…

You think you’re too good for “The Vampire Diaries.” I know you do. I know it because I was once you, so young and naive. So full of opinions on what is “good” television and why you couldn’t possibly watch something on the former WB, something so thoroughly overpopulated with ridiculously good-looking people. Your argument against it probably includes an offhand reference to Twilight,  a reminder that you’re not 13 years old, and some lame excuse that you have better things to do. Let’s face it—we both know you don’t. And really, you’re just fighting fate.

It’s true, “The Vampire Diaries” has one of the more absurd premises you’ve recently heard: feuding vampire brothers both fall for the same mortal high school girl—and, oh yeah, everybody keeps diaries and stuff. And, sure, all of the witches and werewolves and werewolf-vampire hybrids and doppelgängers take some getting used to. You’re probably wondering what’s so great about the protagonist, Elena Gilbert, aside from the fact that she has pretty hair and is deep, or whatever, because she hangs out at the cemetery to write in her diary. And you might spend a couple episodes getting into it, maybe because you’re continually distracted by doing Google image searches of Ian Somerhalder before he darkened his hair, back when he was on “Lost.” But once you get hooked, and you will get hooked—it will sneak up on you, like an evil, centuries-old vampire slyly hanging out at a high school dance, and sink its teeth into your helpless mortal neck—you won’t be able to resist. You’ll breeze through the existing 60 plus episodes in less than a month, which is totally not embarrassing, okay? Totally. Not. Embarrassing.

And you’ll quickly understand that even though this is a show about vampires and love and looking hot even when you’re dead, it’s not another Twilight. It’s not another “True Blood” for that matter, and not just because a random passerby won’t mistake it for soft-core porn. For one thing, it is thrillingly plot-driven, focused not only on longing looks between a mortal girl and the boys who want to eat her but also real life-and-death-(and-undeath) situations. Everyone is in peril, all the time, and the enemies just as often come from within as from without. Action is constant: former adversaries became allies, former friends become foes, and sometimes former cheerleaders become creatures of the night who want to drain you of blood. Every episode is a roller coaster ride. Make that a roller coaster ride in the dark: you can never see what’s coming.

The first episodes set up a dramatic arc that a sane person—or, at least, someone not addicted to amphetamines—would assume could be resolved only over the course of a season (maybe more if your head writer is Veena Sud from”The Killing”). After all, Elena (Nina Dobrev) will need time to fall head-over-heels in love with vampire Stefan (Paul Wesley) before learning he’s a full-fledged, full-fanged predator, right? Well, since this is still a teen show we are talking about, and since, for fictional teens, a reasonably good first date will invariably result in the two protagonists proclaiming that they would die for each other, of course not. Elena quickly learns that Stefan is a vampire, and that he has an evil (but hot) vampire brother, but she decides she’s totally okay with it. Suddenly, it’s the two of them against the world, first taking on Stefan’s evil-but-hot (don’t forget hot!) brother Damon (Ian Somerhalder), but then moving on to even greater threats.

Basically, on “The Vampire Diaries” one scary villain has an even scarier villain behind him or her. Without giving away too much of the plot, I will mention that Damon is remaining in their hometown of Mystic Falls for a very specific reason, and that it has something to do with a vampire even more powerful (and treacherous) than he is. This person, in turn, has been on the run from an even more powerful vampire. And so on, and so forth. The plot twists are manifold, the mythology endless. A new mystery develops at every turn, forever feeding the addiction to find out what happens next. I was up to four episodes a day of this show when I watched the first two seasons on Netflix. That’s not an embarrassing personal failure—that’s just science. Don’t think this won’t happen to you. You’re smug, but so, so stupid.

So, to recap, you are not better than “The Vampire Diaries.” You may think you are, but try watching a few episodes and then giving up cold turkey. What’s that, you just found out about the secretive council of founding families that knows there are vampires living in their town? Oh, now you just discovered that Stefan and Damon’s former love, Katherine Pierce, looks exactly like Elena? Good luck trying to stop thinking about that while you go about your boring everyday duties like grocery shopping and explaining that your favorite tv shows are “Downton Abbey” and the news.

…I’m prettty sure everyone knows what “‘Downton Abbey’ and the news” is a euphemism for. You only wish Dame Maggie Smith were a centuries-old vampire…instead of, you know, just centuries old.

…

If you’ve ever seen D.C. Pierson’s work with DERRICK comedy, like the 2009 full-length feature Mystery Team, then you should have a basic idea of what you’re getting into with The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To. Both sophomoric and inspired, keenly observed and absurdly over the top, this book—marketed to adults, but essentially YA—is reminiscent of Pierson’s comedy…yet no less a novel in its own right. Though not perfect, it is a solid debut: while the plot can feel uneven, the pacing inconsistent, Pierson shines in his characterization and his impeccable knack for finding humor in everyday high school situations. At his worst, he is a funny guy trying his hand at novel-writing; at his best, he echoes Salinger and celebrated contemporary YA authors like John Green. More often than not, however, he falls somewhere between these two extremes, crafting an assured tale of high school nerds, rites of passage, and the most bizarre form of insomnia you’ve ever encountered.

The boy in The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To is, in fact, not our narrator, Darren Bennett, but rather his strange new friend—in fact, his only friend—Eric Lederer. While both are social outcasts, only Eric has been blessed (cursed?) with a quirk that is somewhere between a super power and a medical condition. Eric, as the title suggests, cannot sleep, has never slept, and is actually beyond the need for sleep. When he tells Darren this, Darren is naturally a little suspicious…but he is quickly persuaded. The two begin a friendship based on a shared love for sci-fi, and together they create an entire alternate universe for a fantasy series they call TimeBlaze. Darren is a talented artist (or “draw-er,” as his inarticulate classmates would deem him), while Eric has plenty of time to dream up backstories and new characters since he never actually, well, dreams. Their collaboration is going well, and their friendship is solid, when they succumb, naturally, to the greatest temptation of high school boys: girls. More specifically, they both fall for one girl, and this rivalry tears them apart. It also leads Darren to do a very stupid, spiteful thing: he tells someone about Eric’s condition.

Soon, Eric is being pursued by a mysterious man whose motives are unclear yet undoubtedly sinister. Both Eric and Darren suspect that the man wants to capture Eric to perform experiments on him; with no other choice, the two, who easily reconcile, go on the run. They hide out in the desert, where Darren makes a shocking discovery: the creatures from TimeBlaze are real. Or rather, Eric has made them real, dreaming them into the real world because that is the only dreamworld he has ever known. How can the two use this incredible ability to save themselves from their powerful adversary? Can Eric be saved, or has Darren ensured his destruction?

The final third of The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To abruptly shifts from realistic coming-of-age story to…well, something a lot less realistic. I suppose it is unfair to fault a book that, according to its title, is about a boy who never sleeps, but it is still jarring to go from reading about Darren and Eric’s girl problems to learning that Eric can create things in the real world just be getting really tired and thinking about them. Pierson ties everything together nicely in the end, so this absurd development should sit better with the reader in retrospect. Still, there’s something inherently problematic with the pacing, which goes from languorous—even a little boring—to suddenly high-octane. It makes the tone of the book that much harder to pinpoint.

In the end, however, I would recommend this book to anyone who likes their stories witty, offbeat, and a little juvenile. Pierson reminded me of writers like Frank Portman and John Green, which I think is a good thing (except that, you know, the book isn’t technically YA). He’s a funny guy, sure, but he really impressed me when he proved himself to be more than that. The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To is at times more than its silly premise, deeper than its jokes; it’s about friendship, about trust and betrayal, and, above all, about celebrating what makes us unique, those qualities that must be preserved rather than destroyed.

…

Vera Dietz has a problem. Actually, she has a thousand of them, all identical, all which look exactly like her deceased ex-best friend, Charlie Kahn. Charlie has been haunting Vera, exponentially, ever since his tragic, mysterious death. He has been haunting her because she knows the truth but is not yet prepared to share it. Wherever she goes—to her job at Pagoda Pizza, on a date with a cute guy who’s too old for her—Charlie follows. He beseeches her to clear his name, to right the wrong that occurred one fateful August night. But it’s complicated. Vera is still mad at Charlie, not only for dying, but also for betraying her months before his death: she’s mad for losing him twice. How she can reconcile her conflicting emotions for Charlie—the friend she hated, the friend she always loved—now that he’s gone?

Please Ignore Vera Dietz, by A.S. King, is certainly serious in subject matter, yet it, surprisingly, is a book that does not take itself too seriously. This is in large part due to Vera, who, for all of her doubts, regrets, and fears, is an engaging, quirky narrator. Though much of the narrative focuses on Vera’s coming to terms with Charlie’s death, and her insight into his final days, it also deals with Vera coming into her own as a person. Vera is a fully-formed, three-dimensional character, and it is this quality, more than any other, that makes the book such an affecting read.

Of course, the novel, which was a 2011 Printz Honor book, is irresistible from the start. It has an interesting structure that serves to displace its readers without actually disorienting them. That is, Please Ignore Vera Dietz is not a linear book, nor does it adhere to any single perspective. Readers get a sense of the inner workings of everyone from the dead kid (narrating from beyond) to Vera’s dad to even the pagoda that overlooks the town. In the deft hands of King, this technique never feels like a gimmick; instead, it only enhances the emotional depth of the story. This device fits perfectly in a structure that is already inventive.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz plays out almost as a mystery novel, but the interesting twist is that most of the mystery is already known to Vera. Her memories reach the reader unordered and out of context, but, naturally, they all exist within her head from the start. It is as if she is sharing parts of herself—and her history with Charlie—as she learns to accept them. To delve further into the story is to get closer to Vera’s dark past, to the secrets she has locked away even from herself. The tension is there, even if Vera, technically, has always had the power to clear Charlie’s name and resolve her struggles. The tension is there because every step of the way Vera is wishing she could just be left alone.

In the end, the resolution of the story is cathartic not only for Charlie but for Vera. By fighting her instincts to be invisible, to be ignored, she learns to stand up for what is right and what is necessary. In spite of its somber subject matter, there is undoubtedly something empowering about this story. It is not just about grief but about carrying on. It is not just about death but, more importantly, life.

…

What if Don Quixote were a 16-year-old kid living in Texas, whose uneventful life suddenly became an adventure when he was diagnosed with mad cow disease? What if his Sancho Panza took the form of a hypochondriacal dwarf named Gonzo, and his Dulcinea a punk rock angel named Dulcie? What if his journey took him from a secretly sinister snack-n-bowl (where no one ever gets less than a strike) to a MTV-style beach house in Florida? And what if, for good measure, the author of this epic tale threw in some stuff about physics, time travel, an evil snow globe company, the Norse god Balder and the Small World ride at Disney World? In Libba Bray’s Going Bovine, this is exactly what happens…but the strange thing is, it totally works.

Going Bovine is the kind of weird, gutsy, balls-to-the-wall experiment that could easily crash and burn, but which, somehow, is all the better for its completely out-there premise. Bray doesn’t shy away from either serious issues or all-out quirkiness, which is why this novel soars when it could easily falter. It’s not perfect—it’s too overpacked, too flamboyant, and too self-referential to be completely accessible—but its messy, sprawling nature is, for the right reader, precisely where its charm lies.

…It’s probably not hard to guess that the trick worked on me. I was completely enamored of Bray’s hyperactive exercise in wit, wisdom, and a whole new level of surrealism. I loved her sense of humor—which is a prerequisite if you plan to enjoy this book—but I was equally enchanted by her endless imagination. To begin, the premise is completely insane: Sixteen-year-old Cameron Smith is a slacker high school student who starts to have weird health problems. In short, he’s losing both his control over his body and his grasp on reality. A doctor gives a completely improbable diagnosis. Mad cow disease. And then things get really weird.

Cameron enters the hospital, but he doesn’t plan to stay. He and his roommate Gonzo are destined for great things. Armed with a magical Disney World wristband given to him by an angel only he can see, Cameron is just healthy enough to spend the next few weeks on a journey in search of the one man who can save his life. Unsurprisingly, for this book at least, the man is called Dr. X, and he’s just come back from another dimension. Cameron and Gonzo—who has been promised that there’s something in this trip for him, too—begin their journey in New Orleans in search of a jazz musician who continues to perform despite the fact that he may have died years ago. They never stay in one place too long, however, as they are constantly threatened by both the fire giants who want to kill them and their parents who want to take them home. Yeah, I know.

It’s impossible to summarize the book, so the best way to review it is to give an impression of what it’s about. And that, essentially, is…well, everything. This book asks the big questions as well as the small ones. What’s real? What’s meaningful? Is there really an internet fetish site called “Naughty Gnomes”? Bray’s ideas are big, complex, and multitudinous, so the resulting story can’t help but be ambitious. Nonetheless, it is fun, entertaining, and a surprisingly breezy read despite its length of almost 500 pages. There are plenty of memorable moments, from Cameron and Gonzo’s narrow escape of the cult-like CESSNAB (The Church of Everlasting Satisfaction and Snack-N-Bowl) to the wild spring break that involves everything from gnome-napping to a dwarf in an electric chair. If you don’t get Bray’s sense of humor, you’ll likely curse her editor, and wonder why this book resulted in Bray being published rather than institutionalized. If you do, though, you’ll totally understand why it won the Printz Award in 2010 and why I’m wholeheartedly recommending it now.

…

Perhaps the best way to recommend Before I Go to Sleep, by S.J. Watson, is to mention that I read it in three days, and that, given the chance, I would have finished it even sooner than that. I found it thrilling from the moment I first started reading, and my mind would wander to it whenever I had to step away. This is not to say that the book, in the end, was perfect, or that it was one of the greatest books I have ever read, but it was a fantastic debut that I would recommend to many different types of people. Gripping, thought-provoking, and well-executed, Before I Go to Sleep is the kind of book that almost insists on being compulsively read. You will abandon basic duties, prior engagements, and probably personal hygiene, in your quest to finish it. And then, of course, you will recommend it to everyone you know—no matter how tenuous the relationship—in the hopes of having someone with whom to discuss it.

The story belongs to Christine Lucas, the amnesiac first-person narrator who wakes each day not knowing how she spent the last one. In fact, she cannot remember how she spent the last twenty years or so—sometimes much more. A terrible accident left her unable to form new memories, or even to recall some old ones, and thus she cannot remember anything that has happened to her since she was in her twenties. She wakes up each morning not recognizing the man she is sleeping next to, and she must be told that he is her husband of more than two decades. When she looks in the mirror, she is shocked by the middle-aged woman staring back at her. Half her life has been lost to her, even though she has lived it.

On the day that we readers meet Christine, which is just one in a disconnected series of days, one that cannot be placed in any context, she has, for the umpteenth time, learned of her accident, her memory problems, and the life she leads with her husband, Ben. When he leaves for the day to go to work, she tries to occupy herself, performing simple chores around the house and wondering if this is what she does every day. Her routine is broken, however, when she receives a phone call; the man on the other line is not Ben. The stranger introduces himself as Dr. Nash, a neuropsychologist who has been working with Christine for the last few weeks, helping her to recover her memory. They have an appointment that day, one that Ben knows nothing about.

Christine agrees to meet with Dr. Nash. He explains her unusual condition to her: it allows her to retain new memories, but only until she goes to sleep for the night. Each morning, it is as if her memory has been reset. Curiously, there is no medical explanation for how or why her memory works this way. Dr. Nash tells Christine that one solution he has suggested is for her to keep a diary of her daily activities, which she has done for the past few weeks. Each day she would reread or skim through the previous entries in order to recover some sense of continuity. A few days ago, she left this diary with Dr. Nash, and he has been waiting to return it.

When Christine gets home, she opens the journal to the first page. As expected, there is her name, Christine Lucas, written in black ink across the center of the page. Added below it, however, in all capital letters is something shocking. A message: DON’T TRUST BEN. What caused Christine to write this? And how long has the message been there? Is she in danger…and how much times does she have to read this journal, to learn its secrets, before Ben comes home?

It should surprise no one that this set-up is absolutely irresistible, and that this simple but elegant mystery makes the next three hundred plus pages just fly by. The majority of the novel is made up of the journal, which contains new, shocking revelations each day, and has the added tension of featuring Christine’s interactions with characters who don’t know that she is now aware of  the events that transpired on previous days. Far from being repetitive, this journal actually brings some welcome structure to the novel. It is well-constructed, and it allows Christine’s character to develop some emotional depth, since she is able to respond to events in her past in addition to those in her present. Naturally, it is a bit too polished for an actual journal, and Christine would have to write astonishingly quickly to get down as much information as she does, but, if you can suspend your disbelief, it is an engrossing piece of writing.

Ultimately, the greatest criticism of Before I Go to Sleep may indeed be of its implausibility, which comes out in full force by the end of the novel. Watson does seem to yield to shock value, concluding the novel on a note that feels less natural than its beginning. Still, the clues are all there, and it seems that the biggest disappointment comes simply in reaching the end. There could be no satisfactory way to end a book so rich in possibility and so compelling in mystery: any solution would be a disappointment. The joy is in the journey, and in getting to know Christine, who is refreshingly complex for a character in a thriller. The resolution satisfies, but never thrills in the way the rest of the story does. The best way to read Before I Go to Sleep is just to savor every minute of it. Rush through it, but not too quickly. You’ll want to remember this one.

Instead of posting individual reviews for these five YA books, I thought I would group them together in one post to highlight the theme that connects them. These are all what I am deeming “offbeat mysteries,” YA books that feature a central mystery, but which are not detective or puzzle stories. In these books, the main characters, teens who possess no great deductive skills, solve unusual mysteries that are presented in ways that are variously witty, strange, and unexpected. But, for those of you who are not mystery aficionados, fear not—the books also feature compelling coming-of-age stories. Every one of them is a great read for both mystery fans and skeptics alike: they offer something original, something intriguing, and, above all, something sure to entertain.

In John Green’s Paper Towns, Quentin Jacobsen is leading a safe, predictable, and predictably boring life. Unpopular at school, Quentin, or Q, spends his time with two equally uncool friends, just counting down the days to graduation. He yearns for his neighbor, the fearless and exciting Margo Roth Spiegelman, with whom he discovered a dead body when the two were just children. But Margo is in the popular crowd, and she lives a life Quentin could only dream of: something of a myth in their Orlando, Florida suburb, Margo is said to have run off and joined the circus for a few days, and has broken into most of Orlando’s world famous attractions after hours. One night, everything changes, and Margo finally reaches out to Quentin. Could this be the start of, well if not a romance then at least a lasting friendship? After their late night adventure around town, Quentin can’t wait to see what happens with Margo at school. The only problem is, Margo isn’t at school the next day. And she isn’t there the day after that. The lone clue she seems to have left behind is a poster in her window, the window that is directly across from Quentin’s. Certain that it is a clue left specifically for him, Quentin begins a journey that takes him through Leaves of Grass, abandoned subdivisions, and some pretty harrowing situations. Along the way, he learns, finally, how to live like Margo—with courage and a sense of possibility. Written in typical witty Green fashion, Paper Towns is a quirky but wholly engaging romp that still manages to ask serious questions.

King Dork, by Frank Portman, is similar to Paper Towns in a lot of ways. For one, both feature dorky, unpopular protagonists who are a lot cooler to the reader than they are to the other kids at their respective schools. For another, their mysteries center on clues found in classic works of literature. So, basically, if you ever scoffed at LeVar Burton encouraging you to “take a look, it’s in a book,” you might want to begin drafting a letter of apology. In King Dork, the book in question is The Catcher in the Rye, and it might just hold the key to one of the central questions in Tom Henderson’s life: who was his father? He knows the basic facts, namely that his father was a detective who died in a car accident when Tom and his sister were small. But who was he beyond that? Who was he when he was 16, the same age as Tom? When Tom finds a mysterious code in his dad’s copy of the book, he immediately sets about deciphering it. As he does so, he begins to uncover much more about not only his dad’s teenage self, but also the circumstances of his death. Tom begins to wonder: Did his dad die in an accident, as he was told? Could it have been suicide? Or murder? Despite the heavy subject matter, King Dork is also very funny and clever. Tom and his alphabetical best friend Sam Hellerman form and dissolve about thirty bands in a four month period, all with amusing names like The Elephants of Style. In fact, it is Tom and Sam’s misguided attempts to be rock stars that might just be the key to solving some of the mysteries in Tom’s life once and for all.

Of course, there are a lot of interesting, innovative paths that an author can take in crafting a mystery story, and these next two novels show just how much room there is for variations on the detective figure. These next two teen “detectives,” Will Halpin and Christopher Boone, are outsiders not because they aren’t jocks or because they have nerdy hobbies—they’re outsiders because they simply don’t fit in with a society that largely does not share their disabilities. In Josh Berk’s The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, Will Halpin is overweight, the new kid in school, and, oh yeah, deaf. He has just transferred to a mainstream high school, and is trying to get by in a world that doesn’t understand, and isn’t sympathetic to, his disability. Will gets by on lipreading, which means that he is better than most at observing people. This proves to be crucial when one of his classmates meets a mysterious end at a coal mine on a school field trip. Will and his best friend, Devon Smiley, are convinced that the boy was murdered, and they decide to uncover the murderer. What could be a typical mystery with a clever gimmick is instead an insightful look at what it means to be deaf in a hearing world. Will is funny, smart, and resourceful, but he is also lonely and painfully aware that he will never quite be “normal.” The way in which Berk uses Will’s disability as a useful tool in solving the crime is ingenious, and it really elevates this novel to something more than just an amusing mystery.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon, is, in some ways, the most straightforward story on this list. That’s because its narrator, 15-year-old Christopher Boone, literally cannot tell a lie (or, to be fair, he could, but he is deeply upset by the very concept). He reports every event as it happens, and has an astonishingly detailed memory, but there is one big limitation to Christopher’s story, as he tells it: Christopher is autistic. This novel is very unusual in that it is told entirely from the perspective of an autistic teenager who, though very bright, is oblivious to the motivations of those around him. Christopher’s world is very insular, his routine fixed; it is not until the day that he finds his neighbor’s dog, Wellington, with a pitchfork sticking out of him that Christopher decides he must break some of his rules and venture out into the world. He begins writing a mystery story on Wellington’s murder, intending to solve the murder himself. What he begins to uncover, however, is something that has much more personal relevance than he could have imagined. While Christopher is certainly not what one would typically call a sympathetic character, the access into his mind is fascinating and quite thorough. Haddon captures not the autistic mind but an autistic mind in a way that is thoughtful, convincing, and very memorable.

The last book on the list, I Am the Messenger, by Markus Zusak, is different from the previous four in that it does not feature a protagonist who is still in school. On the contrary, 19-year-old cab driver Ed Kennedy is about as far as one can get from that: with only a high school education, and no motivation, Ed is coasting through life. He is a disappointment to his family and an affront to his own abilities. He lives, alone, in a small apartment with only his ancient dog for company, and his greatest joy comes from playing games of cards with his best friends, one of whom he is secretly in love with. Ed meets his most defining moment yet when he foils a bank robbery; not long after, he receives a mysterious playing card in the mail, on which is written three addresses, which are where Ed will find his first few assignments. Ed becomes “the messenger,” helping those in need, at the risk of his own safety and sanity. But who is sending him these messages? And why isn’t he allowed to stop obeying them? Ed becomes obsessed with catching the sender of the series of playing cards he receives, but this sender always appears to be one step ahead of him. Who knows Ed better than he knows himself…and why has he been singled out to be the messenger? Though the mystery is ever-present, what makes this novel so lasting is Ed’s path to redemption. When he starts to care, the reader can’t help but join in.

…

Even if you haven’t yet read Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, there are probably a few things you already know about it: It won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It features a chapter written entirely in PowerPoint slides. Your Aunt Carol from Ft. Lauderdale, who reads all the best-hyped books in a given year, didn’t really “get it.”

Indeed, the book is worth reading for all of these reasons. Some readers will get it, or claim to, while others will toss it aside, feeling disconnected from the ever-shifting cast of characters and marginal plot. Part of its audience will be lead to it by a sense of cultural responsibility, while part will read it out of curiosity for its inventive narrative techniques. The novel—or is it a short story collection?—is appealing precisely because it is so unusual and polarizing. Still, that doesn’t mean that, at its heart, A Visit from the Goon Squad isn’t just a well-written work of fiction. Though it certain dazzles, and is meant to, its literary pyrotechnics serve only to highlight the main event. Egan is a master at character development, and the truth of her virtuoso character sketches lingers long after the dazzle fades.

The book’s “plot,” insofar as there is one, centers around the lives of Bennie Salazar, a record executive and former punk rocker who long ago sold out, and his assistant, Sasha, whose personal growth is stunted by her rampant kleptomania. In the first chapter, which is really a self-contained short story, we find Sasha, in her mid-thirties and already weary of New York City, recounting to her therapist a recent encounter with a woman whose wallet she had stolen. Sasha steals for the thrill of it, and she has in her apartment a sort of shrine to all of the items that she has stolen (and never used) over the years. Because she is an interesting character in her own right, she is hard to let go of when the chapter ends; yet this is precisely the design of Egan’s text: each new chapter is dedicated to a different character.

The next chapter introduces Bennie Salazar, divorced and down on his luck, with an addiction not to hard drugs but to gold flakes, vainly hoping that they will reinvigorate his sex drive. He stirs them into the coffee his assistant, Sasha, gives him, and accidentally pinches a few flakes in front of his nine-year-old son, who insists on trying some. It’s both exciting and unnerving to see Sasha back in a supporting role: exciting because her absence is felt during the abrupt start of the new chapter, unnerving because she has been reduced to a less important background figure. Though Bennie is an equally interesting character, as are the many characters who come after him, his arrival necessarily means not only the start of a new story, but the definitive end of the previous one. In Egan’s text, there is no going back: each character is given only one chance to share his or her story, and thereafter reappears only to support the story of another character.

Over time, the book’s format becomes more familiar and intuitive, but it could easily turn off readers who prefer a more typical, plot-driven novel. Here, there is no overarching story, but rather meaningful fragments. Readers are granted glimpses into characters’ lives instead of total access. Egan cleverly mimics the way we glean so much of our information, particularly in this digital age; she emphasizes breadth over depth, covering various narrative voices, and even spanning decades and continents, but never lingering long enough in one perspective to make any character wholly knowable. She essentially isolates one interesting detail in a previous story—a friend who drowned in college, a music producer boyfriend who took his kids on an African safari—and expands it into a new story. Though the stories she chooses to tell are all ones we would like to hear, they come at the expense of our ever delving more deeply into any previous story.

If A Visit from the Goon Squad sounds like the result of an interesting exercise, rest assured that it is so much more. The stories are not just technically impressive but genuinely affecting. Above all, they are interesting, insightful, and excitingly fresh. While there’s no guarantee that you won’t end up agreeing with Aunt Carol (about not “getting” the book…not about how cute her cats look in those Christmas sweaters she knitted), you should still be able to appreciate the book for what it is: a work that dares to be inventive and ambitious, but never loses its heart.

…

Maurice “Reese” Anderson is a typical teenager who has made a mistake. The only difference is, his mistake involved stealing prescription pads from a doctor’s office, and he was caught and arrested for this crime. He finds himself locked up at a juvenile prison called Progress, where his efforts to improve his attitude are met with opposition by the boys who have already given up. His days are spent going to class, dodging (or not dodging) fights, and dealing with the boredom that comes from being cut off from the outside world.

When he is singled out as a likely candidate for a new rehabilitation program, however, he thinks his luck might just change. He begins a part-time job at a retirement home, which allows him to get out of the negative atmosphere of the jail. Assigned to the mistrustful Mr. Hooft, who thinks of him only as a criminal, Reese struggles to improve his reputation. If he can get Mr. Hooft to think of him differently, to see him as a person rather than a delinquent, then maybe he can recognize the good in himself.

Lockdown is the kind of book I never would have picked up on my own, but it offered a reading experience I won’t soon forget. Walter Dean Myers is a talented writer, and he captures the bleakness of Reese’s experience in a convincing, yet understated, way. Make no mistake: the story is depressing and claustrophobic throughout; nonetheless, it refrains from any inauthentic sensationalizing. The most haunting aspect of Lockdown is that it all rings true. Though Reese is a fictional character, he represents plenty of young men who are very much real.

Although readers desperately hopes that Reese will be able to transcend his circumstances, they are continually reminded of how truly difficult this is to do. Perhaps this is the most troubling, but ultimately most important, part of the novel. Myers offers no tidy ending, no promise of redemption; instead, he gives his audience what they really need: a sober lesson on the way the world sometimes works.

…

David Small’s family doesn’t communicate. His childhood is full of silence and unarticulated feelings; “home” means nothing more than a place full of secrets and poorly expressed anger. David’s father is a doctor, and he treats David’s many minor childhood illnesses with an excessive number of x-rays. Believing he can cure his son, he instead achieves the opposite. David wakes up one day, from a supposedly simple procedure, with his throat stitched up like a boot, one vocal cord removed. He learns only later—and through a letter that he was not meant to see—that his parents had taken their silence further than he could have imagined: they had failed to inform their 14-year-old son that he had cancer.

As David adjusts to a life of imposed silence, he begins to lose himself in a world where he does have a voice. He starts to draw as a means to release his anger and frustration, as well as to create a place where he belongs. Through a therapist, David is able to recover his self-worth. He is also able to recover his voice, through an unlikely method. David learns to scream, and by screaming he both strengthens his voice and releases the fear and anger that had become such a part of him. In the end, David finds the courage to reject the madness of his family, and to pursue a life of fulfillment, and even happiness.

Stitches is just as depressing as it sounds, but that doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable to read. David Small is a talented artist, and he communicates his story in a beautiful, if bleak, manner. Channeling a silent movie, he introduces the story with establishing shots and proceeds to tell a tale that requires very little dialogue. He emphasizes the distance between sound and silence, between what is said and unsaid. That he is able to tell his story at all is impressive. That he is able to tell it with such depth, such honesty, and such skill is really what makes Stitches so remarkable.

…

Liesel Meminger is not quite ten years old when everything in her life changes. In only a few days, her brother dies, her mother leaves her, and she is sent to live with two strangers who ask that she call them “Mama” and “Papa.” Even at such a young age, she knows that nothing will ever be the same. What she doesn’t realize, however, is how true this is not only for her, but for everyone. Her foster parents, her friends, and all of her neighbors are each facing their own struggles to survive in Nazi Germany.

Liesel grows to love her foster parents, particularly her father, Hans Hubermann, who stays up with her when she cannot sleep and teaches her how to read. Liesel stole her first book, The Gravedigger’s Handbook, the day of her brother’s burial, and it is from this book that she first learns to read. Once she starts, she never wants to stop: Liesel becomes obsessed with acquiring more books, more words. Aiding her in this quest is Rudy Steiner, her best friend, and Max Vandenburg, the Jewish fist fighter whom the family hides in their basement. She also finds an unexpected ally in the mayor’s wife, a strange, sad woman who offers her access to a beautiful library full of books. But Liesel’s happiness is constantly threatened by the war, which brings with it the danger of bombings and, in the case of Max, discovery. Is it possible to make it through a war unscathed?

The Book Thief is a memorable book—and not only because it is narrated by Death. It is a vivid rendering of Germany during the Holocaust, capturing both the ugliness and the beauty of the time. Indeed perhaps the most remarkable quality of the book may be how unexpectedly beautiful it is: though marked by violence, hatred, and countless tragedies, it also highlights those acts of kindness, defiance, and uncommon bravery that make the characters more than victims of their circumstances. Liesel is a winsome protagonist—you can tell even Death admires her—and her strong will and warm heart make her the perfect character around whom to base the various events in the book. She is young enough to have a childlike innocence, yet shrewd enough to gain a gradual understanding of the horrors around her. She is also spirited enough to combat the injustice she witnesses in any way she can. Though essentially powerless, she is always ready to put up a fight.

The other main characters—and they are considerable—are equally well-developed, and the memory of each is quietly devastating even long after the book is over. Even those who fare well in the end endure almost unbelievable hardship, making their stories upsetting to recall. And, of course, many do not survive. Although this is a fact that Death hints at very early on, it still comes as a terrible shock, for the reader desperately wishes that it were untrue. These are characters who, through their amusing antics, heartwarming goodness, and surprising depth, endeared themselves to their reading audience. Their loss is felt not only in the narrative but on a personal level.

In the end, this is precisely how The Book Thief feels: personal. It is a novel based on the experiences of author Markus Zusak’s parents, and it reads like a story that has been told again and again, in many different versions. There is a familiarity, and thus an authenticity, that makes this book special. To look back on it is to conjure not plot points but vivid memories. The Book Thief is interesting, insightful, and even educational. More than that, however, it is a haunting look at the power of words and the ways they express our humanity.