Review: Going Over

By Beth Kephart
Available now from Chronicle Books
Review copy
Read more in my Beth Kephart tag

"You have to wait. You have to be absolutely sure. Love is the biggest thing, of course. But there are other considerations." -p. 78

I have never been to Berlin.  I have certainly never been to 1983 Berlin, given that I was yet to be born.  But Beth Kephart took me there.  She brought to life a city divided.  She showed a city where sometimes people never come home, to be buried without a body.  She showed a city where a group of immigrants do not fit in, and not just because they don't speak the languages.  She showed two teenagers who are in love, who sometimes resent each other and who make art and who look at the stars and who plan.  Two teenagers who are stuck on opposite sides of that city divided.

Stefan lives in East Berlin with his grandmother.  He is the more timid of the two, but if he's going to be with Ada, he'll be the one who bears the risk of escaping over the wall.  Ada lives in West Berlin with her mother and grandmother and works at a daycare center where one of her young charges has gone missing.  She was the last person to see him, but she can't convince anyone else to look for him even though she knows he must be in danger.  It's another straw that's breaking her back, because Ada isn't sure how long she can keep waiting for Stefan.  She loves him, but she's young, and she only sees him twice a year.  He isn't there for her, and that's often what you need most from the people you love.

Beth Kephart was already an accomplished, polished author when she started writing YA fiction.  But with every new release it feels like she's growing more into herself as a writer.  When I read GOING OVER, there was something pure about the experience.  I felt like I was reading the book Kephart wanted to write.  She has a singular style, one that doesn't always work for me, but it sucked me in completely with GOING OVER.  I fell into the imagery and the rhythm of the prose, so often staccato and intense.

I, honestly, don't know much about Berlin during this time period.  It goes beyond never having been there myself.  Oh, I know the basics, which side is which, that the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, but I have no familiarity with the specifics.  (I'm definitely curious now about some of the suggested reading in the back.)  GOING OVER really did make me feel like I was peering in, through the characters of Stefan and Ada.  And I got different glimpses, because they not only live in very different areas, but have very different outlooks.

I will say that I enjoyed the Ada chapters more than the Stefan chapters.  Part of that is the nature of their characters.  She's more proactive and more reactive than Stefan.  Both of them think a lot, and Ada is the one more likely to go out and do something rather than think some more.  At the same time, Stefan isn't less developed than Ada.  He has just as much background, personality, and his own interests.  I'll also say that some of the ending is a bit convenient, but it fits the style of the story and there's still plenty of danger.

GOING OVER is a terrific bit of historical fiction.  I would recommend it for teens and up, because there's some death that younger readers might find upsetting.  There's another event that some readers might find upsetting, but it's written obliquely enough that younger readers shouldn't tune in to the details of the incident.  If the kid is a fan of WWII and post-WWII fiction it probably wouldn't bother them, however.

Review: Small Damages

By Beth Kephart
Available now from Philomel (Penguin)
Review copy
Read my reviews of UNDERCOVER and DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS as well as my interview of Beth and her interview of me

SMALL DAMAGES is set in Seville, Spain in 1995.  The older characters remember living under the rule of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who is still dead.  The eighties brought about a huge change in Spanish culture: the death of conservative Franco and new tourism from the rest of Europe brought new lifestyles, including looser sexual mores and greater rights for women to Spain.  But Spain didn't entirely assimilate.

SMALL DAMAGES made me feel like I was in Seville, seeing and smelling the same things as Kenzie.  There's descriptions of the food, the clothes, the music, and the dancing.  The dialogue gives a sense of the language barrier between Kenzie and her hosts.  She sometimes tries her hand at Spanish and others attempt English, but the words are rarely perfect.

Kenzie has been sent to Spain because she's pregnant.  She refused to terminate the pregnancy as her mother and boyfriend wanted.  The compromise is to live with one of her mother's old friends' friend, Miguel, at his bull ranch Los Nietos and give up the baby to another couple, Javier and Adair.  At Los Nietos she works in the kitchen with Estela and becomes fascinated with ranch hand Esteban, who both have their own stories.

Kenzie is uneasy throughout most of her stay at Los Nietos.  She finds beauty in the people and the place, but she's unsure about what she's doing and not comfortable with the spoiled Adair.  She's struggling to find her way.  Then she begins to find it as she and the people around her open up to each other.  I felt as adrift as Kenzie was at the beginning while reading SMALL DAMAGES.  I appreciated Beth Kephart's talent, but couldn't connect to the story.

I am a huge fan of Kephart's writing.  Her prose is as beautiful and absorbing as ever.  But I felt like I was at a popular museum exhibit while reading SMALL DAMAGES, like I was on tiptoe so that I could see over people's shoulders and catch a glimpse of a masterpiece ten feet away before I was swept away with the crowd to marvel at the corner of the next work on the wall.

I felt like a failure reading SMALL DAMAGES.  If Kephart is one of my favorite authors, then why did I not love this book?  And if I didn't love it, why couldn't I articulate what was wrong?  But I'm not a failure.  There is nothing wrong with appreciating a book but acknowledging that it's not for you.  SMALL DAMAGES is full of achingly raw emotions presented with polished, poetic prose.  There will be someone at the exhibit who sees a ray of light captured just so and is never the same again.

Review: Dangerous Neighbors

By Beth Kephart
Available August 24th from Egmont USA and Laura Geringer Books
Review copy
Read my review of UNDERCOVER and my interview with Beth, or read her interview with me

With every book, my respect for Beth Kephart grows. In fact, she's one of those authors that I enjoy so much I have to find the perfect time and place to read her books so that I can finish comfortably and uninterrupted. For NOTHING BUT GHOSTS, this was two locations: my dorm window seat overlooking Oxford High Street and the Oxford Botanical Gardens. For DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS, I tucked into my childhood bed (no longer in my childhood home) and closed the door to keep my desperate-for-affection dog out of the way.

In DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS, Kephart makes bold stylistic choices. It's told in close third person present. The present is a rough tense, especially when the book moves back and forth in time. The key lies in Kephart's skill. I used the words "bold" and "rough," but those don't suit DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS at all. DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS is fluid and seductive. Kephart plunges right into the action, moving between Katherine's actions during a few days at the Centennial Exhibition and her past with her dead twin Anna at will. It's slightly disorienting but absorbing. Kephart never once underestimates her audience.

In the end, DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS is a short novel. But I didn't feel cheated. I just felt like my time hadn't been wasted on useless scenes or extra words. DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS feels tight. Since the reader delves into Katherine's life for a brief period only, there are open ends. But the important parts - the emotions - those climax.

Historical fiction is not usually my thing, but Kephart pulled me into the world of 1876 Philadelphia. I sympathized with Katherine and Anna the same as I did with the characters of UNDERCOVER despite being so removed from their place. Much of Katherine's inner conflict stems from her feelings about Bennett, who had been Anna's secret lover.

Once upon a time, my sister had a boyfriend she kept secret from our parents. Like Katherine, I knew. Like Katherine, I kept her secret, because however I felt about it, I trusted my sister. Unlike Katherine, my sister is still alive, but that doesn't mean it ended well. I felt betrayed. No one can betray like a sister.

That's the force of Kephart's writing. It is what the stylized prose builds to. Her technical proficiency isn't empty, but a vehicle to deliver emotional truths. Her words have a resonance.

But DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS isn't some stuffy literary work. Kephart doesn't forget the importance of entertainment. There are love stories, new friends, and - of course - danger.

Coming Soon . . .

Is NOTHING BUT GHOSTS by Beth Kephart. I interviewed during the March celebration and intend to review her latest release sometime soon.



But before we get NOTHING BUT GHOSTS, we get the paperback release of UNDERCOVER. Beth wants your poetry, for a chance to win a signed copy.

Interview with Beth Kephart

Wendy Toliver was on vacation last week, so ya'll will have to wait for her guest blog. Instead I bring you the amazing Beth Kephart, the author of UNDERCOVER, HOUSE OF DANCE, and more. Back in September, she did an interview with me. It was fun to turn the tables! And since Beth is uber-nice I know she'll be cool about me shifting her interview up a few days. And if the weather where you live is anything like mine, it's rainy and cold and absolutely perfect for curling up with books like Beth's.

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1. You've got a number of books coming out, but you still find time to blog. But it makes me wonder: do you think you'll ever publish something with your poetry or photos?

Oh, what a great first question you ask. I would love nothing more than to publish my poetry, with photos. My photos have appeared in my books from time to time—into the memoir, Still Love in Strange Places, for example, are wedged my images of El Salvador, and the plan is to have some of my Juarez photography incorporated into the jacket of the forthcoming The Heart is not a Size. But one of the primary reasons I started this blog was to “publish,” so to speak, a collage of my poems and photos. To put both in one place, as often as I can, and without limits.

2. UNDERCOVER, which I loved, is coming out in paperback with extras, just to be mean to those of us with the hardcover. (Not really.) How much input did you get in choosing the extras? i know there's often a reading guide and message from the author, but I've always wondered where the reading guides come from.

Wait. All of your questions are exquisite! But I digress.

Jill Santopolo, my editor, gave me utter freedom when it came to these extras. And so I decided that what I wanted to do was to think ahead in Elisa Cantor’s life, to imagine how things had played out for her, and to briefly capture her subsequent time at high school in a series of new poems. And that is what these extras are. No reading guide. No instructions on how to read the book. Just a suggestion about the still-lived life of a character I can’t let go of. And poetry. Published. In a book.

3. UNDERCOVER features an ice-skater. HOUSE OF DANCE a ballroom dancer. What attracts you to forms of dance? Does the protagonist of NOTHING BUT GHOSTS have a connection to the world of dance?

Katie D’Amore, the heroine of Nothing but Ghosts, does not dance, but there are images that float toward and away from her, just as music floats in and out of me at all times. Writing is the way I sing. It is the way I dance. It is the way I love the world. My characters spring from me, and so they are music bound.

4. I loved your vlog thanking the team behind NOTHING BUT GHOSTS because I enjoy learning about what it takes to polish a novel. What are the most amazing things you've discovered while reading through your manuscript covered in blue pencil?

Gosh, well. The answer to that question could constitute an entire book unto itself. I have a tendency to crumple up my adjectives in a way that leaves Renee, my copy editor, asking: “Would that be a white table with wheels on it? Or a table with white wheels?” With each book I think I get better at self-induced precision. Renee did not have to sharpen too many blue pencils for the forthcoming The Heart is not a Size. In fact, I loved her notes in the margins of that book. I’d be writing about a river in Mexico, for example. Her blue pencil would sing out, “If you like that river, you should see..... “ And then she’d give me some other slice of the world. It made me smile.

5. Have you written the novel you've always wanted to right or are you still trying to find it in you?

Nothing but Ghosts has a mystery at its heart, and that was new and exciting terrain for me (and one of the reasons Renee needed many blue pencils). It found me; I tried my best to answer to the challenge. The Heart is not a Size deals with issues—panic disorder and teen anorexia—that I never thought I would have the courage to face on the page, and it takes readers to a place—a squatters’ village in Juarez—that matters to me deeply, that inspired and moved me. For the past five years I’ve been at work on a novel that takes place in Philadelphia in 1876. It’s a new kind of book for me—an historical novel—and I loved the challenge of sinking deeply within it, and of writing with a brand-new voice. I loved writing it, as I have loved writing all my books. Now I’m at work on a novel that takes place on a cortijo in Seville—a setting with which I worked for years, but never to my complete satisfaction. Something new is happening here, again. Something that is, to me, thrilling as process.

(I should note that both the historical novel and the Seville novel are works in progress, without, as yet, an official home.)

The point is that I am always and forever journeying out toward the breaking point of what I can, at the moment in my career, achieve. Perhaps someday I’ll look back and say, That was the novel that I wanted to write, in some definitive way. But each time out I’m writing to the best of me, I’m writing what finds me and what I have the courage to embrace. I’m going the distance. I’m seeing where it takes me.

6. You have a close relationship with your son.. What sort of books do ya'll share? Is there any book you can't believe he doesn't like?

Oh yes, I love my son. And we are completely and utterly different in our tastes. He has loved the books that I’ve shared with him—A Separate Peace, When the Emperor was Divine, a number of short stories by Flannery O’Connor and Faulkner, for example. But he’s much happier reading books with faster-paced plots and more “excitement,” as he puts it. He has decided to minor in creative writing at college. I watch; I wait; he teaches me. I’ll be teaching at the University of Pennsylvania in the fall—the advanced nonfiction workshop. One of the reasons that I accepted that honor was so that I might stretch as a teacher just as my son is stretching as a student.

7. What kind of camera do you use? Lens? Do you ever play around with filters? Have any feeling about film versus digital?

I use a Sony, and it’s a digital, and it allows me to make mistakes, as all digitals do. I read about photography all the time, and I try to absorb some few elements of what I’ve read. Right now I’m playing around with wide angle lenses and shutter speeds. I’ve played around with the macro lens. I can’t get enough of it all.

Film is more noble, I think. Film requires one to be good every single time out. I’m not that good yet.

8. I haven't heard much about your short story "The Longest Distance" coming soon in the anthology NO SUCH THING AS THE REAL WORLD. What is it about?

This is about a young woman trying to survive her best friend’s unforeseen suicide. It was inspired in part by the tragic events that took place in my own home town a few years ago.

9. Briefly describe your favorite birthday celebration.

My mother threw me a sweet sixteen surprise party that will always rank as the world’s greatest unexpected delight, because somehow or another, she got the great Jim Clancy, the high school star, to show up in my very own basement. Who knows how she did that, but I’ll never forget it.

10. If you had the chance to do anything you wanted, no constraints, no consequences, what would you do?

I’d live in a place that tested me for a few months, that every day brought something new and inexplicable. And then I’d bring that world back home, in words and in pictures. And I would sleep in late every now and then. And someone else would cook the dinners.

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Beth is offering a really cool prize: the last ARC of NOTHING BUT GHOSTS - signed. No really, they randomly found two ARCs when they thought all of them were gone. (Being the Birthday Girl, I snatched one.) Plus, there have been changes made so you'll be able to compare the ARC to the final. Evolution at it's finest.

Follow the rules darlings. And yes, saying Beth is totally awesome is on topic. But that goes without saying, right?

Undercover

Sorry for leaving my last review unfinished for nearly a week. I've now posted the rest of the text.

By Beth Kephart



If UNDERCOVER were a movie, I would say it's a slice of life story. You both start and end in the middle of things, but it's still satisfying. Intelligent Elisa may not be conventionally pretty, but she walks in a world of beauty. She appreciates the outdoors and uses the nature around her to inspire poetry. In turn she gives this poetry to male classmates to aid them in attracting the girls they like. The person who taught her to pay such attention to nature, her father, is away in San Francisco. Her parents' marriage might be falling apart.

Elisa's at a crucial point in discovering who she is, but she's floundering. She's closer to her father and her sister is closer to their mother, but now her father isn't readily available. Her crush Theo is dating the possessive Lila, whom Elisa helped Theo woo. Luckily, she discovers those close to her are allies even when their relationships are strained. She's also encouraged by her English teacher, Dr. Charmin, who recognizes the potential in Elisa's poems.

As with any good slice of life story, UNDERCOVER works because reader's can see elements of their own life in Elisa's, even when the two diverge. I used to skate, although never outdoors and never over a permanently drowning girl. (I do live in Texas. Outdoor ice skating just doesn't work.) During my parents' divorce, my mother used skating to deal with her emotions. The scenes of Elisa skating on the pond, which are numerous, resonate with my own experience.

Likewise, I never had a teacher quite like Dr. Charmin. But I did have wonderful English teachers. I remember reading poetry and plays aloud in class. Of course, the only emotions I was ever overcome by were embarrasment and humor. (Deimyts and I read the two main characters of WAITING FOR GODOT. My character started asking his whether he ever hung himself, because it would give him a boner. Very startling. We also read two characters in a shorter Polish play titled THE UNVEILING. His character began to show another character how to properly seduce a woman - my character. This is the sort of stuff you need to be prepared for! These lines creep up on you!)

One of my biggest quibbles with most books set in high schools is the fact they never seem like any high school I ever attended. But Beth Kephart writes characters I could see myself knowing, in situations I could see happening. And she does it with beautiful language. Elisa's voice has a steady flow and Kephart uses elegant imagery. I hope UNDERCOVER not only pulls readers into Elisa's world, but pushes her world out into theirs and encourages them to read some of the prose and poetry mentioned within the story. (Believe me, it's worth reading.)

Beth Kephart is also the author of HOUSE OF DANCE and the upcoming novels THE HEART IS NOT A SIZE and NOTHING BUT GHOSTS. She can be found on her incredible blog, which has beautiful words to match beautiful photos. I loook forward to her future releases.