. Pearson in that regard for recent entries (Judy Blume still wins for lifetime achievement). It’s funny clever without the annoying Snark. The voice is so good that it just drags you through the entire book, and it’s a pretty long book for YA. Lauren Oliver really is a lovely writer. The dialogue is good, the narrative description and interior monologue are amazing, and even the flowery interstitial description that glues together connected days is short but evocative. The Lovely Bones also had great voice, and a tremendous first half, before it fell apart into an abysmal mess of moral apathy. Before I fall is better.

There are some things worth noting. The characterization and the high school realism is top notch. I was reminded a bit of a modern Freaks and Geeks in that there was that kind of insightful tragio-comic realism. These girls felt pretty darn real. Even the minor characters had some depth. It’s this more than anything else that echoed the master of all YA: Judy Blume. Blume uses dialogue more liberally, as it’s her main method of characterization. Oliver prefers interior monologue and narrative description. The net result is similar. There’s a lot of detail here too, but the voice manages to make it interesting. Sam and her friends are popular girls, and more than a little bitchy, but they don’t extend into characterture. They are a little bad, but not too bad — realistically so. This is no melodramatic Gossip Girl. There is plenty of drinking, rudeness, etc. The sexuality is muted. Handled well enough, but perhaps a bit tamer than it could have been.

Now as to structure. Oliver does a really first notch job repeating the same day seven times without ever being dull. Sam makes different choices, and on some days this plays out very differently. One time she doesn’t even go to school. Still, even when the same scenes are repeated, and they are, different angles are shown, revealing and painting from different directions. This is hard to do, and must have taken considerable planning and rewriting. I’m actually facing a bit of this myself in my second novel, which is a time travel book and involves overlap and revisiting.

I’m going to stop for a second to pontificate on writing this kind of fiction. One of the things that makes this work in Before I Fall is the loose structure of the high school day. Sam’s day includes: getting up, driving with her friends to school, various classes, lunch, ditching, hanging out after school, and the party. These events flow from one to the next because of the inherent structure. If she skips lunch, or English class, she can pick back up on the schedule, because it’s immutable and set at a level greater than herself. This it has in common with Back to the Future I and II. There the structure of the dance forms a background on which Marty can play. In my own story, I have been trying to revisit a complex action scene multiple times. The whole scene — even the first time — folds out from the actions of the protagonist without any background structure, which makes altering that flow… complex.

In any case, in Before I Fall there is a also a very strongly structured arc, like, Groundhog Day, the protagonist has to learn a series of lessons from the failures of the first and subsequent trials. Much like a video game level, she gets to play it over and over again until she gets it right. This is very satisfying to read. Too bad real life doesn’t work like that.

The seven day structure also helps avoid the dreaded “reveal” problem. There is no giant structural reveal, the premise is setup in the first couple pages, and so the book does not suffer from the first half being better than the second. It races right on to the end. But there is an end, and I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. Given the options, Oliver chose a pretty good one, and it does leave one with a deep sense of catharsis. So it was probably the right choice. Still the looming shadow over the entire affair left me with a deep sense of sadness not unlike that caused by reading The Time Traveler’s Wife (the excellent book, not the mediocre film).

For a review of Oliver’s second novel, Delirium, click here.

Related posts:

  1. Bleeding Violet
By: agavin
Comments (7)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Are You There God? It's Me Margaret, Arts, Before I Fall, Book Review, Book Reviews, Fiction, Gossip Girl, Groundhog Day, Holidays, Judy Blume, Lauren Oliver, Novel, Young-adult fiction

Gobbler’s Last Stand – The Sandwich

Dec06

The Thanksgiving feast contains many useful components for a great sandwich, and in this day and age when the only food available on airplanes is a box of randomized vending machine junk, what better way to eat and fly.

This was my brother’s version. There’s turkey, stuffing, provolone, and prosciutto (because ham makes everything better). Oh, and arugula and tomato.

Mine is similar except I left off the tomato (yuck!) and added a little salami as well (two kinds of pig are better than one!).

And my wife’s. Tomato yes. No cheese or pig products. Still makes a yummy way to see turkey off.

 

We even took along some of the homemade cranberry sauce to add to the sandwich, but it was packed separately to prevent soggy bread (a big no no).

And some of these little fellows, cornichons, as complement. They really are the best kind of pickle.

Related posts:

  1. ThanksGavin in Review
  2. Ghost of Thanksgivings Past
  3. Quick Eats: Panini at Home
By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Bird, Cooking, Cornichons, Cranberry sauce, Food, Holidays, Leftovers, Pickles, Provolone, Sandwich, Sandwiches, thanksgiving, Travel Food, turkey, Turkey Sandwich

ThanksGavin in Review

Nov29

Every year we Gavins gather in Philadelphia for four days and nights of massive gluttony. The party then moves down to Washington DC. I wanted to create a central post to document this parade of food and Thanksgiving. Also don’t miss the catalog of ThanksGavin turkey plates.

_

ThanksGavin 2021

The holy tetralogy:

Wednesday night dinner (Argana Tree)
Thursday night Thanksgiving Feast
Friday night feast (China Gourmet)
Salty Saturday

_
_

ThanksGavin 2019

The holy tetralogy:

Wednesday night dinner (Keep)
Thursday night Thanksgiving Feast
Friday night feast (DJ Kitchen)
Salty Saturday

Non canonical events:

White Elephant

_

ThanksGavin 2018

The holy tetralogy:

Wednesday night dinner (Georgian)
Thursday night Thanksgiving Feast
Friday night feast
Salty Saturday

Non canonical events:

Oyamel
Q by Peter Chang
Tidewater Grille
IHop
Elephant Jumps

_

ThanksGavin 2017

The holy tetralogy:

Wednesday night dinner (Uzbekistan)
Thursday night Thanksgiving Feast
Friday night feast
Salty Saturday

Non canonical events:

Oyamel
Kapnos Taverna
Tidewater Grille
Mark’s Duck House
Jackson’s

_

ThanksGavin 2016

The West Coast singleton:
Thursday night Thanksgiving Feast
_

ThanksGavin 2015

The holy tetralogy:

Wednesday night dinner (Uzbekistan)
Thursday night Thanksgiving Feast
Friday night feast
Salty Saturday

Non canonical events:

Tiffin Indian Cuisine

_

ThanksGavin 2014

The holy tetralogy:

Wednesday night dinner (Han Dynasty)
Thursday night Thanksgiving Feast
Friday night feast
Salty Saturday

_

ThanksGavin 2013

The holy tetralogy:

Wednesday night dinner (Fond)
Thursday night Thanksgiving Feast
Friday night feast
Salty Saturday

Non canonical events:

Graffiato Italian Tapas

_

ThanksGavin 2012

The holy tetralogy:

Wednesday night dinner (Han Dynasty)
Thursday night Thanksgiving Feast
Friday night feast

_

ThanksGavin 2011

The holy tetralogy:

Wednesday night dinner
Thursday night Thanksgiving Feast
Friday night Shrimp Tacos
Salty Saturday

Non canonical events:

The Italian Market
Saturday night Jackson’s
Sunday at Zaytinya
Monday Lunch at 2Amys Neapolitan Pizzeria
Tuesday at Jaleo Bethesda
Wednesday at Mark’s Duck House

_

ThanksGavin 2010

The holy tetralogy:

Wednesday night dinner
Thursday night Thanksgiving Feast
Friday night at Chez Abbe et Jon
Saturday Deli Brunch

Non canonical events:

Dinner at Little Saigon
Sunday Snack
Monday dinner at Mon Ami
Tuesday lunch at Coastal Flats
Wednesday lunch at Ping Pong
Wednesday dinner at Panjshir
Turkey sandwich for the flight home

Related posts:

  1. Saturday is for Salt
  2. Thanksgiving – Pork Insanity
  3. Thanksgiving Proper
  4. Ghost of Thanksgivings Past
  5. Thanksgiving – The Prequel
By: agavin
Comments (13)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: 2010 ThanksGavin, Cooking, Dessert, Dinner, Food, holiday, Holidays, Little Saigon, ThanksGavin, thanksgiving, turkey
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