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attackfishThere was a half off sale on speculative YA fiction at my local independent book store. After I stopped caressing book spines saying, "come home with me baby and I'll read you all night long like you've never been read before," I came home with a few new friends and a few old favorites, and I ordered a few more.
I have a very bad habit of reading at the bottom of the steps where I'm perfectly positioned as an obstacle to be tripped over. So, when my mom came downstairs, she pulled one of my new prizes, The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan (carrie_ryan at livejournal) out of my hands to get me to move and asked a question she really knows better to ask. "What's the book about?" I can't really manage anything coherent about a book until I finish, but that doesn't stop me from trying...
Fish: It has Zombies and Puritans.
Mom: What? That's an unholy duo that should never see the light of day!
Fish: It's good really, It's like The Village only actually good. It's like Night of the Living Dead meets The Scarlet Letter.
Mom: I couldn't read it. I'd be too scared.
Fish: I don't blame you, those zombies are really really really-
Mom: *Twitch* Puritans. I hate Puritans. I would have nightmares for years.
I'll try again.
Mary's world extends only to the fence around her village, for outside is the forest where the Unconsecrated howl and moan, eager to eat and infect the living. The Sisterhood do their best to keep everyone within the fences pure, sure that only their strict adherence to God's words will protect them from the fate that must have befallen the rest of the world. But Mary's mother has told her stories of the world beyond the village, and when her mother is infected and expelled from the village and Mary is sent to join the Sisterhood, she can't get her mother's story out of her head. When an outsider arrives from another village, and soon becomes a very strange Unconsecrated, Mary must discover what the sisterhood has been hiding.
This book was everything I was expecting and more, scary, compelling, and chock full of powerful images and characters. Mary, Travis, Harry, and Cass' love quadrangle was more real and emotionally wrought than most in Young Adult literature, and the Sisterhood was in its own way as creepy as the zombies.
It's also a book that lends itself really well to fanfiction. There are so many unexplored nooks and crannies to the world Ryan created and to the characters she created, not in a frustrating way, but in a "Oooh, wouldn't it be cool if" way. God, I hope Ryan writes a sequel.
One of the things I most want to see explored in fanfiction and any possible sequels or companions is the gender relations in the village. I gathered that they're relatively conservative, with male warriors called guardians, men speaking for a woman he wants to marry, fiercely controlled and guarded female fertility, and young marriage age, but the village is also run by the Sisterhood. I want to know how this female leadership affects the conservative norms of the village.
I'd love to see an actual village courtship with its focus on constancy and commitment over love. I wonder how many people in village marriages, without the love Mary's mother was lucky enough to have tying her down, feel like Mary with her curiosity about what's outside the village but don't have the courage to leave. Man, that idea of the right kind of marriage makes me shiver more than anything else.
I love the way the zombies are never actually called zombies The villagers refer to them exclusively as the Unconsecrated. It reinforces the connection between the Sisterhood, it's formation and its edicts, and the walking dead just outside the fence.
Also, when Harry gave Mary the puppy for a wedding present, I just wanted to say move over Cass and Mary, he's mine!
There seems to be a pattern in this year's debut YA fantasy writers' novels, at least from those who belong to the 2009 Debutants. Three of the books so far have included disabled male love interests. Furthermore, two of these boys, Alan, from The Demon's Lexicon, and Travis from The Forest of Hands and Teeth both have heavy limps from injuries. This is all to the very very good. For so long, boys with disabilities were portrayed as obviously insufficient to be the love interest, and when they were in fiction, they were the ones that lose out, that werent interesting that were the designated martyrs to the cause. Girls with disabilities have been allowed to be attractive, but only in an excessively fragile way. Girls and boys with disabilities don't get to be part of the adventure, and the boys can't get the girl, and the girls can only get the boy who wants to protect her ethereal long suffering beauty. Yet here, this year, there are at least three boys in debut YA fantasy alone who have disabilities and are sexy, interesting, adventurous, viable love interests. Yay!
There are things I didn't like. There wasn't a single mention of race or of a nonwhite character. In fact, none of the characters are racially marked except for the occasional description that makes the whiteness plain. I can understand why everyone would be Christian, though it's never overtly said, because of the way the village life works, but I had to wonder if any people of color survived the zombie apocalypse.
Also, when Mary was locked away in the Cathedral, I thought the description of what she was feeling and thinking was a bit weak. She was depressed about not being claimed, but she wanted the solitude of the with Sisterhood more than anything else, more than speaking to her friend? This I do not get. More, there was no description or definition of her friendship with Cass until it was already starting to unravel. This made it harder for me to understand and connect with.
My earlier simile explosion aside, The Forest of hands and Teeth has more in common with The Scarlet Letter than insular religious communities in the middle of dark scary forests. Both books are thick with symbolism. From the first page where Mary relates the stories her mother told her of the ocean, the reader is clued in to the fact that symbols and images will be as important to character development as plot. The ocean, at first as an unattainable goal, a symbol of the world before the apocalypse that gave birth to the Unconsecrated, then as a potential fear, then a promise and compulsion, and last as a cleansing force, washing away the bodies of the Unconsecrated, represents many different things for Mary, and as she changes, so does what it represents.
Most obviously, the forest itself, with its army of undead horrors is a potent symbol of the world outside our homes. The most common theme in Young Adult novels is the coming-of-age tale and at the beginning of The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Mary is on the very cusp of womanhood. The first chapter contains a marriage proposal, and in her pre-agrarian society (or perhaps post-information-age society) marriage signals a girl's transition to womanhood. All coming-of-age stories contain an event in which the soon-to-be adult must leave the safety of home and hearth ideologically. The child must choose something outside of the control of her family. Stepping out of the gate represents that for Mary.
The path is more than a symbol, it's an archetype (and the ocean and the forest aren't? you say. Alright, they're archetypes too). The path, and the journey to which it relates, represents typically a road others have traveled before, that the heroine must then make her own. This of course relates to the theme of growing up. Likewise, the narrow path, fenced off and surrounded by hungry zombies, is a traveling nightmare. It's a thin strip of the village, a bit of safety and terror rolled into one. Gabriel's continued presence brings to mind the particular dangers of the outside, and the Sisterhood's warnings, as well as their possible treason.
The zombies are themselves symbolic. Sister Tabitha suggests that they were created by humans, trying to overcome death, breaking, as she puts it, God's laws. The book asks several times how people can live surrounded by death, and how the living, when battling tooth and nail to survive with no time or energy for anything, are really separate from the dead. This is a question for our world without the walking dead. After all, at some point, everyone is going to die.
If all goes as planned, there's going to be a movie made of this book. I will absolutely not go see it. *Shudder* I don't need any more nightmares full of shuffling, sprinting dead. Actually, (or so I've heard) the movie's supposed to do for zombies what Twilight did for vampires. Umm, the zombies in The Forest of Hands and Teeth weren't sexy!
I have a very bad habit of reading at the bottom of the steps where I'm perfectly positioned as an obstacle to be tripped over. So, when my mom came downstairs, she pulled one of my new prizes, The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan (carrie_ryan at livejournal) out of my hands to get me to move and asked a question she really knows better to ask. "What's the book about?" I can't really manage anything coherent about a book until I finish, but that doesn't stop me from trying...
Fish: It has Zombies and Puritans.
Mom: What? That's an unholy duo that should never see the light of day!
Fish: It's good really, It's like The Village only actually good. It's like Night of the Living Dead meets The Scarlet Letter.
Mom: I couldn't read it. I'd be too scared.
Fish: I don't blame you, those zombies are really really really-
Mom: *Twitch* Puritans. I hate Puritans. I would have nightmares for years.
I'll try again.
Mary's world extends only to the fence around her village, for outside is the forest where the Unconsecrated howl and moan, eager to eat and infect the living. The Sisterhood do their best to keep everyone within the fences pure, sure that only their strict adherence to God's words will protect them from the fate that must have befallen the rest of the world. But Mary's mother has told her stories of the world beyond the village, and when her mother is infected and expelled from the village and Mary is sent to join the Sisterhood, she can't get her mother's story out of her head. When an outsider arrives from another village, and soon becomes a very strange Unconsecrated, Mary must discover what the sisterhood has been hiding.
This book was everything I was expecting and more, scary, compelling, and chock full of powerful images and characters. Mary, Travis, Harry, and Cass' love quadrangle was more real and emotionally wrought than most in Young Adult literature, and the Sisterhood was in its own way as creepy as the zombies.
It's also a book that lends itself really well to fanfiction. There are so many unexplored nooks and crannies to the world Ryan created and to the characters she created, not in a frustrating way, but in a "Oooh, wouldn't it be cool if" way. God, I hope Ryan writes a sequel.
One of the things I most want to see explored in fanfiction and any possible sequels or companions is the gender relations in the village. I gathered that they're relatively conservative, with male warriors called guardians, men speaking for a woman he wants to marry, fiercely controlled and guarded female fertility, and young marriage age, but the village is also run by the Sisterhood. I want to know how this female leadership affects the conservative norms of the village.
I'd love to see an actual village courtship with its focus on constancy and commitment over love. I wonder how many people in village marriages, without the love Mary's mother was lucky enough to have tying her down, feel like Mary with her curiosity about what's outside the village but don't have the courage to leave. Man, that idea of the right kind of marriage makes me shiver more than anything else.
I love the way the zombies are never actually called zombies The villagers refer to them exclusively as the Unconsecrated. It reinforces the connection between the Sisterhood, it's formation and its edicts, and the walking dead just outside the fence.
Also, when Harry gave Mary the puppy for a wedding present, I just wanted to say move over Cass and Mary, he's mine!
There seems to be a pattern in this year's debut YA fantasy writers' novels, at least from those who belong to the 2009 Debutants. Three of the books so far have included disabled male love interests. Furthermore, two of these boys, Alan, from The Demon's Lexicon, and Travis from The Forest of Hands and Teeth both have heavy limps from injuries. This is all to the very very good. For so long, boys with disabilities were portrayed as obviously insufficient to be the love interest, and when they were in fiction, they were the ones that lose out, that werent interesting that were the designated martyrs to the cause. Girls with disabilities have been allowed to be attractive, but only in an excessively fragile way. Girls and boys with disabilities don't get to be part of the adventure, and the boys can't get the girl, and the girls can only get the boy who wants to protect her ethereal long suffering beauty. Yet here, this year, there are at least three boys in debut YA fantasy alone who have disabilities and are sexy, interesting, adventurous, viable love interests. Yay!
There are things I didn't like. There wasn't a single mention of race or of a nonwhite character. In fact, none of the characters are racially marked except for the occasional description that makes the whiteness plain. I can understand why everyone would be Christian, though it's never overtly said, because of the way the village life works, but I had to wonder if any people of color survived the zombie apocalypse.
Also, when Mary was locked away in the Cathedral, I thought the description of what she was feeling and thinking was a bit weak. She was depressed about not being claimed, but she wanted the solitude of the with Sisterhood more than anything else, more than speaking to her friend? This I do not get. More, there was no description or definition of her friendship with Cass until it was already starting to unravel. This made it harder for me to understand and connect with.
My earlier simile explosion aside, The Forest of hands and Teeth has more in common with The Scarlet Letter than insular religious communities in the middle of dark scary forests. Both books are thick with symbolism. From the first page where Mary relates the stories her mother told her of the ocean, the reader is clued in to the fact that symbols and images will be as important to character development as plot. The ocean, at first as an unattainable goal, a symbol of the world before the apocalypse that gave birth to the Unconsecrated, then as a potential fear, then a promise and compulsion, and last as a cleansing force, washing away the bodies of the Unconsecrated, represents many different things for Mary, and as she changes, so does what it represents.
Most obviously, the forest itself, with its army of undead horrors is a potent symbol of the world outside our homes. The most common theme in Young Adult novels is the coming-of-age tale and at the beginning of The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Mary is on the very cusp of womanhood. The first chapter contains a marriage proposal, and in her pre-agrarian society (or perhaps post-information-age society) marriage signals a girl's transition to womanhood. All coming-of-age stories contain an event in which the soon-to-be adult must leave the safety of home and hearth ideologically. The child must choose something outside of the control of her family. Stepping out of the gate represents that for Mary.
The path is more than a symbol, it's an archetype (and the ocean and the forest aren't? you say. Alright, they're archetypes too). The path, and the journey to which it relates, represents typically a road others have traveled before, that the heroine must then make her own. This of course relates to the theme of growing up. Likewise, the narrow path, fenced off and surrounded by hungry zombies, is a traveling nightmare. It's a thin strip of the village, a bit of safety and terror rolled into one. Gabriel's continued presence brings to mind the particular dangers of the outside, and the Sisterhood's warnings, as well as their possible treason.
The zombies are themselves symbolic. Sister Tabitha suggests that they were created by humans, trying to overcome death, breaking, as she puts it, God's laws. The book asks several times how people can live surrounded by death, and how the living, when battling tooth and nail to survive with no time or energy for anything, are really separate from the dead. This is a question for our world without the walking dead. After all, at some point, everyone is going to die.
If all goes as planned, there's going to be a movie made of this book. I will absolutely not go see it. *Shudder* I don't need any more nightmares full of shuffling, sprinting dead. Actually, (or so I've heard) the movie's supposed to do for zombies what Twilight did for vampires. Umm, the zombies in The Forest of Hands and Teeth weren't sexy!
