A Zoo on the Ocean

There are some books that were just meant to be movies.  Life of Pi by Yann Martel is one such novel. Now I read this book for a book club I run at the library, but prior to having read it, I watched the movie. I know! Shock and awe! Luckily, there was enough space between seeing the movie and reading the book that I didn't do the whole “well that was nothing like what I saw in the movie”. This is such a vibrant and visual book that it made a stunning and accurate movie.

Life of Pi is the extraordinary story of Pi. It begins with his childhood in India, where his father owns a zoo. Pi is an eccentric, wise, and vivacious young boy who takes a keen interest in religion. He is born Hindu, but picks up Islam and Christianity along the way, finding faith and comfort in all three. The real adventure starts when Pi and his family decide to sell the zoo and move to Canada. On the trip across the ocean, the ship sinks leaving Pi on a life boat with a chimp, hyena, zebra, and Bengali tiger. What follows is the story of Pi’s survival at sea with a wild tiger and how he carries on.

Many have found this book to be a survival story, a great book of storytelling, and a book about faith. I found it unique in that it combines all three. It has elements of a Biblical tale in the extraordinary circumstances that take place, yet even when Pi questions his beliefs, he remains faithful. Of course, the most obvious element of the story is that of survival on the Pacific Ocean with a wild animal. Pi’s ability to tame Richard Parker, the tiger, and find hope in his presence is the story that makes for good Hollywood filming. There were times during this second section that I skimmed through  because you can only read about fishing so much before it gets repetitive.

I enjoyed this story. I thought the framing of it was interesting with a young man relating his encounter with the older Pi as he tells his story. Most people can find something they like about this book, whether it be the adventure story, faith in the face of adversity, animals and nature, or a storyteller’s tale. If you've seen the movie, the book is quite similar, but I suppose I should say the book is always better…

A Monster Calls

 “’You do not write your life with words, the monster said. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.´” A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness is a story about truth, power, and life. Conor begins getting nightly visits from a monster who insists on telling him three tales. Where regular children might be afraid of a giant monster at their window, Conor has another nightmare that haunts him. A nightmare he fears more than anything else, because it speaks the truth. During the day, Conor must face a reality he hates. His mother has cancer and everyone treats him differently. His teachers pity him, his classmates can’t look at him, and the only person treating Conor like a real kid is his bully. His nightly visitor becomes normal, but this monster is demanding from him something he’s not willing to face. The truth.

Patrick Ness wrote a beautiful book. A book that speaks the truth: the ugly, wicked, honest truth. This is a children’s book and addresses life and illness unlike any children’s book I’ve encountered. It isn’t smiles and pats on the back, it’s real life. Fear, anxiety, anger. Real feelings. One message of the book, speaking truth, applies to all of us. Speak the truth to children and this book does that. Illness is a part of life and it’s good that there is a book that kids who may be surrounded by it can turn to.

Conor is a great character. He is not a polished boy who finds a way to be good, but a kid who is going through a tough situation and acting out because of it. He does some terrible things, he feels hurt, angry, and sad and takes it out on those around him. Haven’t we all done that? I didn't particularly like him, but i

t was nice to read a fictional character who acts like a real person.

My favorite part of the book was the ink drawings. They are creepy and sinister looking and paired so perfectly with the text. It added a different element to the story. The drawings also make this a more appealing book to reluctant readers.

I highly suggest this to adults and kids alike. It’s a beautiful story that encompasses storytelling elements and difficult subjects in an accessible way.

Mythical Woods

After reading the book, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, I started recommending it a lot and thus started looking for read alikes. I found Touch by Alexi Zentner. Both have similar qualities. They take place in Alaska (Snow Child) and British Columbia (Touch), which are neighbors and share harsh climates, deep woods, and difficult living. Both stories are in the genre of magical realism, a genre characterized by its use of reality or real life situations with a few mystical elements. Everyday life is the same, but there is one thing that is magical or different whether it’s a character’s ability to do something out of the ordinary or occurrences. Both books deal with the settling of wild lands. In my opinion, both were fabulous books.

Stephen is a middle aged man living in the 1940s with three daughters of his own, and he has moved back home to Sawgamet. His mother is on death’s doorstep and therefore, Stephen begins relating the story of his parents and grandparents and the founding of this town. Each story pulls you through time and illustrates the rich history of this family and place. Jeanot, Stephen’s grandpa, walked to Sawgamet and made it his own, discovering gold and then the richness of the trees. He began a lumber company, continued by his son, Stephen’s father. The stories have magical elements thrown in, such as the appearance of strange creatures and ghosts, but it is not a foreign world.

This is a storyteller’s novel. Stephen is certainly a storyteller, relating each story to the audience, and the novel had the rhythm, flow, and language of a storyteller. It was well done. I got lost at points with which story belonged to what person, but I wanted to keep discovering more about these people and this mysterious place. I also wondered at the end what the point was. Was it just to remember times gone by as the last of an older generation died or was a missing the point?

This was truly a novel that was more about the journey than the end result and it was beautiful. The writing is atmospheric taking you to the brink of the known world and sending you into an untamed forest where creatures only spoken about in legend still roam.

It seems I have a penchant for backwoods magical realism. I also seem to love tales told in the storytelling style. They feel more natural and flow with ease. Zintner did a wonderful job with this novel. It makes me long for the distant woods and the mystery of nature. Perhaps I’ll take a lesson from Thoreau and shrug off society for the blessings of nature. Then again, maybe I need to work…

If you’re a fan of the settling of forest lands, or magical realism, or this kind of storytelling narration, here are some read alikes:

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Gathering of Waters by Bernice McFadden

The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen

Wild Life by Molly Gloss

Arabian Nights...Fairy Tale Adaptions

The Storyteller’s Daughter by Cameron Dokey is about Shahrazad, the legendary storyteller of a thousand tales that astounded a king and stayed his hand from murdering her. Although most of us are familiar with the stories, Aladdin, Ali Baba, Simbad, no one knows the story of the king and the woman who enchanted him with her wit and voice. Until now…

Here is the story of a King who was betrayed by the woman he loved and turned his heart to stone so he would never love again. In his anger, he declared that he would take a bride every night and kill her at dawn. What he did not anticipate was that a woman would present herself who would make him question himself and his convictions.

Shahrazad is a beautiful young woman who turned away from a world who did not accept her, but who possesses a rare gift that saves many lives. If she can save the king, she might also be able to find love herself.

Dokey’s story is written as if it were being told by a storyteller, that storyteller being a much older Shahrazad. This was a fun nuance in the book that I enjoyed. It is a very short read and that has value, but at the same time, I found it hard to believe that the couple would fall for each other so quickly. The Arabian Nights are 1001 tales and the book was barely 200 pages long! A bit more story would have been preferable given the depth and richness of the tales the storyteller relates. Given the length and the complexity of the original story, I think Dokey did a decent job with this novel even though it was short.

You will fly through this book, so be prepared with another. If you enjoy Dokey’s short novels and alternative takes on fairytales, try Beauty Sleep, a retelling of “The Sleeping Beauty”. Gail Carson Levine is also a wonderful author who writes fairy tale adaptions and fantasy books.

A Story a Day Keeps the Doctor Away...Storytelling and Humanity

Jonathan Gottschall sets out to show how humans are tied to stories and fiction in his nonfiction work “The Storytelling Animal: How stories make us human”. They are essential to everyday life, play, and mental attitude. You may be thinking, well that’s just silly! I don’t tell stories and I don’t hear storytellers, or even read all that often. Well, Gottschall will tell you you’re not looking at a wide enough angle.

Storytelling is everywhere. Through the thousands of years human beings have been on this earth, we have made stories essential. If, as some claim, fiction and stories are wasteful and unnecessary, then why did they not evolve out? No we might not all sit around listening to our parents recite Sleeping Beauty for the hundredth time, but we function on a daily basis in the realm of the story. 

As Gottschall explains, the mind is a storyteller. We dream nightly, even if we don’t remember, creating events in our head. Dreams help us work out life situations and see the endings to different scenarios. One argument that Gottschall presents for why we dream is because we need to practice. Dreaming gives us the chance to see the endings to different scenarios, feel what it’s like to punch that person you hate without the ramifications of so doing. Then there are daydreams. Living in our heads and telling ourselves fictions about what we want and how we get it. 

When we are unable to explain our world, we fabricate stories. We find explanations because the human mind does not respond well to having no answer. Our minds are created to lie, to fib, to tell stories. In split brain patients, when the left (reasoning, speech center) side of the brain saw an image, then picked the object that was associated with said image and explained why they picked that object. However, when the right (creative) brain saw an image and picked the object associated with the scene, the left side of the brain could not explain why that object was chosen because the brain was not connected to the other side, and the left (communication) side was unable to comprehend what the right side saw. Instead of saying ‘I don’t know’ the patient’s brain made up an explanation. 

Humans are supposed to tell stories about themselves. We need to alter our memories to be more favorable to ourselves, make us be the protagonist of our own story. Gottschall says, “A healthy mind tells itself flattering lies. And if it does not lie to itself, it is not healthy…positive illusions keep us from yielding to despair.”

In the end, Gottschall talks about the future of fiction and how many say it is dying. Quite the opposite is happening in his opinion. People crave story more than ever. Movies, TV show, videogames, even books. He cautions the reader that the problem in the future isn’t losing our stories and wandering away from fiction, it’s getting lost in it and forgetting to live in reality. Virtual realities, MMORPGs, LARP are already popular, but think about when we get better technology, when we can nearly live inside of these worlds with our senses intact there. As Gottschall says, when you’re playing God, why would you ever want to stop?

Jonathan Gottschall gives a fascinating, well researched, convincing look into how storytelling is not dead, and is essential to humans. This was an easy book to consume and a very interesting subject, at least to me. His writing style flows from paragraph to paragraph and he links his ideas throughout the book. In the end, his conclusions draw the book together and give a description of where we are heading. I recommend this book for writers, storytellers, readers, psychologists, and homo sapiens.