Outrun the Moon by Stacey Lee (reviewed by Anya W. '20)

Outrun the Moon by Stacey Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's tough to be an American born Chinese girl in San Francisco in 1906, and Mercy Wong knows all about it. But, for all that she was born and raised in chinatown, she'll let it shape her but not define her. So, after she finishes her last year at the only public school in the city open to kids from chinatown, she seizes the first opportunity she can get to con (beg, borrow, barter, blackmail) her way into a better school. After all, St. Clare's will help her get a foot in the business world, so one day her weak younger brother won't have to take over her father's laundry business. Things go all right, at first. Then they devolve. But when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and Mercy is nothing if not tough.

Lee's Outrun the Moon is a riveting tale of prejudice, friendship, and loss, set against the wonderfully dramatic background of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Her characters are dynamic and multifaceted, each with their own stories, weaving a well-built picture of many different lives converging by chance. Lee paces her story well for the most part, and my only request is an extra hundred or so pages in the middle to allow more time for characterization. Even though the romance is predictable, it is still fairly sweet, and the rest of the novel more than makes up for it. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys historical fiction. - Anya W. '20

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The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee (review by Tasha M. 20)

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When Henry “Monty” Montague embarks on a Grand Tour of Europe with his best friend, he expects a year of glitz, of parties and flirting, and just generally enjoying himself. He does not expect to be the target of a manhunt.

The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue is easily the best historical fiction I’ve ever read. Without bogging the reader down with details, Lee weaves in a few key historical points. Additionally, the tone of the writing was perfect - right from the first page, I knew that Monty was part of the British aristocracy simply from the narrative style. The plot was engaging right from the start, accelerating beautifully right up until the end. I also appreciated the lack of an “epilogue” chapter that only serves to tie up loose ends.

Lee develops her characters spectacularly. I found myself invested in Monty’s growth from a devil-may-care attitude to someone who genuinely cared for the people he was close to. The romance was believable; Monty and Percy did fight as opposed to staying in a utopian love the entire time.
In short, The Gentleman’s Guide blew me away in every respect, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good fiction book. - Tasha M. '20

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The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore (review by Connie M. '17)

The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I picked up The Last Days of Night from the "free book" rack, I was doubtful of whether Graham Moore's second novel would live up to the whirlwind Gilded Age adventure the back cover promised. However, the fact that this novel is based on, of all things, a patent lawsuit, impressed me all the more when I found myself completely absorbed in the incredibly intelligent and fast-paced plot. Moore skillfully paints his characters with depth and unique personalities, many of whom are well-known historical figures (Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, J.P. Morgan, etc.). I loved getting to know the eccentricities of these almost legendary people, and Moore periodically provides wonderfully profound insights into the way their minds operate. My only reservation is that Moore can sometimes overdo the most unique parts of his writing. For example, I found the quotes that he placed before each of the very short chapters more distracting than helpful, and his insights can occasionally be presented more subtly. Overall, The Last Days of Night was refreshing and exciting and would be a great read in particular for fans of historical fiction, law, or the history of inventions. - Connie M. '17

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The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama (review by Catherine H. '17)

The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Gail Tsukiyama’s The Samurai’s Garden tells the tale of a young Chinese man, Stephen, who travels to a sea-side town in Japan to recover from tuberculosis during the Second Sino-Japanese war in the late 1930s. He stays with Matsu, who has worked for Stephen’s family all his life, and learns to live in the quiet town of Tarumi while he regains his strength. Stephen also meets Matsu’s friend Sachi, also an outcast, and slowly gains her trust. This book tells a touching story about friendship in a time of war and Tsukiyama’s simple, yet elegant language really draws the reader into Stephen’s story. I really appreciated learning about the war and how Tsukiyama incorporated Stephen’s identity as a Chinese man who is immersed in Japanese culture and makes friends at Tarumi during this time period. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a satisfying read.

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Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys (review by Melissa K. '18)

Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Out of the Easy begins with seventeen-year-old Josie Moraine's stark opening line: "My mother's a prostitute." From the very first sentence, author Ruta Sepetys sucks the reader into the world of 1950s New Orleans, a place rife with scandal and mystique. Desperate to escape the stigma of her mother's reputation, Josie dreams of leaving New Orleans by attending college far from the South.

Everyone in the novel has something to conceal—the wealthy Mr. Lockwell hides his trips to the French Quarter from his wife; Josie's friend Patrick hides his aging father's memory loss from the authorities; Josie hides a pistol under her skirt. The inexplicable death of a wealthy Memphis businessman in the French Quarter only adds to Josie's list of secrets, especially when she suspects her mother's involvement.

Ruta Sepetys writes flawlessly, revealing striking historical details through Josie's observant eye. As historical fiction, Out of the Easy is painstakingly researched and powerfully told. Do I need to say more?

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The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker (review by Andrew R. '17)

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The premise of The Golem and the Jinni has an irresistible sort of cosmic balance to it: when a female homunculus named Chava and a male fire spirit named Ahmad collide in nineteenth-century New York, earth meets fire, the mythology of the West means that of the East, the Judeo-Christian tradition collides with one far older, and the ancient past meets the modern era. If only this novel could shed its affected writing, its chronically flat characters, and about a hundred and fifty pages, it might be able to meet this impressive potential. Wecker makes the unfortunate decision to relay the entire story in a faux-historical voice, weighing her sentences down with unwieldy vocabulary and convoluted syntax in a misguided effort (like so many other writers of historical fiction) to stay true to the literary style of the time she portrays. Uninspired prose might be excusable, but, in my view, weak characters are not; populating a fantasy world as Wecker does with transparent characters, single-minded and invariably “good at heart,” is a cardinal sin in any sort of fiction. I have to give the author credit for the alluring symmetry of her premise, but her execution is unremarkable and doesn’t nearly deserve the 500 pages it takes up.

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Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (review by Jacqueline H. '18)

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Gone With the Wind is a refreshing twist on your typical classic novel. It's one of those books that leaves an indelible impression on you, the kind that you find yourself re-reading every so often.

We start off in the rolling red hills of the antebellum South. Scarlett O'Hara, a sixteen-year-old debutante with a self-centered personality and a sharp mind to match, comes of age during the tumultuous Civil War. In a surprisingly short time, Scarlett's life of luxury degenerates into one of starvation and poverty. The book is a masterful subversion of many common literature tropes. Rather than becoming the sweet-natured lady she was groomed to be, Scarlett is selfish and vindictive to the core. She doesn't get her initial love interest, nor her second - despite her former status as belle of the South. Lastly, Gone With the Wind is told from the perspective of the Confederates. Racial prejudice is a glossed-over issue in this novel, which reinforces the uncertain morality of the characters.

Overall, this is an amazingly well-written novel. I loved the vivid prose, the heart-wrenching moments, and the abrupt ending that yearns to be extended. I recommend this book to anyone searching for an interesting read.

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Into the Valley by Ruth Galm (review by Jacqueline H. '18)

Into the Valley by Ruth Galm
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Into the Valley is a debut novel by Ruth Galm that chronicles the adventure of B., a thirty year old woman who wanders through 1970s California, trying to assuage a "carsickness" that plagues her thoughts. B. is unable to cope with the coarseness of the present world, yet rejects the traditional binds of the past. This tension is an interesting dichotomy throughout the novel, although it is never resolved at the end. The ending was surprising, but it left me hanging. Into the Valley reminds me more of a collection of individual narratives than a cohesive plot. Nevertheless, the novel was beautifully written and I found it hard to put down. The characterization of B. is excellent - the author represents her as an eccentric and neuroatypical itinerant. Written in raw, haunting prose, Galm's exceptional use of unreliable narration and stunning portrayal of California in the 1970s leaves an indelible mark in the reader's mind. I would recommend this book to anyone craving a dreamy, existential read.

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An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris (review by Mr. Silk, Teacher)

An Officer and a Spy by Robert Harris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Falling somewhere between history, historical fiction and spy novel, An Officer and a Spy is a fact-based account of the Dreyfus Affair, one of the more troubling times of the French military. When Alfred Dreyfus is accused and convicted of treason, it takes the newly appointed head of the French spy division, Georges Picquart to ferret out the truth. Robert Harris is a master story-teller, and this book is surely a page turner. At times the story seems unbelievable, or, at best, inconceivable, but the reader has to remember that all the events did actually occur. A definite must for anyone who has read and enjoyed Harris or Jean le Carre, or who is interested in French history.

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To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (review by Connie M. '17

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To Say Nothing of the Dog is perhaps Connie Willis's most humorous Oxford Time Travel book, set mainly on the outskirts of Victorian Oxford. The novel features two main characters: Verity/Kindle, who is sent back in time by the frustratingly persistent Lady Schrapnell to help figure out the location of the Bishop's Bird Stump, and Ned Henry, who is sent back to help right a supposed discrepancy caused by Verity. Willis often pokes fun at aspects of Victorian life through Ned's nonchalant humor (he is the narrator). The story reads much like a mystery novel as Ned and Verity attempt to understand the nature of their first time discrepancy while simultaneously trying to prevent more time-travel disasters. The final solution is amusingly explained but leaves some unanswered questions. To Say Nothing of the Dog is certainly worth reading for its humorous, science fiction, and historical fiction aspects, but those who are not interested in the Victorian era will be disappointed.

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Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (review by Connie M. '17)

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Doomsday Book, Connie Willis's first Oxford Time Travel novel, is one of her most famous, featuring young time traveler-historian Kivrin on an expedition to medieval England. Shifting between modern and medieval times, the novel combines first person "journal" accounts and traditional narration. Like many of Willis's novels, Doomsday Book is (in comparison) relatively slow moving for a good half of the book (though certainly not uninteresting) and speeds up to an incredibly moving ending. The book makes the horrors of the Black Death devastatingly real, and continuously questions the role of religion in our lives. While perhaps more interesting to those who have some background on the middle ages, I had little interest in medieval times but still found the book hauntingly captivating. I found myself pondering Doomsday Book for days after I had finished reading it.

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All Clear by Connie Willis (review by Connie M. '17)

All Clear by Connie Willis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All Clear is the second half of the time travel Blackout/All Clear duo by Connie Willis, set in World War II. While I found Blackout a bit frustratingly repetitive in places, All Clear was a whirlwind of plot twist after plot twist, with an emotional range of unfathomable despair to shock to tentative joy. Willis will leave you gasping aloud in both excitement and frustration as the three main characters attempt to return to 2060 from WWII. Willis leaps back and forth between different times, places and characters, thus weaving in an element of mystery (pay attention to the date printed at the beginning of each chapter). Blackout and All Clear are must-reads for any time travel or historical fiction fan, but as a message about the strength of the common person undergoing unimaginable hardship and sacrifice, these two novels would be enjoyed by anyone.

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The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough (review by Andrew R. '17)

The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In The Game of Love and Death, the deities Love and Death come together to play a high-stakes cosmic game of strategy. The board: Jazz-Age Seattle, still deeply rooted in racial prejudice. The pawns: Henry, an affluent white high-school student, and Flora, a black jazz singer (and, improbably, airplane pilot). The objective: for Love to manipulate Henry into winning Flora’s heart, and for Death to twist Flora into rejecting his advances. The stakes: the pawns’ lives. It’s the perfect premise for a historical-fiction-romance-supernatural genre mashup, but from the first chapter it’s clear that Brockenbrough can’t quite pull off the ingenious plot she’s cooked up. The characters are sadly underdeveloped: Henry’s sole obsession is Flora, Flora’s sole obsession is flight, Love is maddeningly altruistic, Death is irrationally destructive. Worse, we’re granted near-omniscience when it comes to the plot, making the entire novel read like a tiresome textbook example of dramatic irony. (Case in point: Henry is convinced that his infatuation is true love, whereas we know from page one that it’s a ridiculous idea planted in his head by a manipulative deity.) Thanks to the wild originality of this novel’s premise, the jacket blurb makes excellent reading; the book itself, though, is a disappointment.

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X: A Novel by Ilyasah Shabazz (review by Andrew R. '17)

X: A Novel by Ilyasah Shabazz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The premise of Ilyasah Shabazz’s most recent novel, X, is so unusual as to seem off-putting at first: in a narrative geared specifically toward young adults, a fictionalized Malcolm X plays out the early part of his life, starting with his exodus from Michigan to Boston and ending just before he begins the outspoken racial and religious activism for which we remember him today. The story is doubly odd because the author, the daughter of Malcolm X himself, has taken the liberty to novelize her famous father’s turbulent life—and in the first person. I’m not sure how, but Shabazz has taken this dubious stew of almost overambitious narrative points and crafted a surprisingly engaging story, which, although it contains hallmarks of the young adult genre like forbidden love and coming-of-age internal conflict, also features pacing and setting that are remarkably sophisticated for a YA novel. (Most of the first six chapters takes place on a largely uneventful train ride, and it takes a measure of patience to get to the meat of the book.) The protagonist Malcolm, even if he bears suspiciously little resemblance to the more weathered and polarizing Malcolm X most of us are familiar with, is a memorable and magnetic character, and this narrative of his life is strange in concept but impressive in execution.

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Blackout by Connie Willis (review by Connie M. '17)

Blackout by Connie Willis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was the first time I read a work by Connie Willis. Blackout is, at its core, historical fiction, though laced with elements of sci-fi in the form of time travel. The premise of all of Willis's time travel novels is that in the near future (2060) Oxford University historians will conduct their research by traveling back in time to their periods of study. In Blackout, several historians travel to England during World War II, disguising themselves in various locations including London during the Blitz, Dunkirk during the evacuation, and a countryside manor house. However, something has gone wrong with the historians' return mechanism (called the drop), and our heroes are trapped. At first, I found Blackout to be immensely interesting, as the story exuded all the emotions and attitudes of WWII life and at times even made me feel slightly panicked. However, 500 pages of nearly the same phrase ("Where is the retrieval team? Why is my drop not working?") began to get frustrating. I will be reading the sequel, which essentially is a direct continuation from the 1st book with hardly a transition at all, but only because I'm curious to find out how/if the characters return to 2060. In the end, I would recommend this book, as the story is extremely immersive, but don't attempt it unless you're ready to read 1000 pages of WWII historical fiction.

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All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (review by Connie M. '17)

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All the Light We Cannot See met and exceeded my high expectations. Doerr's masterpiece, transitionally smooth between the simultaneous stories of the two main characters, is written eloquently and at times poetically. The plot line is intensely gripping and not only conveys the deep horror and trauma caused by WWII both on the French and the German sides but also reminds us of the beauty and light that exist even in dark times. This book is not a romance -- as suggested by the publisher's book summary. Readers should be prepared for a story that is raw and emotionally moving. The decade Doerr used to write All the Light We Cannot See paid off. - Connie M. '17

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A Separate Peace by John Knowles (review by Andrew R. '17)

A Separate Peace by John Knowles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A Separate Peace is such a refreshing change of pace, it deserves its own genre. Set at a boys’ boarding school in the final years of the World War II draft, it follows the powerful friendship and all-consuming rivalry between Gene and Phineas as the two students battle their teachers, the war, and each other. A Separate Peace is worth a read simply for its historical aspect—written in 1946, it chronicles the overlooked perspective of an adolescent during wartime, and its setting is as far as can be from Normandy and Auschwitz. But Knowles’s true mastery lies in his themes, deeply nuanced and constantly developed to more complex and enlightening forms, and by the end of Gene’s tale he has painted a beautiful portrait of conflict in any setting. A Separate Peace may make a perfect subject for an English essay, but at the same time its gravity and depth merit at least one read from any serious student of the Second World War. - Andrew R. '17

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On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers (review by Elisabeth S. '16)

On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

On Stranger Tides details the adventures of former puppeteer John Chandagnac, whose ship is captured by pirates and who is forced to change sides and become a pirate at gunpoint. He becomes "Jack Shandy," to the pirates, and he inadvertently saves the pirate captain's life, thus becoming a full-fledged pirate. The book was neither overwhelming nor underwhelming, neither incredibly avant-garde nor too comfortably formulaic. Jack Shandy made for an enjoyable protagonist, though the novel gets kind of muddled two-thirds of the way through. The pacing felt too slow for the kind of blow-by-blow action-adventure book it's trying to be. It was also unfortunate that the female character was useless--too much of a damsel in distress. The romantic subplot felt too one-sided and like too much of an afterthought to engage the reader. However, the novel does improve with a highly intriguing magic system and strong characters like Davies, Blackbeard, and even Hurwood. Overall, On Stranger Tides was an entertaining read but not much more than that. – Elisabeth S. ‘16

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Beloved by Toni Morrison (review by Elisabeth S. '16)

Beloved by Toni Morrison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A warning: Beloved is not for the light of heart. Sethe is an escaped slave and mother of three that heads for Ohio with her broken family, having lost her husband in flight. The trauma that she has endured as a slave and during her escape haunts her, so she does her best to repress those troubling memories. With the appearance of a figure from her past, however, she slowly begins to question the choices she once made with the interests of her children in mind. This novel is based off of real events and will sicken, disgust, and cause you great despair and shame for the United States and slavery. However, this novel also involves supernatural elements, with the presence of a main supporting character who is a manifest form of Sethe's dead daughter. Overall, Beloved is recommended to anyone even a little bit interested in slavery for a new perspective, sorely needed as the years progress and the Civil War era seeps into the past. – Elisabeth S. ‘16

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Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (review by Ravi B. '14)

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell creates a universe in which multiple characters from various past and future settings fight against repression. The book follows an unconventional narrative construct with six story lines, beginning with an American notary in the 19th century and ending with a child in a post-apocalyptic future. The stories are initially told in chronological order, but each, except for the last, is interrupted at a critical moment. Following the last story, the book continues in reverse chronological order. I found Mitchell’s technique gave me a greater sense of closure and empathy for the characters as I finished the book. Although the book is especially challenging to start because each ending of a chapter feels somewhat intrusive, completing the novel was rewarding. Additionally, one of the stories is a hilarious relief from the rest of the novel. Someone who enjoys sci-fi fantasy and dystopian novels will find this to be refreshing change of pace. – Ravi B. ‘14

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