A More Diverse Universe Review: The People of Paper

By Salvador Plascencia
Art by Sarah Tillman
Out of print from McSweeney's (HC)
Available now from Mariner Books (Houghton Mifflin) (PB)

Aarti of BookLust came up with the idea of the A More Diverse Universe Tour.  From September 23-29, bloggers will be reviewing speculative fiction titles by authors of color.  You can go here to read more about why this tour is happening.  The full schedule is available here.

THE PEOPLE OF PAPER is not an easy book to describe.  You can throw around terms like 'postmodern' and 'magical realism' to try to get a grip on it.  While both of those are accurate, they're too small for THE PEOPLE OF PAPER.  It's a highly experimental novel, ambitious, a mesh of fiction and fact, a meditation on art, the debut of Salvador Plascencia, and it should be a total mess.  There is a character whose name is cut out of the book.  But it's a mesmerizing work that exceeds its ambition and stands apart as something unique and exciting.

I could tell you that there is a woman made of paper in the story.  There is a prophetic baby who speaks in black rectangles.  There is a grown man, Frederico de la Fe, who still wets his bed.  There is the daughter of the man, Little Merced.  There is Saturn, who the man wars against.  There is Saturn, who is the author.  There's enough crazy typography to make TRISTRAM SHANDY and HOUSE OF LEAVES look like your normal left-to-right reading experience.  There is a love story.  There is a gang war.  There are flower pickers.  Most of the book takes place in California, El Monte, to be specific.  But none of the little details can truly prepare you for reading THE PEOPLE OF PAPER.

Yet, it's the small details that linger with you after finishing.  (And okay, the binary chapter, which - if you're like me - you plugged into your computer to find out what it said.  No, I'm not going to give it away.  I was disappointed at first and then liked it.)  THE PEOPLE OF PAPER is a wild ride, but there's a grounding in character that many less-successful experimental novels forget.  Each of the many narrators has a distinct voice.

And, honestly, I can't imagine many readers THE PEOPLE OF PAPER wouldn't appeal to.  It's a book about making art, about writing, about being a character, about reading, about how books work.  It's bibliophile meta that still functions as a story.

Since the A More Diverse Universe Tour is partially about the author, here is some of Plascencia's description of himself, from an interview with the Nashville Review:

"Professionally—albeit a meagerly profitable enterprise—I’m a writer. But I’m not a professional Mexican; that’s Ruben Navarrette’s gig. I’m a Latino. I’m a writer. I identify as both, but not when “Latino” is serving as a modifier. ...

This might seem like I’m contradicting what I said earlier—I’m not—but what was a major [publisher] going to do with an experimental Mexican-American writer? The reality is that—aside from the Cisneros and Dagoberto Gilb, writers who reinforce parochial views of Latinidad—there are very few of us on the majors. Name them. Off the top of my head, I can only think of Alex Espinoza, Joe Loya, and my fellow El Montian Michael Jaime-Becerra. But Joe and Michael were under Rayo, some HarperCollins specialty imprint aimed exclusively at Latinos. The Houghton Mifflin’s and HarperCollins don’t see us as marketable to the general public. There is Luis Rodriguez—a writer that heavily informed me—but even he is pushed as some sort of exotic criminal. ...

But there are obvious advantages, too. Sometimes, for no good reason aside from the fact that I were born south of the Rio Grande, my name gets tangled up with the greats: Bolaño, Borges, García Márquez. I’m never going to complain when that happens."

A small, personal list of suggestions (mostly YA) for further reading:

• AKATA WITCH by Nnedi Okorafor - YA novel in my own TBR
• ALIF THE UNSEEN by G. Willow Wilson - An exciting genre-bender I've reviewed
• ANGEL SANCTUARY by Kaori Yuki - My all-time favorite manga (only 20 volumes!)
• ASH or ADAPTATION by Malinda Lo - Fantasy lovers to the first; sci-fi to the second
• BATTLE ROYALE by Koushun Takumi - Make up your mind about the comparisons to THE HUNGER GAMES; also it's just an interesting read
• CITY OF THE BEASTS by Isabel Allende - This series used to be pretty popular
• THE GIRL WITH BORROWED WINGS by Rinsai Rossetti - A lyrical, lovely debut that I adore
• THE HUNT by Andrew Fukuda - I have this vampire novel on my to-buy list
• LEGEND series by Marie Lu - Loved the first book and awaiting the second
• LOST AND FOUND by Shaun Tan - Anything by him is great but I've reviewed this one
• ONCE UPON A TIME IN AOTEAROA by Tina Makereti - May be harder to find since it's by a Maori writer and published by a small New Zealand press; I only know about it because I received it as a gift
• THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie - Banned Book Week is coming up; make your own decision about the controversy
• SORRY PLEASE THANK YOU: Stories by Charles Yu - Yu is an emerging talent
• TANTALIZE series by Cynthia Leitich Smith - Also has a diverse selection of narrators
• A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS trans. Husain Haddawy - His translation is so much more better than the popular (public domain) one by Sir Richard Burton I'm not even kidding
• THE VICIOUS DEEP by Zoraida Córdova - This is my favorite of the mermaid trend

Review: 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth

By Matthew Inman (the Oatmeal)
Available now from Andrews McMeel Publishing
Review copy



Okay, I often don't talk about what format I read a book in. I read the epub version of 5 VERY GOOD REASONS TO PUNCH A DOLPHIN IN THE MOUTH, which is relevant because the resolution wasn't all that awesome. You couldn't really zoom, which meant some bits were almost impossible to read. Judging by the reviews on Amazon, that hasn't been fixed. So printed is the way to go. Not that I expect many people to be more interested in the e-version of this. It's easier to browse through the random comics with a book or on the site than in an ebook.

I was excited for 5 VERY GOOD REASONS TO PUNCH A DOLPHIN IN THE MOUTH because I'm a big fan of the Oatmeal, author Matthew Inman's humor site. There are great infographics about such things as grammar, vocabulary, cheese, and coffee. There are also fun quizzes and some delightfully surreal comics, such as the eponymous work. It's nice to have some favorites collected and at hand.

At the same time, when idly browsing on the internet I never noticed how often Inman jokes about hookers. Not particularly good jokes, either. It got kind of uncomfortable after awhile.

Between being underwhelmed by the format and overwhelmed by (dead) hooker jokes, I was less impressed by 5 VERY GOOD REASONS TO PUNCH A DOLPHIN IN THE MOUTH. I'll continue to check the website, but I don't think I'm going to purchase the book for myself or as a gift for friends.

Review: Please Ignore Vera Dietz

If you're wondering who won the preorder contest, I kept that secret since I kept track of it by e-mails. The SOLITARY winners were Mad Scientist of Steam Punkery and Book Reviews and Jessi E. of The Elliot Review.


By A. S. King
Available now from Alfred A. Knopf (Random House)
Printz Honor Book
Review copy
Read my review of DUST OF 100 DOGS and Amy's guest blog

I read quite a bit of this novel in the back of my car. Fitting, since Vera Dietz spends quite a bit of time in her car like a good pizza delivery person. (She also takes shots of vodka like a bad pizza delivery person.)

What to say? Here's what I didn't like about the book:

Jenny Flick is mean and cruel and evil and completely flat. It makes sense, since neither Vera nor co-narrating (from beyond the grave) Charlie Kahn have any reason to make an effort to see her good side. At the same time, she's one of the main external antagonists. Vera deserves a better enemy. A. S. King crafted a sharp, funny, and tragic heroine. It seems almost laughable that such a fully realized character is pitted against a deranged bully.

But it does fit, at the same time. Jenny Flick is not the main antagonist, though she would like to be. Vera's her own worst enemy. Her love is the best weapon she can turn against herself. And there are worse things in her life - and there were worse things in Charlie's - than Jenny Flick.

Here's what I liked about the book:

The structure. (It reminds me of THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS by Arundhati Roy.)



The flowcharts. Chart jokes are always funny.

The black humor. There's a running joke about a pickle that will break your heart.

The heart breaking. This isn't a maudlin, Lurlene McDaniel, saddest little cancer patient story. You know Charlie is dead, you know he was on a downhill slide when he died. You know that. King breaks you slowly by showing just how close he came to making it despite his few chances in life. She breaks you with the knowledge that Vera might not make it, that she might end up like Charlie despite having so much potential.

Smart people are excellent at doing dumb things because they think they know better.

(Perhaps, sometimes, they want to do dumb things.)

PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ is one of the reasons YA is such an exciting genre.  It's an example of why writing for young adults shouldn't be underestimated.  It should already be on your shelf, nestled by gems like DANGEROUS NEIGHBORS and GOING BOVINE.

Review: Beatrice and Virgil

By Yann Martel
Available now from Spiegel & Grau (Random House)
Review Copy

Note: This review looks at BEATRICE AND VIRGIL holistically. If you object to knowing anything about the ending, please do not read this review. Simply take this statement with you: I devoured this book and I am thinking rather hard about it . . . perhaps too hard.

AVC: You said that your next book is almost finished. Do you have a sense of when we're going to see it?

YM: I would think, the fall of 2008. It's two things, the next one. It's a novel and an essay. The reason I did that was that as I was writing the novel, I had certain questions and approaches and things I wanted to discuss which didn't fit in the genre of the novel. They'll be published back-to-back, upside down, what the trade calls a flipbook. In other words, a book with two covers. And they'll have the same title: A 20th-Century Shirt. They share the same fundamental metaphor to do with the shirt and to do with the laundry, and they both have to do with the Holocaust.
-from an A.V. Club interview by Tasha Robinson

In his first novel since the wildly successful LIFE OF PI, Yann Martel decides to approach the Holocaust through a postmodern perspective. He blurs the line between fantasy and reality - and if the above quote is to be believed, he changed the position of that line sometime after November 6, 2007.

BEATRICE AND VIRGIL is told in the close third perspective, through the eyes of Henry, an author with an extremely successful first novel whose second novel was savaged by his editors. That second novel was a flipbook, a novel and an essay about the Holocaust. But that novel is not A 20th CENTURY SHIRT. A 20th CENTURY SHIRT is a play by a taxidermist, which Henry eventually rewrites and adapts into a memoir: BEATRICE AND VIRGIL.

Like LIFE OF PI, BEATRICE AND VIRGIL is a story about how we tell stories. The survivors of the Holocaust are dying, but the event cannot be forgot. The Jews, the Poles, the homosexuals, none of the victims can be forgotten. But how will the story be told by those of us who weren't there? We've grown up with a fairly standard Holocaust narrative. It is tragic and somber. As Martel points out, only a few storytellers like Art Spiegelman use fanciful flourishes. I am surprised that Martel did not mention the work of Günter Grass.

Grass's work is also postmodern. His magical realist novels tell of the horrors of the Nazi regime, focusing on the invasion of Poland and the changes within the city of Danzig. The exclusion of Grass soon fell to the back of my mind, only to be recalled when I reached the end. In 2006, Grass revealed that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS. At the climax of BEATRICE AND VIRGIL, Henry realizes he's been wrong about the taxidermist's narrative of the Holocaust. The taxidermist was a Nazi. His point of view changed, Henry rejects the taxidermist's story. How can Grass be ignored?

There is more to BEATRICE AND VIRGIL's crabbed structure than just this bending of Martel and Henry's identities. The philosophical musings on how we talk about the Holocaust are offset by an allegory of the Holocaust: the play-within-the-novel, BEATRICE AND VIRGIL. It's an explicitly Beckett-like production. Two characters, talking to each other. They're hungry and lost. They're surrounded by a world of meaning but don't understand what it means. They're trying to decide how to talk about what has happened to the animals. That's the taxidermist's concern: the destruction of animals. It's an allegory that, as Henry discovers, can be valiant or monstrous.

Then there's also Henry's home life, with his pregnant wife, cat, and dog. There's his careers, as a thwarted writer, a waiter and an amateur actor. There's quite a bit happening in few pages. It is a lovely work, but I think some of Martel's own narrative is lost in the way he drives the mind off the page to think about story and the Holocaust and the way reality and fiction fit together.