The Yellow Wall-Paper (1892)

Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman  |  Page Count: 55  |  Publisher: Penguin

“It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”

If you hear the name Charlotte Perkins Gilman spoken outside of critical circles then it'll more than likely be in reference to The Yellow Wall-Paper. Her most famous work, it constantly overshadows all the others. It's a short but deeply engaging first person narrative from a woman who—in the eyes of her physician husband—has fulfilled her main role as wife. Being of the weaker sex means she should quietly do as she's told for her own well-being. Confined to an attic room, with nothing to occupy her sharp intellect, her state of mind deteriorates.

Her husband’s cure for her sickness, one that he believes is of her own making, does more harm than good. Left alone she reads, writes and draws comparisons that wouldn't have existed had she been allowed to walk free. The patterned wallpaper is ever-present; its influence is inescapable.

Gilman’s unnamed protagonist is a sympathetic character whose journal entries get more hurried and feverish as subsequent days pass, a written account of the truth she hides from her husband. Her silence speaks of a strength that the model, meek wife ought not to have. Gilman had a very real insight into the workings of her character’s mind, having suffered from postpartum psychosis herself. Making such thoughts public, in a fictional but undeniably semi-autobiographical manner, shook the restrained sensibilities of nineteenth-century readers.

The pictured edition includes two additional short stories. The first of them, Rocking Chair, was published just one year after TYW. It's a creepy tale, also a first person narrative, about two friends that together find lodgings in the same house. The text explores the tensile nature of the bond they share, and how it's affected by the introduction of a female presence. It reminded me of Poe's work at times, being concerned with an impulse that partially conceals itself from the person it moves. Again, it's an excellent short, proving Charlotte's mastery a second time.

The final story, Old War, first published in 1911, is the weakest of the three but still superbly written. Both it and Rocking Chair illustrate how well Gilman was able to write both sexes. A mother who wants for her daughter the romanticised love that she never had, a practical young woman who wants none of it, and a poet suitor representing everything that's false about the poetic method all dance around each other, neither one prepared to admit failure.

5 provoking forms out of 5

Let It Snow (2008)

Authors: Maureen Johnson / John Green / Lauren Myracle  |  Page Count: 368

'It's such a disaster, whenever, in the course of human relationships, someone begins to chisel away at the wall of separation...'

A collection of three novellas, one from each of the authors mentioned above, with a different take on the theme of 'holiday romance'. The holiday, if you hadn't guessed, is Christmas. The individual stories are linked by location and certain events overlap more than once, so it's more like a novel with changing authors as opposed to a traditional anthology collection.

Appropriately, snow covered the ground on the days I read the book. The windows were closed and curtains purposefully pulled to hide it, but I knew it was there and I'd been caught in it a few times while out. It'll sound ridiculous, but I believe that being cold helped me appreciate more the situations the characters found themselves in. I'd hoped for some emotional warmth from the text to counteract the chilly settings, and in all three cases it was delivered; although the levels at which it was apparent did vary from one to the next.

It would be easy to single out a favourite, but the preference would be based on an empathetic response only and that's not a solid basis upon which to lay a criticism. None of the three stories was badly written. Each author had a clear vision that was communicated intelligently but in a slightly different way. One thing that's consistent throughout is the use of a first-person narrative, making the best of what the technique offers and skipping easily around the limitations.

I admit my instinct upon seeing the words 'holiday' and 'romance' together was urging me to snub it in favour of something more manly, but instinct was wrong on this occasion. It isn't chick-fic. It's suitable for all, or at the very least anyone who's ever been in an emotionally-challenging relationship.

If you're attracted to the collection because you're a fan of one specific author, try to resist the temptation to go directly to his/her story first. They’re arranged like they are for a reason and work better when read in that order.

3½ pigs of fate out of 5

An Abundance Of Katherines (2006)

Author: John Green | Page Count: 236

It kept the loneliness of crushlessness from being entirely crushing. Driving was a kind of thinking, the only kind he could then tolerate. But still, the thought lurked out there, just beyond the reach of his headlights: he'd been dumped. By a girl named Katherine. For the nineteenth time.

Colin Singleton is an awkward former child prodigy who has yet to live up to his potential. Much to his chagrin, he has yet to turn his intellect into anything resembling extraordinary; what he calls a "eureka moment". This is only exacerbated by his girlfriend, a girl named Katherine, dumping him; a scenario that has happened to him a total of 19 times. To help him heal from the breakup and assess his life, his middle eastern friend, Hassan,  takes him on a road trip.

Colin's obsession with the name Katherine is one of his many eccentricities which also include excessive anagramming of words and phrases and adding lists in the middle of sentences. Since he cannot seem to make himself matter to the world, mattering to his girlfriends worked as a substitute until they inevitably crush him. Colin's motivation for learning and excellence contrast with Hassan who has no game with the ladies and is excessively lazy. Watching Judge Judy instead of enrolling in college classes is his favorite past-time as well as jabbing Colin on his awkwardness and atheism. Both are set to learn something on this road trip.

Colin is supposedly unlikeable, but I found him much more interesting than the protagonist of author John Green's previous novel, but this second novel is full of his non condescending and flawed, but personal characterizations that would become even more refined in his later novels. The inserted footnotes are both informative and entertaining and similar to the list interjections that Colin favors which makes me feel Green has put some of himself in the character. This only helped with the engagingly thoughtful ideas that really make the book worthy of any reader and not just the "young adults" it is targeted at.

4½ Archduke Franz Ferdinand out of 5

Escape From Camp 14 (2012)

Author: Blaine Harden | Page Count: 210

A perverse benefit of birth in the camp was a complete absence of expectations.

And so Shin's misery never skidded into complete hopelessness. He had no hope to lose, no past to mourn, no pride to defend. He did not find it degrading to lick soup off the floor. He was not ashamed to beg a guard for forgiveness. It didn't trouble his conscience to betray a friend for food. These were merely survival skills, not motives for suicide.

Escape From Camp 14 tells the true story of a North Korean man Shin Dong-hyuk as he was born in a political prisoner labor camp, his life growing up inside and his eventual escape from the camp and North Korea. The hardships that he faced are some of the worst crimes against human rights that can be imagined. I felt a sort of disconnect at first like I was reading a history similar to the holocaust or stories of Russian gulags; terrible but with a distance that time and historical perspective brings. The author and Shin however stress in the text how North Korea has perpetrated among the cruelest and most long running campaigns of human rights violations ever that is still going on right now and how it is allowed to continue by a clusterfuck of politics, denial, conspiracy and apathy.

That is the point, but the tale itself is more personal as it relates to Shin. He is one of many who were trained from birth to be subservient to authority with no cause towards things like human dignity and integrity as well as the physical hardships of forced slave labor, malnutrition, starvation and murder. Things like respect and love were not even foreign concepts; they didn't exist at all. When his mother and brother are executed for a planned escape, Shin is forced to watch and won't meet his mother's  eye not because he can't bear the sight of her death, but because he was angry at her for putting him in danger by escaping. She was his mother only by fact she birthed him, but there was no love. She was just a person and competitor for food who would beat him when he stole her lunch. Even his eventual escape wasn't prodded on by some grandiose uprising of the human spirit within him. He escaped because he was tired of being hungry and heard from an outside prisoner that grilled meat was particularly good.

A fascinating look at a personal tale behind North Korea's cloak that gives some insight to international geopolitics and the perhaps unseen side of the strength of human spirit.

5 spit roasted rats out of 5

Looking For Alaska (2005)

Author: John Green | Page Count: 221

"Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage, and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane."

Miles has grown fed up with his Florida high school where he has no friends and, with the help of his habit of memorizing famous people's last words, convinces his parents to let him transfer to a more prestigious boarding school. Despite failing to reinvent his antisocial personality, he gains some new friends and is introduced to and immediately falls in love with Alaska; a beautiful and buxom girl who is everything he is not. She is fearless and impulsive and prone to rash behavior and mood swings. Through her and his new friends he just may manage to break out of his shell and learn more about himself.

The writing is solid with some likeable and interesting characters though I found Miles partly insufferable and his devotion to Alaska felt rushed. Maybe I just read the book too fast, but the time it takes place in is too short to inspire the lifelong love Miles says his infatuation has become. Or maybe that is partly the point as despite his intellectual aptitude he is still an inexperienced teenager in his existential crises, adolescent adventures and hilarious sexual encounters. The "controversial" sexual content isn't, but it is good at conveying what it was meant to and anyone who objects to it must not realize that teenagers somewhere are having sexy times right now. The introspective thoughts and themes still make this flawed book a great read that is worth dissecting and digesting.

4 Homicidal Swans out of 5

Thirteen Reasons Why (2007)

Author: Jay Asher | Page Count: 288

The premise of Thirteen Reasons Why is an interesting one. A girl, Hannah, who recently committed suicide left behind a series of cassette tapes in which she explains the various events that led to her suicide. I feel like Jay Asher had some big message he wanted to send here- there's no concrete reason why people kill themselves, small actions can have a huge effect on others- but he completely misses the art. Hannah is surprisingly unsympathetic, and seems more interested in dragging others down with her than anything else. Most of the things she tears apart others for are minor- voting her "Best Ass", touching her leg on a date- but some of her own actions are pretty sickening.

We experience the tapes via Gary Stu extraordinaire Clay Jensen, and it's him that takes this book from "not very good" to "nearly unreadable". He constantly interrupts Hannah's stories with the most inane interjections, like "wow this milkshake tastes really good" and "that class is really fun" and keeps the story from ever having any sort of flow. The book needed a likable character somewhere, I guess, but Clay's so devoid of flaws that it's irritating, and I can't like anyone who has to interject every 5 minutes to let me know that Hannah was pretty.

1 reason why I need to read better books out of 5