Far Far Away & The Story Of Owen

It's inevitable, when you read two books side by side, that one is going to capture your attention and your imagination more than the other. And this is not fair, because both may be equally valuable, equally enthralling. But I've always held that each book has its own mood, and if my mood doesn't match the book, then even if I love it, I can't read it properly at that time.

It was interesting to me that when I came to class to discuss these two books, I had picked a favorite -- or rather, there was one I preferred over the other. And yet, during discussion, I ended up criticizing and challenging parts of the book I favored, while acting very fondly towards the other one.

I won't tell you which is which, but see if you can guess.

By Tom McNeal

In Far Far Away, the characters live in the town of Never Better, which is a pretty sly way of pointing out that you can very easily get caught in one of two mindsets when you live in a small town: The first being that there is nothing out there that is better than your little village, and the second being that nothing ever gets better, or changes, in fact.

Never Better is a town a bit like Brigadoon, or a Wes Anderson film -- it exists in what we assume to be the modern day, yet things like cell phones and the internet are conspicuously absent. And I enjoyed this book for the very reason that I enjoy Wes Anderson films (I'm rather ambivalent about Brigadoon, to be honest): the world navigated by Jeremy Johnson Johnson and Ginger is very stylized and smudged. It is at once picturesque, and creepy. This setting is especially effective as the progressive levels of creepiness and horror within the story unfolds.

Make no mistake -- this is a scary story, as all my favorite fairytale and fantasy stories are. The settings: an isolated village, a cabin in the woods, a hidden dungeon, familiar enough to be extra scary when things start to go wrong. Everything was normal, and cozy enough that when the villain was revealed, it was a surprise to me. That, I find, is extremely satisfying storytelling, at any age. As children, we like to look for the secret hidden in a story. As we grow up, continue to ferret out the plot twists, but because we are older and craftier, we are better at it. Any book or story that surprises me as an adult gets a good review from me.

By E. K. Johnston

There is a sequel coming to in March, and I am very much looking forward to it. The Story of Owen took on the fantasy trope of dragons in a way that was very refreshing. Johnston's dragons are not fantastic, or awe-inspiring, or meant to be studied or conversed with or ridden. They are just dangerous jerks who fly around, eating carbon-emitting objects and setting things on fire. The tone of the book was so droll, that at first I was afraid Johnston wouldn't be able to keep up the tempo for the whole story. This sort of cheeky world-building can sometimes distract from actual plot and character development, but luckily, Johnston is Canadian, and I'm fairly certain they watch more BBC comedies than we do here in the States. Whatever the reason, she manages to provide both realistic and interesting characters and a nice, brisk plot, without losing any of the humor of her world and her storytelling style.

That said, I was troubled by a few things that seemed to be taken for granted in both the story, and the world building (though it must be said that I am not Canadian, and may have just stumbled culturally, not literally). There was a militarism built into the social climate that wasn't familiar to me, and confused my interpretations of probably future actions for the characters. For example, after banging on for ages about Tradition and the hierarchy of Dragon Slaying and how these activities are mandated by policy from the Oil Watch, Lottie and Hannah are able to convince two town councils to give free reign to a handful of people in the matter of killing off a whole pile of dragons. I understand that there is a socialist message behind this book, however, sometimes that message seemed forced in between the plot points, making some parts of the story a bit unlikely. It did, however, move the plot along quickly so we could get to the exciting bits.

There was also the concept of a Dragon Slayer's Bard, which seemed a bit odd -- just because history has been rewritten to include dragons doesn't necessarily mean that the entire field of public relations fails to exist. I'm happy to grant allowances for books that show me a good time, but if the humor and pacing and characters of this book weren't so strong and engaging, I think that even as a teenager I would have been critical enough to toss it aside, unfinished.


With both of these books, I enjoyed fantasy and fairytales in a different way. The Story of Owen appeals to my sense of humor, and while I found Far Far Away slow going at times, the excellent craft of it is just right.

Eleanor & Park

by Rainbow Rowell

"Hey," he said. It came out hard and frustrated. "I told you to smile because you're pretty when you smile."
She walked to the bottom of the steps, then looked back at him. "It'd be better if you thought I was pretty when I don't."
"That's not what I meant," he said, but she was walking away.
When Park went inside, his mother came out to smile at him. "Your Eleanor seems nice," she said.
He nodded and went to his room. No, he thought, falling into his bed. No, she doesn't.

-Eleanor & Park

Eleanor is described as being good, honorable, honest, but not nice. She is the opposite of nice, whatever it is that nice is supposed to be. Nice usually means clean, polite, agreeable. It's interesting to note that Eleanor is all of those things as well -- she is clean, she is polite, and she wants to please people. But because she is honest, she lacks the smooth distance that would codify her as being a nice girl. 

Though hailing from a completely different genre, Eleanor is reminiscent of Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series with her "knack of speaking uncomfortable truths" (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince). I love that she challenges Park's motives, and forces him to clarify and own up to his feelings for her -- both his love for her, and his unconscious resistance of fully embracing her and her strangeness. She doesn't let him get away with hurting her during his period of adjusting to her, and she doesn't pretend that she isn't hurt when she is. She doesn't sacrifice her feelings and her integrity for the sake of his, and I find that part of her admirable honesty, and her strong sense of self. I wish I had been that honest and sure and brave when I was young. I wish I was that honest and sure and brave today.

Eleanor can see that each time she gives Park a nugget of her true, broken self in the early part of their relationship, it takes him a moment to get over his aversion to things that aren't nice. 

"I hate meeting new people," she whispered.
"Why?"
"Because they never like me."
"I liked you."
"No, you didn't. I had to wear you down."

How painful for her, and for anyone learning to trust and to open up, to have those honest pieces of yourself inspire an unconscious flinching and a subtle rejection. This is something we all face, especially as teens, when we first start taking the risks involved with forming deeper relationships with people outside of our family circle.

Eleanor & Park is one of those novels that touches you again as an adult because we can remember that first time we felt so passionate about someone. It would touch you as a teen as well, because you're experiencing that passion for the first time. The realism of this novel lends it credibility. The book jacket says that Eleanor and Park are "smart enough to know that first love almost never lasts," but what really happens is that this is never discussed, never considered until the inevitable end. Park is blind to this reality, and Eleanor understands all too well that she will be alone again in the end. Really, the only person "smart enough" is the reader, although we all read in hope, and that keeps us ripping along right up to the end.