ROOMIES GIVEAWAY CONTEST

  

      I posted here last Sunday about having gone to a reading/signing for ROOMIES, by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando.  (But I don't think I mentioned what an awesome job I did driving into the Village, finding a great parking space, and hardly getting lost at all on my way to McNally-Jackson Bookstore.  Believe me, for someone with my lack of directional skills, this counts as a major accomplishment.)  I said in that post that I was going to run a giveaway contest as soon as I finished reading my own personalized first edition.  And do I keep my promises?  You'd better believe it.
     I'm not going to say very much about ROOMIES, because I want to offer whoever wins the book in this contest the chance to send me his/her own review so that I can post it here, with credits.  But I will say that if you don't win the book, you should buy it anyway, because it's delightful.  The word that's been running through my head when I think about ROOMIES is "bagatelle," but I wanted to make sure I was using it correctly in this context, so I looked it up in online dictionaries.  And guess what?  One of the Merriam-Webster definitions is, "a short literary or musical piece in light style."  I NAILED IT!  Other than the fact that, at 279 pages, ROOMIES probably doesn't qualify as "short,"  the word conveys what I meant to say, and pretty much what the authors were saying at the reading, which is: they wrote this book for fun, in between their more serious works.  They were playing.  Which is not to say that serious issues don't get touched on, or that serious things haven't happened or don't happen to the main characters, but the book is nonetheless written "in light style."  It's about the summer spent by two young women on opposite coasts who have just graduated high school, will be freshmen at Berkeley in the fall, and have learned that they've been assigned to share a dorm room.  They've never met, and they're about to live together.  Technically, until the very last line, Elizabeth and Lauren are not actually roomies; they are prospective roomies.  And, knowing the very little bit that I do about psychological theory, I would say that the situation puts them in the perfect position to serve as each other's transitional objects during this summer when everything is about to change.
     Okay! Enough of my blathering! ON TO THE CONTEST!!
     Here's how it goes: If you want to enter, leave a comment to this post describing the best or worst experience you've ever had with a roommate.  Pseudonyms are probably the way to go here, but otherwise, the more details, the better.  You don't have to have shared a dorm room with the roommate in question - he or she can have been a sibling, a bunkmate at camp, or a romantic partner whom you've since unfriended on Facebook. Post your comment between now and next Saturday, the 25th, at midnight East Coast time.  The winner I choose, no matter where s/he lives, will receive my almost-pristine autographed copy of ROOMIES.  And by the way, if you show me proof that you've linked to this blog post in any form of social media, I will think of you kindly when it comes to judging entries.
     Ready... set...  GO!!

NEXT BOOK GIVEAWAY IS ON DECK!

     Yes, I've acquired an autographed first edition that I'm going to (1) read, and then (2) give away to some lucky contest winner.  Just got back an hour ago from my jaunt into Manhattan to hear co-authors Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando read from and talk about their new YA novel, ROOMIES (Little, Brown, December 2013) at McNally Jackson Bookstore.  (I didn't get a photo, but Farrin Jacobs did; see tweet @farrinj.) Here are some things I learned about the novel and the process that produced it.   There are two main characters, both of whom have just learned that they've been assigned to share a dorm room two  months hence when they'll be starting their freshman years at Berkeley. Authors Sara and Tara (doesn't that sound like a pair of twins whom their mother dresses identically, virtually ensuring that they'll end up in therapy?) each assumed responsibility for one of the characters.  Elizabeth in New Jersey (Tara) and Lauren in San Francisco (Sara) narrate alternating chapters, and each chapter includes at least one side of an ongoing e-mail exchange between the two.  What I found fascinating is that the _ara Sisters did not really collaborate while writing the book.  Instead, one would finish writing her own chapter, email it to the other _ara, and then wait for the next chapter to be emailed back.  They didn't really discuss the process along the way.  Each trusted the other enough to follow wherever she might lead.  Each had other "front-burner" book projects going the whole time, and they were having fun writing ROOMIES and didn't take this back-burner project too seriously until it was done.  That's when they sat back and appraised it and lo, they saw that it was good.  So they revised, and then sent it to their respective agents.  And lo, the agents saw that it was good, and Little, Brown saw that it was good.  And the rest of the story isn't history yet, because the book has just been released.
     I've reviewed Sara's THE LUCY VARIATIONS here, and I mentioned her again here.  I'm a great admirer of her writing.  I'm sorry to say I'd never heard of Tara until tonight, but as I've now learned here, she's the author of quite a few well-received YA novels.  Her most recent, THE BEST NIGHT OF YOUR (PATHETIC) LIFE, was published by Dutton in 2012, and her next out will be THE BATTLE OF DARCY LANE (Running Press Kids, April 2014). 
     So this is a teaser.  Now there are two fabulous events to watch out for here: the ROOMIES giveaway, after I've finished reading it, and on January 25th, the Holly Schindler vlogstop.
    
HEY, KIDS!!  DO WE HAVE FUN HERE AT TAONGP, OR WHAT????

IT'S THE PROCESS, STUPID

     So, I'm at the stage with my Work in Progress where I'm completely obsessed with it, but at the same time, want to blast it out of existence with some sci-fi weapon.  I thought it was time to share my brilliant solution to this dilemma, which is: compulsive eating! Man, I just can't stop shoveling in the food, although - fyi - it does not actually help with the writing.
     See, but here's the thing. After years and years and years of writing, I now know that this whole deal is known as The Process.  From following successful writers on their blogs and on Twitter, I know that many of them begin loathing their books about midway through their first drafts.  I know that Harper Lee once threw the only extant manuscript of To Kill a Mockingbird out of the window of her Manhattan apartment, that's how much she hated it.  Fortunately, it wasn't a windy day, so when she immediately had second thoughts and scurried downstairs to retrieve it, it was still there.  Lucky her.  Lucky us.
     I even know that gifted, experienced, widely-revered authors still fear failure as they work on new projects. Like Sara Zarr, for example.
     I know all this now.  I didn't know any of it in my 20's and 30's.  Instead, when I reached a point like this, I would stick my partial manuscripts in a drawer and leave them there for months at a time because I couldn't bear to look at them.  And I would try to just live my life and do other things, until the pressure built so high that I couldn't not write any more or else I would explode, and then I would pull the manuscript out of the drawer, force myself to read it, and, inevitably, think: this is actually not so bad, you know? I wonder who wrote it?
     It's been a long journey for me from there to here.  I haven't forgotten any of it, though.  So if I had to choose between going through all that again or eating compulsively for a month or so at a time, it would be no contest.  Hmmm.. a few extra pounds v. months of despair?  Let me think about it.
     IT'S THE PROCESS.  It's not just me, or you, or anyone in particular.  After pouring everything we've got for months on end into a book, and facing the realization that we're going to have to keep going for more months on end, we hit a wall.  I'm told it happens to marathoners too, somewhere around Mile 20.  They recognize the wall for what it is, and they summon all their remaining strength, and they keep going.  That's what writers do too.  That's what I'm going to do.  My clothes might not fit as well by the time I get to the finish line, but I'm going to get there.  Sometimes, my friends, it all just comes down to putting one foot in front of the other.

                                                              

THE LUCY VARIATIONS

  Sara Zarr's YA novel, THE LUCY VARIATIONS, due out from Little, Brown in May, is a different kind of novel. This is fitting, because Lucy Beck-Moreau is a different kind of protagonist: a 16-year-old recovering piano prodigy who has spent the last eight months learning, for the first time she can remember, to navigate a life not framed by music.
     Lucy is acutely aware of both the privileges and constraints into which she was born. Carrying her Italian leather messenger bag, she attends the "second-best" private high school in San Francisco; hunting through her closet for something to wear to a party, she comes across a forgotten sweater her mother had bought for her, still sporting its $397 price tag. Her family lives in a house co-owned by her maternal (Beck) grandparents, the sources of the extended family's wealth. No visitor who enters their home for the first time can escape Grandpa Beck's bravado-laced tale of his $17,000 conducting baton.
     But Grandpa Beck is the architect of Lucy's cage, as well as of its gilding. After we read a detailed description of the history of the Becks' heirloom baby grand piano, Lucy's mother's childhood is encapsulated in one chilling sentence: "Grandpa Beck, as the only child, inherited [the piano] the same year Lucy's mother was born, and determined that she would play."  It is only too easy to imagine what happened years ago in that young girl's life when she proved unequal to the task of becoming a concert pianist.
     But, unlike her mother, Lucy was born with the gift. Six years later, so was Lucy's brother, Gustav.  And there was never any question that each of them would be propelled through the ranks until they achieved their rightful places at the pinnacle of classical performance. The only problem, as far as Lucy could see, was herself - her own growing doubts that this was the life she wanted. She had been able to tamp down those doubts with fair success, until that day eight months ago, in Prague, that changed everything.
     After I finished reading LUCY, I turned to Andrew Solomon's FAR FROM THE TREE, a meticulous study of families in which a child turns out radically different in some way from his or her parents. I had flipped through that book earlier and seen that one of his chapters is entitled "Prodigies," with his focus on the musical variety. Solomon discusses a number of case studies before providing this assessment:

          Two distinct kinds of young people are grouped under the 'prodigy' rubric: the
          driven, single-minded baby virtuoso, and the youth who loves music in his bones
          and therefore has a better shot at a sustained career. The latter kids are more
          broadly intelligent, curious, often articulate, and possessed of a sense of humor
          and perspective about themselves. They pursue some semblance of normal
          sociability during adolescence and end up going to college instead of conser-
          vatory. Being pragmatic, smart, poised, and healthy is in their makeup, just as
          their musical enthusiasm and aptitude are.

     Lucy inhabits Solomon's second category. Looking back on her life as a musician, she says: "Time, that was the main thing. Years of it. Aka: her childhood. Gone." Yet she's been able to adapt to returning to a regular school after years of having been tutored so that she could travel on the international concert circuit, and to reconnect with her best friend Reyna, and to attempt to imagine a future for herself other than the only one that had ever seemed possible. With help, she's even able to approach the puzzle of how to reintroduce the music she loves into her life without getting back onto the hamster wheel.
     But damage has been done. Child musical prodigies, as Solomon poignantly observes, "need to mitigate the loneliness of having their primary emotional relationship with an inanimate object." Ironically, although the focus of their lives is their ability to perform on a stage, the prodigious children of ambitious parents "suffer from not being seen; their sorrow is organized not so much around the rigor of practicing as around invisibility." Lucy knows that her family loves her, but she also knows that, once the piano has been removed from the equation, they have no idea how to see her.
     As level-headed as Lucy is, she manifests the loss of her childhood in one particular, potentially dangerous way. Having for so long associated primarily with adults rather than with her peers, Lucy does not seem to be able to form attachments to boys her age. Instead, she develops serial, deeply felt crushes on older men, one of whom happens to be Gustav's new (married) piano teacher.
     THE LUCY VARIATIONS is a beautiful book. The action is minimal, but the themes are biggies: love, loss, empathy, trust, and the courage to move forward. There are some holes that I wish had been filled in. The biggest one, for me, is that there is no mention at all of the relationship between Lucy's father, the only nonmusical member of the family, and the domineering and often contemptuous Grandpa Beck. We never see them exchange a word. How have these two men managed to coexist for all these years without erupting into a fullblown turf war? Has Lucy's father just accepted being marginalized in his own home, or has he somehow earned Grandpa Beck's grudging respect? I find the situation fascinating in its potential for explosiveness, and I wish the author had chosen to give us at least a few hints (aside from Lucy's father having acquired an office downtown just to get out of the house once in a while) as to what choices these men have made in order to survive.
     This is, of course, just a small quibble. THE LUCY VARIATIONS is a convincing and moving portrayal of an unusual young woman in whom teen readers will nonetheless recognize themselves.
     And - I almost forgot! - it comes with a bonus CD of the music Lucy loves: rock, classical, some of everything! When was the last time you got a terrific book AND a free CD? Right: never!