Review: The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones

The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones

Author: Jack Wolf
Pages: 560
Publisher: Penguin Books
Source: Publisher via TLC Book Tours

Description from Goodreads:
An explosive and daring debut novel set during the Enlightenment that tells the tale of a promising young surgeon-in-training whose study of anatomy is deeply complicated by his uncontrollable sadistic tendencies.

Meet Tristan Hart, a brilliant young man of means. The year is 1751, and Mr Hart leaves his Berkshire home for London to lodge with his father's friend, the novelist and dramatist Henry Fielding, and study medicine at the great hospital of University College. It will be a momentous year for the cultured and intellectually ambitious Mr Hart, who, as well as being a student of Locke and Descartes and a promising young physician, is also, alas, a psychopath. His obsession is the nature of pain, and preventing it during medical procedures. His equally strong and far more unpredictable obsession is the nature of pain, and causing it. Desperate to understand his own deviant desires before they derail his career and drive him mad, Tristan sifts through his childhood memories, memories that are informed by dark superstitions about faeries and goblins and shape-shifting gypsies. Will the new tools of the age-reason and science and scepticism-be enough to save him?

Unexpectedly funny, profoundly imaginative, and with a strange love story at its heart, The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones is a novel about the Enlightenment, the relationship between the mind and body, sex, madness, the nature of pain, and the existence of God.

First Sentence: "One morning in the Autumn of seventeen forty-one, when I was not yet eleven Yeares of Age, still round in Figure and innocent in Mind, Nathaniel Ravenscroft took me a-walking by the River."

Review:

Do not be lured in by the Cover of The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones to expecting a Novel packed with Action and Magic. It is nothing of the Sort. Instead, Raw Head, as I shall henceforth refer to this Book for brevity's sake, is a slow-moving, pretentious Tale of Psychosis, Pedophilia, and Sado-masochism. While I cannot necessarily say that this is a bad Book, I can say that it is an acquired Taste, one I have no interest in ever personally acquiring.

You may perhaps be wondering at my newly discovered Love of Capitalization. I do this to prepare you for the Experience of perusing Wolf's Novel. Every single Noun within these Pages is capitalized. Wolf presumably does so to emulate the Style of classic Works, which would capitalize particular Nouns, or perhaps to hint at foreign Origins, as I know German does this. However, I found this Style entirely off-putting. In English, capitalizing Nouns in the middle of Sentences is not the done Thing, so my Brain kept trying to place additional Emphasis on those Words, resulting in a stilted Reading. The Capitalization forced me to skim most of Raw Head, as that way I was less bothered by the errant capital Letters. Either the Reader will find this unique Touch endearing or eminently frustrating.

Speaking of frustrating, let us discuss the Plot! Raw Head opens with a young Tristan Hart. He does not begin as a promising Youth, and lives in the Shadow of Nathaniel Ravenscroft. He admires Nathaniel and does whatever Nathaniel does. He becomes rather obsessed with Nathaniel much in the way that Sal Paradise wishes he could be like Dean Moriarty in On the Road. Then Nathaniel disappears for most of the Novel, but, don't worry, he will be back, sort of like Outbreaks of a venereal Disease.

Certainly the book could have been thinner.

As Tristan grows older, he discovers Passions, the first for Science and the second for causing Pain. His primary Hobby is that of performing Autopsies on any dead Animals that can be found. He saves the Bones as a Collection. A short way into his sexual Education, he begins to find that he is turned on by the Pain of Others, and tries to abuse a gypsy Woman who was going to willingly have sex with him. She curses him.

Of course, he blames his Madness on this curse, but, really, he's just psychotic. He has Spells of a Time where a Story comes to life around him, and he believes them to be True. Only later, when Others tell him of his Foolishness does he know these Happenings never occurred. During the time of his Madness taking hold, he is studying Medicine. I love to think about Sadists practicing Medicine, don't you? He also visits a whore House and whips the Whore kept for the Sadists.

If you thought that was bad, get ready. At this Point, the Novel adds another Element: a Romance. Yes, Tristan, psychotic Sadist, deserves a love Interest. Who does he fall in love with and marry?, you may ask. I shall tell you. He meets her when he is twenty Yeares of Age, and she is but twelve. Yes, that's right. Here's the Pedophilia I warned you about. Conveniently, Katherine is a little Slut and quite taken with Tristan. Also, surprise bonus, she is a Cutter and loves Pain. A Match made in the Heavens, truly.

Worst of all, they do not come to an unhappy End. Instead, they raise two Children, which simply gives me the Shivers. What was the Point of this Novel? Is there a Lesson I should have learned from this? Is it that sadistic, psychotic Murderers make wonderful family Men? That's all I'm seeing.

None of this interests me, especially due to the overblown Style with which Wolf told the Tale. However, if you like old-fashioned Language and Spellings, and also always wanted to know what it would be like if Patrick Bateman and Humbert Humbert were combined into a historical Character, then this has been written just for you.

Rating: 1/5

Favorite Quote: "'Fuck off, Ann.'"

Me and the Moon - Something Corporate

Shadows on the Moon

Author: Zoë Marriott
Pages: 447
ARC Acquired from: Candlewick Press via NetGalley

Description from Goodreads:
Trained in the magical art of shadow-weaving, sixteen-year-old Suzume is able to re-create herself in any form - a fabulous gift for a girl desperate to escape her past. But who is she really? Is she a girl of noble birth living under the tyranny of her mother's new husband, Lord Terayama? Or a lowly drudge scraping a living in the ashes of Terayama's kitchens? Or is she Yue, the most beautiful courtesan in the Moonlit Lands? Whatever her true identity, Suzume is destined to use her skills to steal the heart of a prince in a revenge plot to destroy Terayama. And nothing will stop her, not even the one true aspect of her life- her love for a fellow shadow-weaver.

First Sentence: "On my fourteenth birthday, when the sakura was in full bloom, the men came to kill us."

Review:
The opening of this novel definitely grabbed my attention. I mean, her family is attacked, most of them killed, and there are the first signs of her power. Um, awesome and tragic? I think so. On top of some of her family members dying, Suzume also has to deal with the fact that since her dad was marked a traitor, if anyone finds the remaining members, they too will be killed, as will anyone who helps them. Yikes, right?

This is a thing that happens a lot in history and probably now too. People get judged based on the actions of a single family member. For example, in Escape from Camp 14, which I read a few weeks ago, if a family member is found guilty of treason, the whole family is condemned to a camp...for generations. Families are raised in the camps; they have schools, because even the kids born after the incident are guilty of whatever their parents or grandparents did, so they can't leave. Argh! This makes no freaking sense, so how about we stop doing it! People can't help their families!

Oh, also inspired by this book is a rant about being a woman. Basically, it can be summed up into the following: it sucks to be a woman! Certainly, it sucked hardcore to be a woman in the past. While this book is definitely not straight historical fiction, I don't doubt the accuracy of every single female being completely at mercy of male society. Argh! Whoever it was that originally decided women should be second class citizens, I hope he never got any and I hope he's in the special hell. 

Anyway, done ranting now and going back to the book. I loved it, even if it did make me ranty. Most historical fiction does that to me, because the way people were treated just makes me so mad. The storytelling is completely beautiful. I spent much of the book trying to figure out if it was history with a small fantasy element or a history based on Japan. It seems to be a combination of both, a retelling set in a fairy tale Japan. Whatever that means. Definitely not 'History,' because I'm pretty sure Onieto's country does not really exist, and that, even if it does exist somewhere in Africa, there was no trade with Japan. Marriott openly says at the end that this not intended to be history at all.

Speaking of Onieto, my goodness does Marriott know how to write a scene to make the reader swoon. He's amazing. I love how he accepts Suzume with any name and any face. I love that he can sense her. I love how sweet he is to her, and how much respect he has for her. Which, of course, meant that every time Suzume breaks his heart because she feels as though she is unworthy of love, I wanted to smack her upside the head and tell her to lock it down. If someone amazing is willing to love you, accept that miracle, don't push them away to create a self-fulfilling prophecy about your not deserving love!

I mentioned that this is a retelling of a fairy tale. Apparently, the fairy tale in question is Cinderella. I would never have figured that out, had I not read reviews by other bloggers. While I totally sensed the fairy tale-ish quality too it, the story definitely didn't bring a particular tale to mind, nor, thinking of Cinderella, am I especially convinced. Only very loosely does it fit my conceptions of Cinderella at all. Some liberal changes have been made. I approve of what Marriott has done, but it just came out feeling more like her own story than a retelling, if that makes any sense. Actually, the more I think on it, the more impressed I am about the skews she put on the original fairy tale, like how her evil step-mother is a combination of her step-father and her jealous mother. Ouch.

Suzume can be hard to like sometimes. She makes a lot of bad decisions, blinded by her pain and her hurt. Rather than dealing with her admittedly awful life in healthy ways, she cuts herself and throws herself at vengeance. She's much colder and more calculating than a lot of YA heroines, a lot less interested in love or her own well-being. Still, I could not help but root for her, both because she was a mess for a reason and because I love Onieto.

Shadows on the Moon is haunting and beautiful. Though I was not previously familiar with Marriott's work, you had better believe I'll be hunting more of it down!

Rating: 4/5

Favorite Quote: "Better naked and alive than decent and dead, I thought."

"Away with these nightmares
Away with suburbia
Shake down away
You marry a role and
You give up your soul til you break down

'It's me and the moon,' she says
'I got no trouble with that, but i am a butterfly, you wouldn't let me die'
 'It's me and the moon,' she says"

Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd

My Beating Teenage Heart

Author: C. K. Kelly Martin
Pages: 288
Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers

Description from Goodreads:
Ashlyn Baptiste is falling. One moment she was nothing—no memories, no self—and then suddenly, she's plummeting through a sea of stars. Is she in a coma? She doesn't remember dying, and she has no memories of the life she left behind. All she knows is that she's trapped in a consciousness without a body and she's spending every moment watching a stranger.

Breckon Cody's on the edge. He's being ripped apart by grief so intense it literally hurts to breathe. On the surface, Breckon is trying to hold it together for his family and his girlfriend, but underneath he's barely hanging on.

Even though she didn't know him in life, Ashlyn sees Breckon's pain, and she's determined to find a way help him. As her own distressing memories emerge from the darkness, she struggles to communicate with the boy who can't see her, but whose life is suddenly intertwined with hers. In alternating voices of the main characters, My Beating Teenage Heart paints a devastatingly vivid picture of both the heartbreak and the promise of teenage life—a life Ashlyn would do anything to recover and Breckon seems desperate to destroy—and will appeal to fans of Sarah Dessen, John Green, and David Levithan.

First Sentence: "The first moment is utter darkness."

Review:
One of my favorite bloggers, even though she doesn't blog much anymore, is Presenting Lenore. She's helping to host a twitter book club, the aim of which is to read books that are amazing but do not have nearly enough buzz. This is the first selection. Well, it definitely isn't well known enough, since I totally thought Yesterday was going to be Martin's debut. Apparently, she's written four books before that one.

The opening of My Beating Teenage Heart is quit alarming. You're thrown into some weird dream-state type thing with the heroine whose name you don't yet know. It's odd and mystical and it's hard to tell whether anything is real or a dream or what. Actually, the book continues to be this way. Ashlyn learns a bit about herself, but what she figures out results in more questions than answers. Breckon (we also get some chapters from his perspective) is mired in depression.

For me, this is one of those books where how much I likes it depended entirely on the explanation of what's going on. The writing is decent, but didn't especially resonate with me. The characters are both so whacked out on grief or confusion that I had trouble connecting to them. The plot is so strange, requiring some serious suspension of disbelief, but, if she pulled it off with the ending, it could definitely make the book epic.

Without a doubt, I can honestly say that My Beating Teenage Heart is unlike any YA book I've read before. It picks up steam very slowly, but, by the end, I was definitely engaged. For the first hundred or so pages, the melodrama of the narration irritated me, especially given the fogginess of Ashlyn's memory. Plus, she made so many assumptions that seemed strange to me.

Anyway, having now finished the book, I'm still not sure how I feel about it. On some levels, it was definitely really cool and thought provoking, and I'm certainly glad to have read it, but there were also aspects with which I did not reconcile. My main issue with the book I can't express to clearly without risking spoilers, but, basically, I do not get why Ashlyn's memory would ever work that way. However, on the plus side again, Martin can write the heck out of a steamy scene.

Looking at those labels at the bottom of the post, you might notice that they're not super happy times themes. Nor is the book at all light and fluffy. At all. Recommended to fans of Ilsa J. Bick and Laurie Halse Anderson. Although I didn't love this, I am now definitely looking forward to reading Yesterday more than I was before.

Favorite Quote: "I'm talking to myself in two different personas now. I'm reaching for a full-throttle meltdown and why not? Why stop halfway? Why not just go for it, jump on and ride the wave?"

Rating: 3.5/5

"How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here. "

Up on the Roof - The Drifters

The Deserter
The Bone World Trilogy, Book 2

Author: Peadar Ó Guilín
Pages: 441
ARC Acquired from: David Fickling Books via NetGalley

Warning: This is the second book in a series. This review will contain spoilers for book one.

Brief Summary:
Stopmouth is back, determined both to save the humans in his small tribe and to get Indrani back. His task is made more difficult by the fact that, even though he knows the methods of his old tribe did keep the race as a whole going, he doesn't want to resort to such harsh methods. When the digger threat rises to high levels again, Stopmouth decides he can wait no longer for Indrani; he must go to the Roof and bring her back, along with the promised weapons to fight the Diggers.

Review:
I didn't particularly like The Inferior; although it was well done, I just had trouble relating to or getting into something so wildly different. My experience with The Deserter was better, probably largely due to the fact that I knew what to expect. Now, when I say better, I don't mean that I loved it or even really liked it, but I did enjoy the experience more.

Ó Guilín deserves some serious praise, and I would like to start with that. Although I have not gotten into this series, his worldbuilding is simply amazing. A ton of work has gone into the Bone World Trilogy and it is really evident. This is much better thought out than a lot of the YA dystopias I've read. He keeps peeling back layers and revealing more sliminess and dystopian-ness at the core of this world. That is, simply put, astounding.

This book was a lot more interesting to me, largely because most of this book was spent in the Roof. The cannibals running around on the surface of the planet throughout book one were just too weird and creepy. The Roof, and its occasional parallels to our modern society's ills, was much more captivating.

Still, the real downfall of the books for me, I think, is character. I'm through two fairly long books now, and I still just don't especially care about anyone. Stopmouth and Indrani are okay; I do want them to win over the other people, but I am not hugely invested either way.

At this point, I'll probably finish out the trilogy when book three comes out, just to check out the worldbuilding. If you're fascinated by the feats of an author's imagination, Ó Guilín's books might be for you.

Rating: 2.5/5

P.S. How perfect is this song? I thought of it and couldn't resist.

"When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space
On the roof, it's peaceful as can be
And there the world below can't bother me"

My Immortal - Evanescence

Drowning Instinct

Author: Ilsa J. Bick
Pages: 352
ARC Acquired from: Carolrhoda Lab via NetGalley
Brief Summary:
Jenna Lord has just awakened in the hospital, having nearly died for a third time. Her life has been an incredibly difficult one, with an overbearing father, a drunken mother, the only person she's really close to, her brother, in Iraq, and herself recovering (?) from psychological issues. The detective investigating her case gives her a digital recorder and asks her to explain how she got to this hospital. The story is her transcription.

Review:

Whoa. What an incredibly dark and well-done novel. I have absolutely no doubt that Ilsa J. Bick will come to be recognized alongside authors like Laurie Halse Anderson. She clearly has no problem plumbing the darkest and most terrifying of human emotions. Like Anderson, she also focuses on teens, on the bad stuff - not the shiny vampires and the sweet first loves.

Reading this book...it's going to hurt. Jenna is incredibly messed up. You learn this up front. She's spent a year in an institution, put there after it was discovered that she'd been cutting. So yeah, going into it you know her family's a mess and that she is too, but you don't know the full extent of it. The awfulness just keeps on rolling; I only wish that there were not people out there who have likely actually lived lives like Jenna's.

The main plot is about Jenna's relationship with an older man, her science teacher Mr. Anderson. Obviously, this too is a completely dark and forbidden thing. At the outset, you don't know what's going on exactly, but you definitely have your suspicions and you're pretty sure it's bad. Bick does an amazing job of highlighting the difficulties of understanding such a case.

Nothing in this book is black and white. For one thing, Jenna is not an especially reliable narrator. It's hard to know how much of what she believes to be true is actually true. Such realizations can be just as mind-blowing as reading through the book itself is. I got completely sucked into her story and to seeing from her point of view. Then, when I would step back and think about it, I had to face the fact that things may not be what they seem at all.

Fans of Laurie Halse Anderson or Patricia McCormick will love undoubtedly love this book. Do not read it without due preparation: i.e. tissues and/or something super sappy and happy to help you recover afterwards.

Rating: 5/5

"These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase"