Delirium by Lauren Oliver

What if love were a disease? A deadly disease?

Magdalena Ella Haloway (Lena) will turn 18 on September 3. On that day she will have "the procedure" to cure her from the disease of "falling in love" or as it is known, "amor deliria nervosa". It's been sixty-four years since love was officially declared a disease and since that time everyone gets the procedure done in Portland to cure them.

Portland is like most other cities in the United States, walled in by miles of electrified fencing, strictly regulated and controlled to prevent outbreaks of deliria nervosa. Regulators patrol the streets searching for "sympathizers" and those who might be sick. To prevent developing the terrible affliction or deliria nervosa, each person undergoes an "evaluation" prior to their 18th birthday where they are rated and paired - that is, matched to people with similar characteristics. They are then assigned a marriage partner and after being "cured" are allowed to marry. Scoring high on the evaluation is all that matters. It means getting assigned a great job and a good marriage partner.Those who resist being cured or have evaded the cure are known as invalids. They live outside the cities in what is known as the Wilds, where the cured believe they live like diseased animals.

Lena Haloway lives with her Aunt Carol and her younger cousins Jenny and Grace. Lena's mother had the procedure done three times, all unsuccessful in curing her disease. Just before her scheduled 4th procedure, her mother committed suicide by stepping of a cliff. Her father is dead and her older sister Rachel, now cured, is married and lives away from home.

Delirium begins 95 days before Lena is scheduled to have her cure. She can't wait because the cure will make her life uncomplicated and protect her from the disease of love. It will also mean an end to the shame and humiliation of her mother's incurable disease. For Lena, it is "the chance to be reborn: newer, fresher, better. Healed and whole and perfect again...."  "I don't like to think that I'm still walking around with the disease running through my blood. Sometimes I swear I can feel it writhing in my veins like something spoiled, like sour milk. It makes me feel dirty. It reminds me of children throwing tantrums. It reminds me of resistance, of diseased girls dragging their nails on the pavement, tearing out their hair, their mouths dripping it."

Before her cure she must attend her evaluation to get ranked and assigned a marriage partner. However, Lena's evaluation is disrupted by a protest organized by the Invalids who unleash a herd of cows into the labs where the evaluations are held. It is during this disruption that Lena first sees Alex watching and laughing from an observation deck. Lena is immediately attracted to Alex.

Hana Tate is Lena's best friend. Unlike Lena, Hana is not so eager to be cured. She tells Lena that she is sick of all the rules and walls. She wants to make her own choices in life and not have to do what others tell her to do. As Hana begins to rebel, Lena finds herself drawn to follow her. In the first instance of rebellion, both Hana and Lena who like to run take a forbidden route that leads them down to the labs where the evaluations are held. It is here that Lena again meets Alex who works at the labs as a security guard.

Hana discovers that there are many people, not just Invalids, who don't believe in the cure and who post rebel music, thoughts and comments online. She invites Lena to a music concert out at a deserted farm where Lena again meets Alex. Eventually she begins to secretly see Alex, meeting him on the beach near her home. At first Lena is intensely conflicted about going to music concerts and also about meeting Alex. She is unnerved by Alex's free and open way of living and expressing emotion, his being totally unafraid. But as Lena learns more about Alex she comes to understand that Alex really cares for her.

Alex opens Lena's eyes to the truth of the society she is living in. The people of Portland are being lied to and controlled in ways they cannot imagine. Alex tells her that "Everyone is asleep. They've been asleep for years. You seemed....awake." When he asks her what she is afraid of Lena tells him, "You have to understand. I just want to be happy....I just want to be normal, like everybody else."

In their own world, Lena experiences the stirrings and liberation of a first love - a forbidden love, which if discovered, could lead to her early cure as well as punishment and humiliation for her and her family. Complicating this is that her match is someone she doesn't love and whom she knows she could never love. He isn't Alex. Lena must decide; does she get the procedure and marry someone she will never love or does she make a decision that will change her life forever?

Discussion

This book was a fantastic read - breathtaking, poignant and sad, rushing to a thrilling but unresolved ending. A perfect setup for the second book in this trilogy. Lauren Oliver has definitely created a uniquely disturbing world in which adults are treated to prevent them from ever experiencing deep feelings of love for anyone or anything.

Although Delirium is very much plot-driven, Lauren Oliver takes the time and care to detail the characters of Alex and Lena. Lena is a girl who wants more than anything to be secure, to be safe, since all she's known her entire life is that she comes from a mother who was incurable."After the procedure I will be happy and safe forever."

The second book in this trilogy is slated to be titled Pandemonium. Hopefully more will be revealed about the Wilds, the Invalids and their attempts to subvert the controlled society of the cities. There are other things I hope to learn about too, but discussing them here would spoil the book! Enjoy this fantastic novel!

Book Details:
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
New York: HarperCollins Publishers
441pp.

Puppet by Eva Wiseman

Eva Wiseman’s young adult novel, Puppet tackles the subject of blood libel which is the false belief that certain religions use the blood of children in their religious practices. In particular, the Jewish people have been singled out as partaking in this practice, using the blood of Christian children to make matzos, a type of bread, for their Passover and have suffered persecution as a result.

There have been many blood libels throughout history. Puppet tells the story of the blood libel of Tisza-Eszlar in Hungary in 1882-83. The story is told in the voice of Julie Vamosi, a simple girl who lived in the village of Tisza-Eszlar. Julie lives with her dying mother, her abusive father and her younger sister, Clara. Although Julie is a purely fictional character, the events she relates and the people she interacts with are true. Wiseman based her story and the accounts presented in Puppet on those that appeared in Egyetertes, a daily Hungarian newspaper which was published at that time.

In the spring of 1882, 14 year old Esther Solymosi, a Christian, disappears on her way home from an errand to Kohlmayers. Her mother who is very distraught over her daughter’s disappearance feels certain that the Jews murdered Esther for her blood. Julie is a friend to both Esther and her sister Sophie as well as to the young Jewish lad, Morris Scharf who will play a prominent role in the blood libel of Tisza-Ezslar.

Julie is present when some women from the village try to bribe 14 year old Morris and his younger brother, Samuel into believing that the new Jewish butcher, Solomon Schwarcz kidnapped Esther and slit her throat. Eventually what starts out as a lie is accepted as fact and the Jewish men of the village are rounded up and incarcerated, including the synagogue butcher, Abraham Buxbaum and Leopold Braun, Morris and Samuel Scharf and their father. Finding that Sam is too young to testify, Morris is beaten and intimidated into accusing his father and several other Jewish men of killing Esther. The hatred and prejudice of the village people leads to the Jewish men being tried in the district court in Nyiregyhaza.

Wiseman inserts her fictional character into the story in order to recount the events from the perspective of a young person who thinks for herself and who witnesses events behind the scene. Julie bears no prejudice against the Jews. She was friends with Morris prior to Esther’s death and her and her family have been well treated and helped by the Jewish people of Tisza-Eszlar. She never judges Morris Scharf, recognizing that he has been manipulated and maltreated by people who should have been concerned with learning the truth rather than acting on their prejudices.

While many readers may find that Julie’s presence at all of the key events - the bribery of the young children, the jails where the Jewish men were held and at the trial – are overly coincidental, the retelling by Eva Wiseman is effective. The key characters in the event, notary Joseph Bary, the brutal court clerk Peczely, Chief Recsky, and the kindly Christian lawyer Karl Eotvos are well developed.

The book,Puppet, is aptly titled because Morris Scharf is no more than a puppet in the hands of authorities who are supposedly unbiased and responsible for overseeing community safety and judicial matters in a fair manner. Scharf, young and easily intimidated, was manipulated into testifying against his own father and his own people by those who hated the Jewish people living in their village and their country. Morris the Puppet is very much the opposite to the puppet, Leslie the Brave who boldly defeats evil in the play that Julie and Sophie watch at the beginning of the story.

Wiseman has written an excellent book on a difficult subject and one which many young people likely haven't heard about. Puppet is a book that informs readers about how prejudice and ignorance can result in the most terrible actions that one group of people might inflict upon another group who are different.

For more information on this event, you can read an entry in the Jewish Encyclopedia (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=226&letter=T)

Book Details:
Puppet by Eva Wiseman
Toronto: Tundra Books 2009
243 pp.

for Freedom. The Story of a French Spy by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

For Freedom tells the true story of Suzanne David, a former opera singer AND a spy for France.

Suzanne David is just 13 years old in 1940 when the Nazis invade France. She and her best friend Yvette attend a convent school in Cherbourg. Suzanne's family include 14 year old Pierre, and 16 year old Etienne who is lame. She is studying to be a famous opera singer under the tutelage of Madame Marcelle.

Both Suzanne and Yvette experience a horrific bombing of Place Napoleon in Cherbourg, on Wednesday May 29, 1940. While Yvette is emotionally scarred for life, Suzanne is "not one who cries". This was the beginning of the war for Suzanne. Although France had been at war with Germany for six months, Suzanne relates that "...it was not that I was not paying attention to the war but that I never thought the war could hurt me."

A short time later, Paris is bombed and the French give Paris up to the Nazis to preserve their beautiful city. Eventually Cherbourg with it's ammunition depot and submarine base succumbs. Suzanne's father decides to help the Nazi's run the French railroad. He takes the position that in order to survive one must "obey the rules and no one gets hurt." It is apparent that Suzanne does fully believe this will work and nor is it the right approach.

The German army takes over the houses on two streets in Cherbourg - one of them being the street Suzanne's family live on - Rue Lohen. The David's lose their home and are taken in by the Herberts who allow them to stay in their basement. The David family soon finds an apartment near a cemetery. During this time, France signs a treaty with Nazi Germany and France is divided into two parts; occupied France and Vichy France with a puppet government under German control.

Within weeks Suzanne's family is able to return to their home, now abandoned by the German soldiers. To their horror they discover that the German's not only stole all their possessions but destroyed the inside of their home as well. Suzanne struggles to understand the wanton destruction and the theft of personal items:

"Why had they taken things that meant nothing to them?...Everything was gone. I walked around and around my empty room, trying to make sense of it. Gone were clothes, toys, books and photographs."

When early in the war, her family is discussing spies, Suzanne considers this possibility:

"I stared at Papa, hearing his words over in my mind: if I were a spy. I didn't think for one moment that Papa was actually a spy, but the phrase awakened a sense of possibility in me."

Life continues on for Suzanne amid the war. She is cast as Josepha in the opera, L'Auberge du Cheval Blanc. In July 1942, Suzanne continues to travel to different cities singing and taking lessons from various instructors. The Nazis begin rounding up Jews in France.

In the spring of 1943, Suzanne is preparing to sing Carmen. When she inadvertently cuts herself with a knife, her shoulder becomes badly infected and she goes to see Dr. LeClerc who is impressed with her courage and toughness. It is this quality plus the fact that she travels throughout France that prompts LeClerc to ask Suzanne if she would like to help him in his "work" - the work of carrying messages. Suzannne agrees and becomes number 22. The messages Suzanne carried were instrumental in helping the Allies plan the D-Day invasion.

The author has written a short, high interest novel about an important French heroine in World War II. For Freedom is fast paced and mostly plot driven with little real character development beyond that of Suzanne. I highly recommend this short novel for students who might not be avid readers and need something that is high interest or who require a short historical novel for English class.

You can read an excerpt from For Freedom here and also check out Bradley's other novels at her website.

Book Details:
For Freedom. The Story of a French Spy by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
New York: Dell Laurel-Leaf 2003
181 pp.

exposed by Kimberly Marcus

Once again my appetite for novels in verse was well satisfied by exposed, a debut novel from Kimberly Marcus.

Sixteen year old Elizabeth Grayson is Photogirl- photographer extraordinaire. Her forever-best friend is Kate, Mistress of Modern Dance.

Kate comes over to Liz's home for their once a month sleepover. Instead of having a great time together however, the two girls fight. Liz insists that Kate should dump her boyfriend Trevor and that she is afraid to take risks. Kate accuses Liz of hiding behind her camera. The evening ends with Kate sleeping alone downstairs. When morning comes, Liz finds her best friend gone.

As the days pass by, and Liz tries to repair her friendship with Kate, she finds herself being pushed away. When she finally gets up the nerve to confront Kate, her shocking revelation is the beginning of the unraveling of both girl's lives. As rumours and accusations fly, Liz is consumed with guilt as she tries to sort out fact from gossip.

Kimberly Marcus has written a a beautiful short novel that deals with a sensitive topic. How does one sort out who is telling the truth, especially when one of the versions of truth comes from a family member? Here is a sampling of some of the poems found in exposed:

Letting Me Have It

She's silent
for a long minute.
Then she looks straight at me,
straight through me,
and tells me
why
it was such a big deal.


Empty

I run,
not knowing where I'm going, but I run.
Around the building, down the street,
my sneakers smacking the pavement so hard,
shooting fire up my shins.

I run past twelve years of friendship,
matching clothes and birthday parties,
jumping on beds and catching crickets,
too-long phone calls and belly laughs,
passing notes and building dreams.

This was a well written novel in verse that I managed to read in a few hours.
I look forward with great anticipation to more from Kimberly Marcus.

Book Details:

exposed by Kimberly Marcus
New York: Random House 2011
255 pp.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Gayle Lemmon came to Afghanistan in the winter of 2005. She was on winter break during her second year of an MBA at Harvard Business School when she decided that she wanted to act on her desire to write about stories no one else was covering. The stories Lemmon thought she might want to tell were those of women working in war zones. Previously she had written a piece about women entrepreneurs in Rwanda - a country whose male population was completely decimated as a result of the genocide.

In 2005, Lemmon arrived in Kabul looking for the stories of women who had survived the numerous wars, invasions and cultural changes of Afghanistan. She was looking for women who had not just survived the Soviets, the Taliban and the post-Taliban eras but those who had successfully initiated entrepreneurial projects.

"Most stories about war and its aftermath inevitably focus on men: the soldiers, the returning veterans, the statesmen. I wanted to know what war was like for those who had been left behind: the women who managed to keep going even as their world fell apart. War reshapes women's lives and often unexpectedly forces them - unprepared - into the role of breadwinner. Charged with their family's survival, they invent ways to provide for their children and communities."

Initially the author was looking for a story about Afghan women post 9/11 and what sort of businesses these women were developing. Eventually she learned of Kamila Sidiqui, a young entrepreneur who got her start as a dressmaker during the Taliban regime. Sidiqui, whose family is Tajik, Afghanistan's second largest ethnic group, lives in Khair Khana, a northern suburb of Kabul. Her father, Woja Abdul Sidiqi whose family hailed from Parwan in the north, was a senior military officer for the Afghan army.Together, he and his wife Ruhasva were the parents of 11 children, nine of them girls!

Essentially the Dressmaker of Khair Khana tells the story of Kamila Sidiqi as she struggles to survive during the Taliban occupation of Afghanistan beginning in 1996. Sidiqi's story wouldn't be so exceptional if it weren't for the fact that she overcame enormous obstacles - ones North American women couldn't even comprehend, in the most imaginative and determined way.

Sidiqi's story begins at the point where she has just received her teaching certificate from Sayed Jamaluddin Teacher Training Institute and is about to commence her studies at Kabul Pedagogical Institute, a coed university in the capital. It is 1996. Afghanistan is rocked by civil war now that the Soviets have left. The triumphant Mujahideen are now fighting amongst themselves for control of the capital, Kabul. And it is the Taliban who are winning control over more and more areas of the country.

Kamila's hope was to earn a bachelor's degree and eventually become a professor of Dari or literature. If the Taliban win and take over Kabul, Kamila realizes that this will not happen. She has heard rumours that when a city is overtaken by the Taliban the women must leave school and cannot even leave their homes unless they are accompanied by a mahram. Taliban controlled cities require women to wear the full length burqua, known in Dari as a chadri. When the Taliban finally do overrun Kabul, all this comes to pass.

Kabulis watched helplessly as the Taliban began reshaping the cosmopolitan capital according to their utopian vision of seventh-century Islam. Almost immediately they instituted a brutal - and effective - system of law and order. Accused thieves had one hand and one foot cut off, and their severed limbs were hung from posts on street corners as a warning to others...Then they banned everything they regarded as a distraction from the duty of worship: music, long a part of Afghan culture, and movies, television, card playing, the game of chess, and even kite flying, the popular Friday afternoon pastime....
But of all the changes the Taliban brought, the most painful and demoralizing were the ones that would fundamentally transform the lives of Kamila, her sisters, and all the women in their city. The newly issued edicts commanded: Women will stay at home. Women are not permitted to work. Women must wear the chadri in public."

The effect on the women of Kabul and even on Afghan society itself was disastrous. Girl's schools closed and women vanished from the streets. Forty percent of civil servants and more than half of the teachers in Kabul were women. They were now unemployed. For families headed by widows the consequences were particularly devastating. Many of these women were the sole support for their families, often having lost their husbands in the many years of war. These families had lost their principal breadwinner. The loss of so many workers also affected the general day to day running of the government.

Many families decide to leave Kabul for Pakistan or Iran, but the Sidiqi family decides to stay. Eventually Mr. Sidiqi decides to move to his hometown of Gulbahar in Parwan and his wife eventually follows. They decide that it is too dangerous for the remaining daughters to travel north so they will remain in Kabul. But it is clear that Kamila and her sisters need to find a way to support themselves. What they initially thought would be a short-lived edict restricting women in society, was now becoming ridiculously entrenched with further rules such as prohibitions against walking in the middle of the street, mixing with strangers, wearing chadri which showed the outline of arms or legs, or going out without a mahram (male relative). What Kamila needed was "a plan that would allow her to earn money while staying within the Taliban's rules...."

Kamila decided tostart her own dressmaking venture. She had her older sister Malika teach her how to sew and how to use a sewing machine and then she and her sisters prepared samples of dresses to take to shop-keepers with the intent of securing orders. Her younger brother Hajeeb was her mahram and together the two of them were able to navigate through the Taliban rules to start a flourishing dressmaking business. Eventually, the business expanded to teaching other women how to sew and how to set up their own businesses.

Kamila was eventually asked by two Afghan women who worked for UN Habitat to join Community Forums in which women took part in jobs and social programs they designed and supervised. Profits earned were redirected back into the forums to fund more projects. The Taliban allowed these forums as long as only women participated but this was still a risk for Kamila. But Kamila's desire to help other women especially when the need was so great meant she could not refuse.

Since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Kamila has focused on women and business, training women in microfinance, and in entrepreneurship. Eventually she launched her own company, Kaweyan which is responsible for training people how to turn their ideas into a business plan.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana is a story of one woman's desire to help not only herself but other women too and of her brilliant accomplishments. It was amazing to read how these young women helped each other - their wonderful warmth and deep concern for neighbours and those around them. Whenever women in need came to the Sidiqui house, the family always responded by taking them in to work.

Lemmon has told Kamila Sidiqi's story because in her own words,

"Brave young women complete heroic acts every day, with no one bearing witness. This was a chance to even the ledger, to share one small story that made the difference between starvation and survival for the families whose lives it changed."

Book Details:
The Dressmaker of Khair Khana by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
New York: Harper Collins Publishers 2011
256 pp.

Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang

Fifteen year old Anna Brunner lives in Stiegnitz, a small village located in the Sudetenland - a predominantly German speaking border area of Czechoslovakia that was annexed by Hitler in 1938. Steingnitz is a mere 10 miles from the border of the Czech Protectorate. During the week, Anna studies at a school in Schonberg where she boards with Frau Gisela Beranek. On the weekends she travels home via train to Mellersdorf and then walks to Steignitz where she lives with her mother Marie Hanisch, her grandmother and her 14 year old brother Felix. Her father, Felix Brunner, a circus conjurer, committed suicide when Anna was young and her older brother Seff is away fighting on the Eastern Front.

One day on her way home to Stiegnitz, Anna Brunner discovers tracks in the snow weaving in and out of the forest. She follows them home to her family's barn where she discovers a cold, emaciated and ill man hiding their hayloft. Puzzled and believing him to be a lost mental patient from a nearby institute, Anna gives him shelter and clothing. Her family doesn't know and Anna still doesn't clue into who she is helping even when she learns that seven escaped men have been shot and the eighth man is still being sought.

However, Anna is horrified to discover that the man in the barn is the sole survivor of eight Russians who escaped from a prisoner of war camp days before. Anna now faces a serious dilemma. If she turns him in, he will be shot. If she helps him, she is helping an enemy of Germany and she will be a traitor and executed.

"To deliver up a terrified, half-starved man to shot like an animal -- how could she reconcile that with her conscience? She couldn't live with guilt like that, and she didn't want to!"

Anna experiences intense inner conflict based on what she sees in the escaped Russian soldier - a helpless man who is grateful, respectful and suffering and what she has seen in posters that portray Russians as bloodless murderers. She recognizes that people can have both bad and good in them and that this is not just restricted to people of a certain race.

"Frau Bernaek had objected that all the good was never on one side, not all the evil on the other. Not even now. She was of the opinion that 'Next to the good in every individual, there is also evil."

Unlike Felix who acts as a foil to Anna, she does not have others tell her what is right. She is not so accepting of the indoctrination of the Hitler Youth and the German Girls League and the German government and tries to think for herself. While thinking about what her father would have done with the Russian soldier she ruminates on the problem of good and evil:

"You knew it too, she thought, this problem of good and bad. If you were still alive, you could see it in your son. In Felix, whom you never knew. He's convinced that anything that benefits the German people is good. But he lets others dictate what that is....But he leaves it to others to decide for him what's good and what's bad. That's why I'm afraid of him, Father. I'm afraid of my little brother!"

Anna sees that Felix is becoming more and more radical and that her grandmother and mother are afraid of him. For Felix, Russians and Czechs are not people. They are expendable. Hitler is Felix's hero and he would die for him.

Eventually as her emotional burden increases and Anna struggles to find food for the soldier, she tells a friend about what she has done and this woman agrees to help her supply the hidden soldier with the necessities of life. But as the Germans lose the battle after battle and their country is invaded by the advancing Russians, Felix becomes more radical and Anna, although happy that the Russian soldier will finally be able to meet up with his advancing army, is worried about how she and her family will survive into the peace.

This novel has a shocking ending which I won't reveal and which the reader would never anticipate. Gundrun Pausewang has written a stunning psychological thriller right to it's unexpected and horrific end. I highly recommend this novel, although don't be surprised if teen readers are not satisfied with the ending.

Book Details:
Traitor by Gudrun Pausewang
New York: Carolrhoda Books 2004
220pp.