Unfortunately good books.
Sep. 18th, 2008 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaI read until 1:30am, last night. Didn't sleep very well, mostly because the no-sleeping-on-your-back thing is killing me. And then Alex woke up at 6:30am with a nightmare and neither one of us got back to sleep.
I am so tired.
I'm reading a YA book called Long May She Reign, by Ellen Emerson White. I picked it up on impulse because the girl on the cover was wearing a Williams sweatshirt, and then the back cover description was intriguing, and then suddenly it was 1am and I knew I was hurting myself by staying up so late and I still couldn't stop myself from sucking down one more chapter. And one more after that. And one more after that.
The book is about the eighteen-year-old daughter of the first female President of the United States. A few months before the book starts, Meg was kidnapped by terrorists, beaten, starved, and left for dead in an abandoned mine shaft. She had to crush her own hand to escape, and then wander out of the woods under her own power. With a smashed knee. Now she is permanently disabled, in crippling pain, and suffering from PTSD - all under the harsh spotlight of relentless public attention. And her family is privately falling apart from the strain, in large part due to her mother the President's public statement, while she was missing, that she "can not, have not, and will not negotiate with terrorists."
It's painfully real - so much so that tears kept leaking out of my eyes while I read. White doesn't go for simplistic. Meg is unbelievably damaged and spilling over with bottled-up fury, and yet she's also someone who has been trained for years to be poised and careful and consider the political implications of every word and facial expression. Her feelings sort of leak out sideways instead of erupting in scenery-chewing melodrama. White sticks to a tight third-person perspective, but shows how Meg's judgments and perceptions are warped by her experiences, both in ways she recognizes (she can pinpoint what stimuli trigger a panic attack, for example) and in ways she doesn't recognize (she resents the hovering White House servants, but is completely oblivious to how much she simultaneously depends on them and takes them for granted, even after she goes away to college and can't meet her basic needs without them).
When I was first reading the book, I kept thinking how interesting (although not unique, I know) it was to write an entire book about the aftermath of a trauma, with only bits and pieces of the kidnapping, and Meg's life before the kidnapping, slipped in retrospectively. Then, uh, I flipped to the back cover to read "about the author" and learned that this book is the fourth in a series. So never mind. White does a great job with inclueing all the same - obviously, given that I couldn't tell that I had missed earlier books.
Anyway. It's a really good book. And I don't know how I'm going to tolerate another 430 pages of it, because it just hurts that much.
I am so tired.
I'm reading a YA book called Long May She Reign, by Ellen Emerson White. I picked it up on impulse because the girl on the cover was wearing a Williams sweatshirt, and then the back cover description was intriguing, and then suddenly it was 1am and I knew I was hurting myself by staying up so late and I still couldn't stop myself from sucking down one more chapter. And one more after that. And one more after that.
The book is about the eighteen-year-old daughter of the first female President of the United States. A few months before the book starts, Meg was kidnapped by terrorists, beaten, starved, and left for dead in an abandoned mine shaft. She had to crush her own hand to escape, and then wander out of the woods under her own power. With a smashed knee. Now she is permanently disabled, in crippling pain, and suffering from PTSD - all under the harsh spotlight of relentless public attention. And her family is privately falling apart from the strain, in large part due to her mother the President's public statement, while she was missing, that she "can not, have not, and will not negotiate with terrorists."
It's painfully real - so much so that tears kept leaking out of my eyes while I read. White doesn't go for simplistic. Meg is unbelievably damaged and spilling over with bottled-up fury, and yet she's also someone who has been trained for years to be poised and careful and consider the political implications of every word and facial expression. Her feelings sort of leak out sideways instead of erupting in scenery-chewing melodrama. White sticks to a tight third-person perspective, but shows how Meg's judgments and perceptions are warped by her experiences, both in ways she recognizes (she can pinpoint what stimuli trigger a panic attack, for example) and in ways she doesn't recognize (she resents the hovering White House servants, but is completely oblivious to how much she simultaneously depends on them and takes them for granted, even after she goes away to college and can't meet her basic needs without them).
When I was first reading the book, I kept thinking how interesting (although not unique, I know) it was to write an entire book about the aftermath of a trauma, with only bits and pieces of the kidnapping, and Meg's life before the kidnapping, slipped in retrospectively. Then, uh, I flipped to the back cover to read "about the author" and learned that this book is the fourth in a series. So never mind. White does a great job with inclueing all the same - obviously, given that I couldn't tell that I had missed earlier books.
Anyway. It's a really good book. And I don't know how I'm going to tolerate another 430 pages of it, because it just hurts that much.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 03:54 pm (UTC)I think I read the first book a long time ago, in which Meg's mother is campaigning (I think). I knew there was one with a kidnapping too, and I vaguely knew there was a Williams connection somewhere. I am All About the YA Books these days, so I'll have to look for these.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 06:13 pm (UTC)Even if it's not the first in the series, it's very cool that the author wrote a whole book about the aftermath -- so often, when the person is physically safe again, it's the end of the story and the physical and emotional recovery is never discussed.