Recent books
/I have had the pleasure of reading several very good books recently.
Will on the Inside, Andrew Eliopulos.
Full disclosure: Andrew grew up on the corner down from us; we’re still friends with his parents. He went to GHP, he participated in the teen theatre at my theatre. All of this is to say that I would have read his book (this is his third) in any case.
However, it’s a book that I would have read and happily put on the shelf at my high school media center. It’s a gentle, persuasive examination of growing up gay in a small Southern town and in a Baptist Church (both of which Andrew did), complicated by being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease (again, like Andrew). Very very positive approach to the issues.
I am not sure that a small Southern middle school in the 1980s would be quite as full of gay-tolerant characters as Will on the Inside is, particularly on the soccer team, but I appreciate the impulse to create such a milieu.
Will on the Inside was named a Best Book of the Year by School Library Journal and the New York Public Library — kudos to Andrew!
Thinking Shakespeare, Barry Edelstein.
It’s subtitled “A working guide for actors, directors, students… and anyone else interested in the Bard,” and I found it to be both fun to read and full of strategies that — were I to direct Shakespeare again — I would make sure to share with my cast.
He teaches you how to break down the verse while still letting it do its work; he exhorts you to pay attention to the verbs; you learn how to handle prose; how to apply all the strategies to actual scenes. It’s a lot, but it’s good.
I had one violent disagreement with his interpretation of one scene, but that’s what “doing Shakespeare” is like, innit? Where he saw the disintegration of a relationship, I saw tongue-in-cheek literary flirting — I guess it’s just my naturally sunny disposition.
The Puppets of Spelhorst, Kate DiCamillo.
Ever since Because of Winn-Dixie, I’ve been a huge fan of DiCamillo. Her books are beautiful stories, often painfully so. If there’s one thing I can promise you in reading her stuff, it is that you will cry by the end of it.
So with Puppets of Spelhorst, I was a little surprised at the extremely simplistic style. The sentences are short and repetitive, the language oddly stilted. The plot involves five puppets: a girl, a boy, a wolf, an owl, and a king. They belonged to an old sea captain, who dies at the beginning of the book. The puppets are then sold and end up in the possession of Emma, a girl in well-to-do home.
The puppets have limited personalities and very specific desires, but they are convinced that they belong together for a much larger story. Adventures ensue, but nothing that involves them all: episodes, not story.
And then…
Emma writes a puppet play that she, her sister Martha, and their maid Jane perform for her parents and their guests — and this is where DiCamillo HAS SUCKERED YOU ONCE AGAIN INTO BEING EXPOSED TO BEAUTY AND LOVE AND PAIN. Unbelievable.
Apparently Puppets is the first part of a supposed trilogy. I’m ready for the next tale now, Ms. DiCamillo.
