Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands - reviewed by Maggie Devero

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands by Chris Bohjalian

Reviewed by Maggie Devero

When your whole world comes crashing down around you, can you ever find the will to live on?

Emily Shepard is on her second to last day of junior year at Reddington Academy, when the school receives some devastating news -- the nuclear power plant called Reactor One, located on Cape Abenaki in the Northern Kingdom, had exploded and caused a radiation blow to the entire area. Now known as the Exclusion Zone, with radiation levels unfit for an living being, has left Emily homeless and orphaned, with her parents being the main directors of the plant and obviously killed in the explosion. Instead of seeking the help that would have reached out to her at the time, she chooses to avoid the general public who blames her parents for coming to work inebriated and causing this problem, and lives on the streets. She takes on the alias Abby Bliss, friend of her idol Emily Dickinson, and roams the streets taking up stealing and some others destructive habits. She struggles between survival and suicide...that is until she meets Cameron, a nine year old runaway who gives her a reason to live for.

I did in fact, like this book very much. Emily was the most accurately portrayed teenage girl in a disastrous situation, unlike characters in the many other YA books I've read before. Her panic and struggle, the solace she finds in the poetry and life of Emily Dickinson was very relatable to the reader,  and the sisterly love she gives to Cameron is one of the most endearing aspects of the story. Even so, she still makes mistakes like a human being (leaving Cameron while he's sick, doing drugs, cutting) which enhances the realistic aspects of her character. How Bohjalian depicts the setting gets you right there on the streets with Emily, in her garbage bag igloo. Beautiful wording, and accurate usage of modern social networks brings the story up to date, and puts you right in it. It was an amazingly written novel, and even without the perfectly happy ending it's an enjoyable read. Five out of five stars.

Above - Reviewed by Maggie Devero

Above by Isla Morley

Reviewed by Maggie Devero

Sixteen year old Blythe is going about her average business in the small town of Eudora, Kansas; arguing with her siblings, falling for a boy named Arlo, and enjoying the town's annual picnic and just growing up a regular teenage girl, with nothing out of the ordinary. That is until the town's librarian, Dobbs Hordin, kidnaps her the night of the Horse Thieves Picnic and hids her away from her normal world, preaching the End of all as we know it. He keeps her held captive in an abandoned missile silo in the vast fields of Kansas, where he has made his survivalist home of sorts, to wait out the end, and then repopulate the vacant world as the Remnant of humankind. Blythe struggles with the idea of no one coming to her rescue, and deals with failed attempts of escape; she is stuck and no one is going to save her. She fights off and eventually succumbs to some kind of insanity, accepting that this is where she will reside until she passes from this life, but it will never be a home. She deals with many traumatic events during her time down under, until miraculously she finds escape seventeen years later. But the world she returns to is so different than the one she had previously known, will she be able to return to life above ground? Was escape really worth it in the end?

I LOVED this book, it was just as good as I had expected it to be. Starting right in the midst of the drama from the very first line, and working its way through the storyline until the very end this book keeps you on your toes. Blythe's character grows, maybe not in the happiest or most positive way, but seeing how Morley writes her changing while stuck in this hidden silo is crazy because she sticks with the initial passion to escape, but eventually settles with the fact that this is her life now, and escape will not happen. Also seeing Dobbs go from Blythe's captor who won't lay a hand on her, to a crazed man who even through all this, might have loved her all along, is just so weird. Also all the different means of escape, states of minds, and drama that Blythe endures is just mindblowing to experience as a reader. The writing style of Morley was detailed, breathtaking and enrapturing for me. The only fact that kept me from giving this book five stars is that after Blythe manages to get out of the silo, the setup of the plot just seems to be random and not as well thought through and put together. It bored me in comparison to what I had just previously read, and had me skimming the pages multiple times before i completely grasped what was going on. Overall, though, a fantastic book that I would recommend to any apocalyptic/thriller genre fans! Great book!

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Grim and haunting, January 10, 2010

I rate books on how much of an impact they have on me and whether or not I will think about or want to discuss the contents after I've read the last page and closed the cover. The Road is a post apocalyptic novel that will stay with me a very long time. The bleakness of the journey that this unnamed father and son embark on is quickly evident -- they are going south but have no real plan and no endpoint or destination in mind. They traverse an unrelenting and very bleak landscape of ash and burnt out flora, fauna and civilization -- devoid of any life except for the occasional creature that bears little resemblance to what was once humankind. The man and the boy stick to the endless blacktop, the road -- the only somewhat permanent residual marker in a very changed world. They walk by day, pushing a metal grocery cart full of their meager possessions, avoiding the marauding bands of cannibals and even the lone survivors as trust is not a trait they can afford to have when it is survival of the fittest at stake.

Though the story is very grim, the love and protectiveness that the father has for his son is the only light in this otherwise very depressing narrative. They are all unto each other -- there is no one else and nothing else. Memories that the man has are soon discarded as his reality is faced with plugged determination -- a search for food, water, warmth -- merely to survive another day.

I'm eager to see the movie based on this book and hope it's a faithful adaptation. This is definitely a novel that I will think about time and again as it haunts me with its stark portrayal of whatever comes after "the end of the world as we knew it."
I gave this 5 stars, not because it was a pleasant story, but because of the impact it had on my psyche and my senses as I read it.
I can't really say I LOVED this book, but I did live it.
Recommend.