Sarah Andersen has always been a little too relatable.

Impactful and powerful. This trilogy would be an excellent supplement to a high school American history class. It is has become increasingly necessary to reach outside the set standard of white priority in the textbook industry of we're ever going to reach a better understanding of our own history.

"If you spy a naked man among the pines, you must run as if the Devil were after you."

Sound advice, Ms. Carter. Review to come.

This is a beautiful little book, gorgeously illustrated by the author's brother.



The opening pages, where Goblin Men call out to the women about their market wares, reads a bit like something from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:

Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy.

Whimsical, rhyming and vaguely ominous. Twin sisters hear their call; one quickly falls prey to their voice while the other resists. After Laura becomes despondent when she can no longer "[suck] until her lips are sore" (the Goblin Men's calls do not fall upon her ears any longer), Lizzie takes it upon herself to approach them and get "the antidote" for her sister's woes. By taking their abuse of fruit upon her person, but refusing steadfastly to ingest it, she is able to bring it home with her and Laura can partake once more in an uncomfortably erotic recitation:

She clung about her sister,
Kissed and kissed and kissed her:
Tears once again
Refreshed her shrunken eyes,
Dropping like rain
After long sultry drouth;
Shaking with aguish fear and pain,
She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.

It quickly becomes a heavy-handed metaphor for Victorian morality; the "fallen" one with the saintly pious sister. Joyce Carol Oates says in the afterword that this lesson is shown "perhaps too clearly for contemporary tastes", which I can certainly agree with. Still, there are many possibilities that can be drawn from the simplistic, lyrical tone. Are the Goblin Men representative of all men who tempt women from their chastity? Or are they just a representation of sexual desire that all Righteous Women, "full of wise upbraidings" should resist? One thing is made clear: men are not to be trusted.

Adichie always manages to say a lot with so little. She is a gift. Here I can only collect pieces of her brilliance that speak to me.

"Do not measure [your daughter] on a scale of what a girl should be. Measure her on a scale of being the best version of herself."

"Teach [your daughter] to question men who can have empathy for women only if they see them as relational rather than as individual equal humans. Men who, when discussing rape, will always say something like 'if it were my daughter or wife or sister.' Yet men do not need to imagine a male victim of crime as a brother or son in order to feel empathy."

"Teach [your daughter] to reject likeability ... Many girls think of the 'feelings' of those who are hurting them. This is the catastrophic consequence of likeability."

"Don't think that raising [your daughter] feminist means forcing her to reject femininity. Feminism and femininity are not mutually exclusive."

"Teach [your daughter] that to love she must give of herself emotionally but she must also expect to be given."

A gorgeously illustrated fusion of Mi'kmaq folktales and the traditional French version of Cinderella. The youngest sister of three, scarred and ashed-stained, is the only one who can see the powerful Invisible Being for who he truly is, which eventually leads her to leave her abusive family for a better life. Here we see the tried-and-true concept of internal beauty triumphing over external, wonderfully detailed by the illustrations of David Shannon.

A rounded up 3.75 stars.

I make no bones about the fact that I generally do not have the math for anything that approaches science-fiction or science-based-fiction. This means I cannot say yea/nay with any sort of authority about the plausibility of this concept. Is it possible that a man, during a team based mission to Mars, could have been left behind, survive against nearly insurmountable odds and keep up a pretty unwavering sense of cheer? I'd believe it - not because I know anything about space, advanced mathematics or thermodynamics, but because I have anthropocentric belief in the resilience of humans; I know in my heart that we are among the most stubborn motherfuckers out there. That is realism to me.

Mark was kind of a dick, which seemed to rub a lot of reviewers the wrong way. I can understand that, but I had a giggle every now and again because being an overall asshole isn't actually a Bad Thing for me and fictional characters. It was his off-hand, occasional sexist remarks that dropped his character down several notches (for example, sending in his farewell letter to Johanssen commentary about her being "the hot chick who went to Mars" might have been tongue-in-cheek, but was also very unnecessary). So, basically, he's like a lot of dudes I know, but also on Mars.

When it comes down to it, the science and math made sense within the context of daily entries from Mark and did add to the story's Big Picture, but it didn't work for me. I did my best not to let my eyes glaze over, but it was a struggle, which I acknowledge is more of a failing on my part than the novel's. However, when I hit chapter six, I was mightily relieved to see that the whole novel wasn't just sol log entries. Diary entries, letters, logs - these narrative devices are all written by someone who the Exciting Thing has already happened to, which really cuts down on the Adventure Quotient for the reader. Considering this is survival fiction, that brought the story's "!!!" down for me occasionally.

As Mark contemplates his successful rescue

, his thoughts veer toward something that seem out of character for his brand of cheerful assholery, but sums up the overall thesis of this novel:

The cost for my survival must have been hundreds of millions of dollars. All to save one dorky botanist. Why bother?

Well, okay. I know the answer to that. Part of it might be what I represent: progress, science, and the interplanetary future we've dreamed of for centuries. But really, they did it because every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it's true.

There's a lot going on in this story of magic and fairies and science-fiction nerdery, but strangely enough, what stayed with me was Mori being absolutely appalled at the temerity of C.S. Lewis creating Narnia as an allegory for Christianity:

"I also feel tricked, because I didn't notice all this time. Sometimes I'm so stupid - but Aslan was always so much himself. I don't know what I think about Jesus, but I know what I think about Aslan."

Review to come.