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attackfishGrammy paid me for taking care of her garden and feeding the birds, and you, my dear readers, know what that means. I bought gas and headed to the local independent bookstore. I love that place; the people there don't mind if I pull a book off the shelf and just start reading. They even have convenient armchairs for people like me. Even when I'm broke, I like to go there with my laptop, chat with the staff, and regale hapless visitors to the Young Adult section with what I think they should read (or buy for the young adults in their lives).
Lo and behold, Shadowed Summer by debut author and member of the 2009 debutantes Saundra Mitchell sat miss-shelved under the R's, and it's just by chance I saw it while searching for The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Mitchell's fellow deb, Carrie Ryan, which was, alas, not to be found.
Anyway, the plot didn't really sound like my cup of tea, being a ghost story mystery, but it's Young Adult fantasy, and besides, it's Mitchell's first book and I like to support new authors, so I pulled it off the shelf and decided that if I was still reading by page fifty, I'd buy it. Well, I read the whole way through without even looking at the pages, and rushed over to the counter to buy it.
Iris is a fourteen-year-old girl with a taste for the supernatural. To alleviate the boredom of living in a town without even a movie theater (and don't I know what that's like) she and her best friend make up ghost stories and spells, all written down in a pair of inconspicuous spiral notebooks. But that year, Iris' partner in crime has new interests, a boy. At the same time, ghosts become very real when Iris sees one in a graveyard, the subject of a local mystery from before she was born. As he keeps haunting her, Iris decides to find the truth behind his disappearance. And while she's at it, what do her parents have to do with it?
Ignore the weak somewhat overblown quote on the back jacket. What sucked me into this book was the voice. Iris has such a frank, funny, and real way of putting things that I can't help being glad Mitchell wrote Shadowed Summer in first person, even though I don't usually like it. Even her occasional flowery phrases feel like something a fourteen-year-old would write and think it was brilliant. It feels, in other words, right, and charming, and yet very very funny. It's not just Iris with her roundabout way of looking at and putting things, it's the way Mitchell uses just the right amount of dialect in her dialogue. Reading it felt like talking to my sister and brother from Alabama.
I don't remember any long passages of description, but from page one, I was in small town Louisiana in the middle of the summer. It brought back memories of summer trips to the deep south (with a mandatory drive through Louisiana) so vividly, I started looking for the air conditioner.
The people fit the setting so well too. "In Ondine, we were bred with God and superstition in our blood. If we spilled salt, we threw some over our shoulder right away. And we always found wood nearby to knock on when we were graced with good fortune." My Southern teachers and family members bear that out, especially about the salt.
Mitchell also outs Iris' uncle to us readers so smoothly and with such humor, I started petting the book and cooing.
"'Don't you fall in love with the river,' he said. 'First it's the river, then it's the rivermen. Then, the next thing you know, you're on the run with a gambler, crying when he loses your wedding ring in a hand of five-card stud.'
"I picked up my menu, fanning it lazily in front of my face. 'Oh really? Is Uncle Carl an gambler?'
"'Hardly." Uncle Lee snorted, then sat back. 'Look now, maybe I fell in love with an accountant, but take my word. I still know everything.'"
What kept me hooked to this book, aside from Iris' voice, was the friendship between Iris and Collette. I remember those wonderful heady days when I played that sort of pretend with my friends, the sort that arose when we were too old according to everyone else for that sort of game. When she and Collette were fighting, I remembered how wrenching it was when I stopped being friends with my partner in crime. In my case, it was the catalyst that would turn my post-pubescent pretending into writing. When she and Collette made up, I felt all warm and tingly inside.
There was something about the way Iris reacted to her games suddenly becoming all too real. When Ben joins their games, she first became afraid that they would end as he stole Collette away from her, but when Elijah the ghost shows up, she really wishes they'd end right then.
Iris' first period, all bound up in the supernatural fright surrounding the event is delightfully sinister and at the same time normal. It's in there, part of the whole mess, and yet so overshadowed by her terror. The way she handled it had me laughing out loud and got me a couple of glares from a far too solemn little boy and his mother in the children's picture book section.
I can't tell you my only real complaint about this book, because it's a huge spoiler. It's such a small problem anyway.
Shadowed Summer is a good old fashioned ghost story, sort, sweet, by turns spooky and sad, and absolutely hilarious. In no other genre can a funeral be such a fulfilling, almost happy experience. Besides, I have now discovered, I'm a sucker for repeated historic grave desecration... All in the name of a good cause, of course.
Saundra Mitchell can be found on Livejournal at anywherebeyond.
Lo and behold, Shadowed Summer by debut author and member of the 2009 debutantes Saundra Mitchell sat miss-shelved under the R's, and it's just by chance I saw it while searching for The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Mitchell's fellow deb, Carrie Ryan, which was, alas, not to be found.
Anyway, the plot didn't really sound like my cup of tea, being a ghost story mystery, but it's Young Adult fantasy, and besides, it's Mitchell's first book and I like to support new authors, so I pulled it off the shelf and decided that if I was still reading by page fifty, I'd buy it. Well, I read the whole way through without even looking at the pages, and rushed over to the counter to buy it.
Iris is a fourteen-year-old girl with a taste for the supernatural. To alleviate the boredom of living in a town without even a movie theater (and don't I know what that's like) she and her best friend make up ghost stories and spells, all written down in a pair of inconspicuous spiral notebooks. But that year, Iris' partner in crime has new interests, a boy. At the same time, ghosts become very real when Iris sees one in a graveyard, the subject of a local mystery from before she was born. As he keeps haunting her, Iris decides to find the truth behind his disappearance. And while she's at it, what do her parents have to do with it?
Ignore the weak somewhat overblown quote on the back jacket. What sucked me into this book was the voice. Iris has such a frank, funny, and real way of putting things that I can't help being glad Mitchell wrote Shadowed Summer in first person, even though I don't usually like it. Even her occasional flowery phrases feel like something a fourteen-year-old would write and think it was brilliant. It feels, in other words, right, and charming, and yet very very funny. It's not just Iris with her roundabout way of looking at and putting things, it's the way Mitchell uses just the right amount of dialect in her dialogue. Reading it felt like talking to my sister and brother from Alabama.
I don't remember any long passages of description, but from page one, I was in small town Louisiana in the middle of the summer. It brought back memories of summer trips to the deep south (with a mandatory drive through Louisiana) so vividly, I started looking for the air conditioner.
The people fit the setting so well too. "In Ondine, we were bred with God and superstition in our blood. If we spilled salt, we threw some over our shoulder right away. And we always found wood nearby to knock on when we were graced with good fortune." My Southern teachers and family members bear that out, especially about the salt.
Mitchell also outs Iris' uncle to us readers so smoothly and with such humor, I started petting the book and cooing.
"'Don't you fall in love with the river,' he said. 'First it's the river, then it's the rivermen. Then, the next thing you know, you're on the run with a gambler, crying when he loses your wedding ring in a hand of five-card stud.'
"I picked up my menu, fanning it lazily in front of my face. 'Oh really? Is Uncle Carl an gambler?'
"'Hardly." Uncle Lee snorted, then sat back. 'Look now, maybe I fell in love with an accountant, but take my word. I still know everything.'"
What kept me hooked to this book, aside from Iris' voice, was the friendship between Iris and Collette. I remember those wonderful heady days when I played that sort of pretend with my friends, the sort that arose when we were too old according to everyone else for that sort of game. When she and Collette were fighting, I remembered how wrenching it was when I stopped being friends with my partner in crime. In my case, it was the catalyst that would turn my post-pubescent pretending into writing. When she and Collette made up, I felt all warm and tingly inside.
There was something about the way Iris reacted to her games suddenly becoming all too real. When Ben joins their games, she first became afraid that they would end as he stole Collette away from her, but when Elijah the ghost shows up, she really wishes they'd end right then.
Iris' first period, all bound up in the supernatural fright surrounding the event is delightfully sinister and at the same time normal. It's in there, part of the whole mess, and yet so overshadowed by her terror. The way she handled it had me laughing out loud and got me a couple of glares from a far too solemn little boy and his mother in the children's picture book section.
I can't tell you my only real complaint about this book, because it's a huge spoiler. It's such a small problem anyway.
Shadowed Summer is a good old fashioned ghost story, sort, sweet, by turns spooky and sad, and absolutely hilarious. In no other genre can a funeral be such a fulfilling, almost happy experience. Besides, I have now discovered, I'm a sucker for repeated historic grave desecration... All in the name of a good cause, of course.
Saundra Mitchell can be found on Livejournal at anywherebeyond.
