Jan Elizabeth WatsonCritiques

Book received though First Reads in exchange for an honest review, thank you!

So it starts with a neurotic, true-crime obsessed patron in a library... and I think to myself, damn! How does goodreads now that I am a library employee with a current obsession with cannibal killers? Then I think, well because I told goodreads, that's why. Anyway, narcissistic crazy patron is working on a crime novel and teaching.

She seems like a terrible person, but only in the way that we are all terrible people, sometimes. We are seeing her in one of her sometimes: a character with self-pity cloaked in self-depreciation filled with constant mild hostility. I don't know yet if reading this will be entertaining or irritating. Probably irritating. This particular kind of unlikable character is awfully trendy these days.

Update:
Hahaha, probably irritating is correct. Alas, after getting to know the characters the plot was kinda boring.

85 pages in and I have yet to find one plot or character that I care about. I give up.

Vera Lundy, a frustrated crime writer, has taken a long-term substitute English teaching assignment at a prestigious private school. One of her students stands out, reminding Very of herself at that age. When another student is found murdered, Vera wonders how this crime is related to previous others, and finds herself immersed in the police’s attempts to solve these crimes. Compounding the investigation are wrongly accused, other disappearing students and coincidences. Fortunately, one of the guilty in an act of unselfishness confesses his part to the police and Vera, something I found totally unbelievable, as is much of this book. The only interesting parts actually concerned her insights into being a new teacher in a small school. The “shivery thriller” parts were so boring I would never recommend it for those parts.

Remarkable first novel!

This is a psychological thriller with some mystery thrown in, centered around the character of Vera Lundy, a teacher who also wants to be a true crime writer. Vera's deep interest in true crime began when she was a child, and has led her to seek connections among recent murders of young girls.

Meanwhile, Vera is subbing in as an English teacher at a prestigious private girls' school, where she meets a girl named Jensen Willard, who continuously turns in long journal entries that have a troubling undertone. When tragedy hits Vera's classroom, she is forced to confront truths about her students and herself.

Vera comes across as a bit of a twisted Harriet the Spy, especially in regards to what we learn about her past. I actually wanted to learn more about these important events from when she was a teenager, as they seem fundamental to who she became as an adult. Vera herself even says she sometimes feels she is still the same fifteen year old girl on the inside. The past events are teased out, but I would have liked to see them fleshed out even more.

As a teacher myself, there were a lot of instances when I was grimacing at the choices Vera was making in regards to her class and her students. She desperately wanted to be "the cool teacher". But it made sense in the lens of what she went through as a teenager.

Watson does a great job with the slow burn. The story gradually builds until you realize you haven't put the book down in hours. The lines between fiction and truth begin to blur, and you're not sure what to believe anymore. I found the ending satisfying and fitting, though I know not all readers did.½

Vera Lundy is a long-term sub teacher in a private high school, teaching Catcher in the Rye to a group of moderately privileged millennials. She is obsessed with serial killers and trying to write a book about one particular case. She seems to attract what she's obsessed by: late at night after a drunken encounter with a stranger, she stumbles on the body of one of her classmates. Then, a student who has threatened suicide in her dark but brilliant class journals disappears.

I expected to enjoy this more than I did. It was fast and easy reading, and moderately suspenseful, but I didn't find it believable. The plot was contrived and the character of Vera felt like a type. It certainly is in vogue these days to write dark, hard-drinking, deeply flawed loner female protagonists. I like them, but it is definitely a trend and I'm suspicious of trends.

I really liked this book. I would recommend it to almost anyone. Right from the start you can tell the family is very different. The writing is descriptive yet holds the innocence and youthful thoughts of the narrator, which I particularly loved. You can tell this girl is intelligent and holds quite the active imagination for a seven year old. The mother comes off as egotistical and a bit cold but you can tell she holds love for her children. As the story goes on, we get bits and pieces of the bigger picture. The delusional world Asta is living in starts to emerge. I like how it's not spelled out to you, that there is a mystery to this and the author is making you work a little to fit all the pieces together. One line I really liked, "There is something particularly magical about listening to music from a car radio while looking out a window at a vast, open sky." I love experiencing the world through Asta's new eyes. It makes me remember all the little things we overlook and take for granted. I feel as if the story is speaking to people who feel they are different and saying, "It's okay, there are others who feel the same and there is a place for you in this conventional society of drones." What society considers normal is tested by the beauty and intrigue of characters that exude unusual actions and traits. Even Asta herself wondered about fitting in with the world, "for a minute - just a minute - I wondered if my specialness had been compromised."

I'm writing this review as I recently wrapped up my 9th year as an educator (and currently a middle school librarian). There were just way too many flimsy plotholes in this book to take it seriously.

The first gaping hole is when the teacher does what she does with Jensen -- ALL of it. All teachers undergo thorough training and are MANDATED REPORTERS. The fact that Vera did not immediately report Jensen's journals are ridiculous. And then...AND THEN...(spoiler alert)...this idiot woman goes to a hotel room with her student...AND THEN...drinks alcohol with her student. It gets worse. She LIES to the police, more than once. I just want to bludgeon Vera with something, anything, because it is incredibly stupid, and then I want to bludgeon myself for even taking the time to read this inane story.

(SPOILER) That Jensen is unhinged is obvious from the very first email she sends to Vera. So, it was not a psychological thriller for me. More like an exercise in vapidity.

But hey, the really dumb teacher who is fired can become a librarian, so at least there's that. I really hated the way librarians were portrayed in this novel, first as suspiciously-uptight (and NO LIBRARIAN would ever go on record and tell a newspaper what a patron checks out, that violates privacy laws--yet another hole), and then as a way for Vera to somehow redeem her idiot self.

OK, I'm done. Just DONE.½

3.25 Stars
A dark YA/NA mystery taking place in Northeastern U.S. The plot is very interesting and the novel flows well. The story and the characters have a film noir feel. It's fast-paced, but not your typical coming-of-age story with a clearly happy or resolved ending. Recommended for younger crime fiction fans.

Penguin First to Read Club

Solid literary suspense about a teacher who becomes blindsided by a student and embroiled in multiple killings in a small Maine town. Vera Lundy moves to Dorset to teach in an all-girls high school; here she latches on to Jensen Willard, a troubled scholarship student whose journals reveal someone to whom Vera believes she can relate. Vera is an immature 39 year old who identifies a little too closely with her students, and when one shows up dead and someone else goes missing, it's not clear how deep Vera's involvement will take her. This one comes with a relatively satisfying ending, too.

Asta is one of those characters who will stay with me for a long time. Though only seven her view of the world is often wiser than the adults she encounters. Asta is strong, loyal, resourceful and brave. A most excellent first novel.

depressing but good. perspective from 7 year old girl's eyes.

Asta and Orion got underneath my skin and lived there the whole time I was reading this book. It was a very different experience (for me, lately) to read about kids who had a hard life but did not talk about it emotionally. I guess I shouldn't say I enjoyed it, I know that isn't the word I'm looking for here but it was an enjoyable book. I liked the beginning where I was thrown into their world and I didn't look back until I turned the last page.

I am always dubious of the seven year old narrator, but this one is wonderful. Jan Elizabeth Watson takes us into the mind of a seven year old and reminds us how limited and literal our vision of the world was at that age, how pure and hopeful our outlook is, especially towards the adults around us. For Asta this optimism bears out as best it could considering the circumstances. Asta, and her nine year old brother Orion, are “isolates” in the parlance of the local media. Their strange little lives are blown wide open when they escape from their little rural cape-style house, in which they have been imprisoned by deceits. Their mother has convinced them that the world outside their doors and tar-papered shut windows is diseased – literally, and therefore too dangerous for children to ever venture forth. Meanwhile she loves them to death, slowly starving them. It sounds horrific, and it might have been except for the author’s beautiful light voice which allows the siblings love for one another to shine through as they adapt to the scary adventures of the real world after accidentally escaping. Social services steps in, as-it-were, for this local community, and Asta is taken in by her aunt, and Orion by a local Doctor, but to this brother and sister they are all strangers in a strange world. MAT06_11

This was an adult novel about a two kids (7 and 9) living with alone with their somewhat delusional mother. The kids never left the house because their mother thought there were too many germs out there. She locked them in the house all day while she was out cleaning houses and barely gave them any food because so they were really skinny, malnourished, and sickly. One day, she doesn't come home and the kids eventually break out of the house. Of course, when people find out how they live, they are taken away and have to learn to about the outside world. This read like a memoir--it was entertaining.

I saw this in the goodreads giveaway (I didn't win) and it interested me. So I bought it.
This is an unusual novel. Interesting concept, endearing characters. This is the author's first novel and I'd say it is a stellar first.

Loved Asta and her adventure in the outside world... Not like any book I'd read before...Very novel.

Seven-year-old Asta and her nine-year-old brother, Orion, are kept locked in their house by their delusional mother, Loretta. Their mother fills their heads with tales of the plague-ravaged wasteland waiting outside their door. Equipped with little beyond what their mother provides, the children are wildly creative, surprisingly intelligent and share a deep bond with each other. But when their mother does not come home one night the two children venture outside to face the real world and real people for the first time.

The children find themselves at the mercy of kind yet sometimes misguided adults. Asta emerges as the stronger, more communicative child. Bright and sometimes wily, she remains steadfastly devoted to her gifted yet now mute brother. This she somehow manages while attempting to adjust to both home and school by herself, as the two children now live apart. The narrative is told from Asta's perspective, and initially the tone is eerie and unsettling. As the story unfolds, the situation feels less threatening and even incorporates elements of humor.½

A child narrator is a tough sell, but it works in Asta in the Wings, a lovely, moving novel about a child who is wise and naive, the way children are. There is love here, and unhappiness and fear. The tone is gentle and distant and yet this child is so winning that I warmed to her, hoped for her and felt for her. The world has never seemed so arbitrary as it does through Asta's eyes, nor life so confusing; the difference between the normal and the outcast so hard to see, nor the warmth of kindness so welcome. She bravely, stoically faces such trials as would make a less resilient child turn from love, but she is stalwart and faithful. As other reviewers have noted, this book is a page turner and I read it with breathless zest and then was exhausted the next morning. This is a grand first novel and I look forward to Ms Watson's next effort.½

It is the story of two kids (told from the point of view of the girl, Asta, who is 7. Her brother is nine) being kept from the world by their mentally ill mother. She believes that there is plague out in the world, though she, herself, goes off to work each day. The children are very underfed because too much food is bad for them. That said, their mother appears to be raising them, for the most part, in a way that nourishes them emotionally, and also feeds their individuality. But one day she is in an auto accident and spends the night in the hospital. The kids make their way out of the house - where they are normally locked in, in order to look for her. The rest of the book is about their encounter with the bumbling ways of the outside world, healing them physically, but keeping them apart for quite some time - though the kids eventually see each other at school. The mother is hospitalized in a mental hospital, then put in an outpatient facility. Asta is with an aunt, her brother in foster care, but in a good place, with an ophthamologist, who manages to arrange a visit with the kids and their mother near the end of the book.

Their mother had said in a letter, "..when you're outside, amongst people , you have to give in a little - you have to follow rules. Stupid ones, even. I would have liked to spare you that kind of stupidity..." But in the hour or so they have together during this visit, you get to see them together as they are when they are not so much following the rules.

It may not be quite realistic - the portrayal of a mother who is simultaneously starving her children physically and yet, in the conversation we overhear sounds quite sane, wise and exciting - but it was engrossing enough to keep me up reading til late at night despite having to get up early.½

Was the mother really mentally ill or just mean? Her children are locked up insider their window tar-pappered house, never allowed to go outside for fear they will catch the plague. They believe all other children are dead and that the bodies of the dead are piled up outside their house. The are starved. One night the mother does not come home and they inadvertently escape from the house and make their way to a gas station/store. Asta is the main character in the story and we see how she deals with school, a new place to live and how she reconciles with her mother- it is ultimately a hopeful novel....