Readers United Book Reviews | Small Fry and Educated

Caroline Rispoli '20 reviews two incredibly crafted memoirs, Small Fry and Educated

Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs

Reviewed by Caroline Rispoli ’20

Lisa Brennan-Jobs’ memoir, Small Fry, introduces to the world the truth about technology legend and co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, as she details their relationship from child to adulthood. Brennan-Jobs, recounting her double life split between the homes of her mother and father, brings to light the fact that regardless of Steve’s reputation as an internationally recognized genius, he lacked the necessary intelligence, or rather what appears to most as common sense, to appropriately pursue fatherhood. 

Rarely present in Lisa’s early life, Steve later emerges as a more “involved” fatherly figure, although simultaneously unpredictable, critical, and cold in his attitude toward Lisa. As her relationship with her mother is strained during the beginning of high school, Steve demands Lisa move in with him, wife Laurene, and son Reed. Lisa is met with a cold bedroom in which Steve refuses to fix the heating, rejection from family photos, and Steve’s insistence that his first computer, the Lisa, has no relation to his daughter. 

Brennan-Jobs masterfully depicts her life between her parents and the psychological repercussions evident into adulthood, while the memoir unfolds much like a puzzle, in which the reader takes on the same confused role as a young Lisa attempting to understand Steve’s erratic behavior and actions. Lisa’s vivid memory allows for an unparalleled openness regarding Steve’s distinct idiosyncrasies, and a level of truth not often present in memoirs today. 

Verdict: A disturbing, passionate, and mesmerizing recounting, Small Fry, should be read by any and all, Apple fanatic or not, as an insightful analysis into the mind of Steve Jobs through the eyes of his first born daughter. 

Educated by Tara Westover

Reviewed by Caroline Rispoli ’20

School to most may seem like a no-brainer, but Tara Westover didn’t enter a classroom until she was seventeen years old. Born into a devout Mormon family living in the mountain’s of Idaho, Tara’s childhood was characterized by assisting her mother as both midwife and healer, experiencing the often dangerous manual labor in her father’s junkyard, and enduring the constant physical and verbal abuse of her older brother Shawn. It is her family’s distrust of the government, which barred her from schooling and medical care, combined with the psychologically and physically detrimental actions of her brother Shawn, that convinces Tara to find a way out. 

In her disturbing, heartbreaking, and inspiring memoir, Westover details her journey through self education. She studies to gain a score of 28 on the ACT, moves on to attend Brigham Young University, and eventually attends both Cambridge, where she earns her PhD, and Harvard, where she is a visiting fellow. In the midst of her immense success, or rather the evil that has overtaken her in the eyes of her parents, Tara is practically disowned and challenged when she comes forward regarding her brother’s years of abuse. 

Verdict: Tara Westover has written a memoir that reveals the power of an education: the opportunity to gain a new perspective through an understanding of the world around you, and the power to change one’s life. 

Readers United Book Reviews | Popular and Midwinterblood

Sabrina Hsu '20 reviews Popular and Midwinterblood

Popular by Maya Van Wagenen 

“Popularity is more than looks. It’s not clothes, hair, or even possessions. When we let go of these labels, we see how flimsy and relative they actually are. Real popularity is kindness and acceptance. It is about who you are, and how you treat others.”

The real-life results are painful, funny, and include a wonderful and unexpected surprise —meeting and befriending Betty Cornell herself. Told with humor and grace, Maya’s journey offers readers of all ages a thoroughly contemporary example of kindness and self-confidence.”

Maya Van Wagenen (left) practicing tummy-slimming exercises listed in a 50s guide (right).

My thoughts:

If this book were a movie, it would be a typical motivational feel-good low-budget comedy, complete with tropes and hypocritically uplifting messages. Despite the moral of the tale being beauty is irrelevant to social status, the author records the triumphant climax of her experiment as a Cinderella moment, with her unable to recognize the lovely vision in the mirror while preparing for prom. Maya invites all the school pariahs to said prom to supposedly create an inclusive atmosphere, a move that appears more like a superficial bid for popularity among a group of outcasts than a sincere gesture of friendship.

Self-contradictory aspects aside, the tone of the book is heavily sugarcoated, edited to appear unrealistically sweet and positive. This renders it difficult to believe or relate to as a fellow teenager. Divided into nine sections based on the months in a school year, Maya strives to follow the outdated advice of a 50s popularity guide one section per month. She commences by addressing her “figure problems”, then moving on to hair, skin & makeup, and so on. Facing each new challenge with a degree of gusto disproportionate to the amount of, if any, beneficial results produced, her voice (marketed as “refreshing” and “honest”) fails to connect on a profound level.

Strewn with anecdotes regarding border life, her family members, and school going-ons, Popularis padded with the mundane events characteristic of an eighth-grade girl’s diary, adding a distinctively lackluster finish to the book. Attempts to render the story more moving can be discerned from subordinate narrative threads such as the episode involving the death of a favorite teacher; however, they appeared rather unrelated to the author’s main storyline. Ultimately, several facets of Maya’s memoir made it seem fabricated: the bubbly tone, the strategic photographs, the school’s rigid social hierarchy, the prom ending, and the social outcasts’ outpouring of gratitude all suggest a cheesy high school movie-like concoction.

Verdict: Overall, I do not recommend this book. The author’s social experiment doesn’t seem authentic and her voice is too gung-ho to be genuine.

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick 

Reviewed by Sabrina Hsu ’20

“He wonders about them all, all the many lives that have been, and that will be, and wonders why they are not all the same, why they are what they are. It cannot be, he thinks, that when our life is run, we are done. There must be more to man than that, surely?

In Marcus Sedgwick’s award-winning novel, seven short stories weave together a poignant tale of love and sacrifice. Proceeding backwards chronologically, the stories stretch from the near future to the distant past, with a revolving cast of characters that encounter each other in the forms of Vikings, vampires, and high priests.

Eric Seven, a young journalist, is sent by his editor to interview the inhabitants of the reclusive Blessed Island, where rumor has it that an elixir of youth has been successfully brewed from the Island’s unique orchid species. He meets and develops an instant attraction to the beautiful Merle, and despite his eerie sense of déjà vu, they bond and fall in love. However, as events take a grim turn, Eric is unwittingly swept up in a tragic saga set in motion more than a thousand years ago. 

Starting with “Midsummer Sun” set in June 2073, the plot travels back in time via the intricately intertwined tales. Connecting details are scattered throughout, and readers begin to glimpse the big picture approximately after reaching the third story. Inspired by the painting Midvinterblot(Swedish for midwinter sacrifice), Marcus Sedgwick writes of a love that transcends space and time, of Eric and Merle’s doomed attempts to find one another in each life.

Midvinterblot by Swedish painter Carl Larsson

As the plot moves back in time, Eric and Merle become Erika and Merle then eventually Eirikr and Melle; Blessed Island is returned to the archaic Blest Isle. The Island, as the constant backdrop of the entire book, almost feels like a solid character in its own right. The mysteries entombed (literally!) on the Island from the orchids to secrets in Viking burial mounds form an interconnected web that tantalizes the reader. 

Sedgwick’s prose is haunting and lyrical, and the novel is unsettling without toeing the line into horror. Masterfully constructed, the seven sections cover distinct genres ranging from a ghost story to a World War Two narrative. An aspect that I particularly enjoyed is the variety among the stories in both thematic content and characterization; Eric and Merle do not make up the typical star-struck couple that changes little from one lifetime to the next. In some incarnations they are lovers, in others they are friends, or siblings, or complete strangers that don’t meet at all. It is a continuous thread of love and self-sacrifice that binds them throughout the centuries.

Verdict: Complex and beautiful, Midwinterblood is a novel that I highly recommend for those who enjoy darker fantasy, as well as anyone seeking an imaginative romance devoid of overused cliché elements.

Readers United Book Reviews | We Regret to Inform You and Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend

Siri Palreddy '20 reviews two incredibly interesting reads, We Regret to Inform You and Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend

We Regret to Inform You by Ariel Kaplan

Reviewed by Siri Palreddy ’20

Mischa Abramavicius seems like the perfect student on paper: straight A’s, Vice President of Student Council, incredibly high SAT scores, a favorite with the teachers at her prep school. By the time Decision Day comes, the time when most Ivy Leagues release acceptance (and rejection) letters, she’s completely sure she’s done everything she can to get into her top schools — and if worst comes to worst (she’s hoping it won’t) she’s a shoo-in at her local safety school, Paul Revere. But when every school she applied to rejects her, even Paul Revere, Mischa is devastated at first, then extremely confused: what’s going on? As Mischa tries to get to the bottom of this entire fiasco with a group of rebel hacker girls and her best friend/crush Nate, she not only discovers some shocking secrets those in her school may be trying to hide, but also finds out more about herself as she faces the possibility of her dream college being only a dream.

Ariel Kaplan’s writing was really relatable as a high school student. She described the college process in a really truthful way, describing both the goods and bads of it, from piling extracurriculars onto your resume to the sincere joy you feel if you are accepted. She also gave us a pretty relatable character — while Mischa may be overly intense at times when it comes to school, she also wants something that most of us also do: college. However, I especially liked that Mischa was a person who was undecided about what she wanted to do in life. It showed that she hasn’t got everything in life figured out and that she’s also confused about her future. Mischa is also presented as a really funny and kind person — most overachievers are depicted as cutthroat and only focused on schoolwork, but Mischa knew how to balance both her personal and academic life.

Kaplan also maintains the mystery well throughout the novel. It wasn’t obvious to me at all who the culprit was and I was kept waiting through every step of the novel. The characters of the Ophelia Syndicate, a tech club of four girls that helps Mischa find out what happened to her applications, were also a nice addition to the book. They not only give a great example of girls being amazing at STEM, but also give advice to Mischa and help her make one especially important decision at the end of the book.

The only things I would criticize about the book are its wording and also some of the more unrealistic aspects of it. For instance, at one point in the book, Mischa says "It was good. It tasted maple-y. I like maple." And there’s also this line: “‘Oof,’ I said, because having a plastic skull under one’s nether regions was not especially pleasant.” It’s not the most sophisticated writing and that distracted me a little at times from the plot.

And as for the unrealistic aspects of the book, while I realize that the entire story is based on something that would most likely happen, the fact that Mischa and her friends were able to do some illegal activities, like easily breaking into a prep school that should have enough money to provide better security, kind of surprised me. I also found it a little unrealistic that Mischa just completely ignored her friends for almost a month during her investigations, but when she finally realized she’d been ignoring them, they all fell back into conversation without a problem.

Verdict: Overall, this is a quick read that provided an intriguing mystery — it’s not the type of book to discuss the value of college and how someone recuperates after rejection. Although the wording in the book isn’t as polished as I’d wanted it to be, this book is interesting enough to read whenever you get a chance, especially if you like a good mystery and don’t mind looking past some unrealistic aspects.

Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend by Matthew Dicks

Reviewed by Siri Palreddy ’20

Almost all of us had some sort of made-up friend when we were young. It might have been an on-and-off relationship, and maybe your friend didn’t even have a name, but at some point, we’ve all created ourselves a companion. Eventually though, those friends fade away and we can barely remember them. We think they’re gone because they were never real in the first place.

But what if your imaginary friend was real? This is the premise that Dicks ventures into as he tells the story of Max, a kid who has Asperger’s Syndrome, and his imaginary best friend Budo. Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend is told through the unique view of Budo, as he explains the many rules that govern the existence of imaginary friends. Firstly, imaginary friends come in all different shapes and sizes — they don’t have to be human, nor do they even have to be a living thing. An imaginary friend has all the limitations and powers that their creator grants them. Budo, for instance, actually looks more human than most other imaginary friends because Max had a very vivid imagination. While Budo can pass through doors like a ghost, he can’t sleep or even pick things up because Max never imagined Budo in that way.

Budo is there for Max at every moment — I especially like that Budo has an individuality not tied to Max. Like when Max doesn’t allow his mother to hug him, Budo feels bad for Mom and tries to encourage Max to open up. But Budo’s also always ready to keep Max away from any school bullies crossing his path. And while Budo wishes he could be there for Max forever, there’s one rule about imaginary friends that shatters that possibility: imaginary friends die when their kids don’t need them anymore.

However, Budo’s tentative future with Max is suddenly interrupted when Max is kidnapped by Ms. Patterson, a Special-Education teacher who forms a peculiar connection with Max and believes she can raise Max better. With Budo being the only witness to the abduction, he’s also Max’s only hope of being saved.

As Budo explores a world without Max on his journey to bring his best friend back, he learns more about what it means to be an imaginary friend and the sacrifices he will make to ensure Max can survive without him.

This book is a heartwarming read and Dicks ties it all together really well. I loved that this entire story was seen through the eyes of an imaginary friend rather than the kid himself. It displayed an entirely different side to how we all experienced childhood. Dicks also created a world that makes sense — all too often, authors make small inconsistencies when introducing a character from a different world. But the rules and origin of imaginary friends made sense and didn’t leave me confused about anything.

This book also has incredible writing — Dicks is actually a fifth-grade teacher and you can see that he knows kids so well. He skillfully incorporates his real-life interactions with kids into his novel.

Verdict: Overall, this is a great novel for just about anybody. It can be a little sad at times (like when Budo’s friends who are also imaginary companions fade away) so be prepared. But it’s also great to see how powerful one person in our life can be, even someone we don’t remember.

Readers United Book Reviews | People Like Us

Betsy Overstrum '20 reviews People Like Us, an intense mystery you won't want to put down

People Like Us by Dana Mele

Reviewed by Betsy Overstrum ’20

Kay Donovan is a student at Bates Academy in the process of reinventing her image as she continues to struggle with her difficult past. She’s one of the popular girls now (a change from her old self) and is on track for a college soccer scholarship (mostly for her parents). 

            

Kay’s world is turned upside down when she finds the body of one of her classmates in the school’s lake. Suicide is a possibility, but an investigation must take place. Days later, Kay receives an email from the dead student. How is that possible? Is it possible? A link to a revenge blog is included in which Kay must complete a series of tasks within a certain amount of time or the secrets of her past and the pasts of her closest friends will be exposed. What did Kay do to deserve this? Not one character walks without flaws, which puts them all on the list of possible murderers with Kay’s name at the top of the list. Along the journey, Kay becomes close (very close) with another student at Bates who is extremely tech savvy and can hopefully destroy the revenge blog. Although, no one is ever who they really seem, so is blog destruction possible? Join Kay and the Bate’s community as they work to uncover the murder mystery. Is all of this work worth it, Kay? You can answer that one, but ask yourself: what would you do to hide your deepest secrets? 

            

Verdict:People Like Us will lead you down a winding road with hundreds of side streets but only one destination. Hop in the car and prepare for a bumpy ride.