Kat's Staff Reviews

There is no chance I would pass up the chance to read a cursed book. Neither would Ariel, the surprisingly smart narrator of The End of Mr. Y. The cursed book leads to drug-induced alternate realities chased with mind reading and laced with heavy doses of theoretical physics. I am science illiterate, but this fast-paced novel was easy to understand, engrossing and provocative.

This graphic adaptation achieves the goals of accessibility and readability set by the 9/11 commission for the publication and dissemination of its findings and recommendations about the attacks on September 11, 2001. Jacobson and Colón have set the words of the commission against a stunning visual backdrop which helped to illuminate my confusion around 9/11, Al Quaeda, Iraq and national security. The Report is informative, respectful of the tragedy, and broad-minded in its recommendations for domestic and foreign policy to aid in ending terrorist attacks on the United States.

Detective Jack Spratt is back in Jasper Fforde’s second installation in the wacky Nursery Crimes Series. DCI Spratt, his assistant detective Mary Mary, and Constable Ashley (resident alien) make up the Nursery Crimes Division. When Jack is blamed for getting Red Riding Hood and her grandmother eaten by the Big Bad Wolf, he is pulled off the latest case: the 13 foot tall psychopathic Gingerbreadman has escaped from St. Bartholomew’s insane asylum. Spratt and Mary are instead forced to investigate Goldilocks’ disappearance and the possible connection to her support of local talking bears and the failed “right to arm bears” legislation. Fforde’s latest satire is full of clever references to familiar characters, such as cameos by Punch and Judy and used car salesman Dorian Gray.

“What happened to Mary Veal when, at 16, she went missing from her girls prep school in Massachusetts?” This is the question at the center of Heidi Julavitz’ novel, The Uses of Enchantment. Chapters alternate between narratives of “What Might Have Happened” when Mary went missing in 1985, notes of the psychiatrist who treated Mary upon her return, and Mary’s return home to attend her mother’s funeral in 1999. This psychological thriller is shot through with the reverberations of the Salem witch trials and New England Puritanism.