Julie Lawson’s The Ghost of Avalanche Mountain and Destination Gold!

Lawson, Julie.  The Ghost of Avalanche Mountain. Toronto and New York: Stoddard Kids, 2000.
-  -  -.   Destination Gold! Victoria: Orca, 2000.
In an article published a few years ago in CCL/LCJ, I wrote about two other novels by Julie Lawson, author of White Jade Tiger, discussed in the last entry.  Now I’d like to go [...]

Julie Lawson’s White Jade Tiger

Lawson, Julie.  White Jade Tiger.  1993.  Toronto: Sandcastle Dundurn, 2006.
The text is a traditional third person past narrative, usually focalized through the central character, Jasmine, but frequently interspersing sections involving not only Keung, a Chinese boy who comes to BC to find his father in the nineteenth century but also other Chinese characters connected to [...]

A.M. Jenkins’s Beating Heart

Jenkins, A.M.  Beating Heart.  New York: Harpercollins, 2006.
The alternating narratives are visually distinguished from each other–his is third person present narrative that looks typically novel-like, hers a first person collection of thoughts set out on the page to look sort of like poetry (but hardly actually ever achieving anything poetic–the only thing this spacing of [...]

Bebe Faas Rice’s The Place at the Edge of the Earth

Rice, Bebe Faas.  The Place at the Edge of the Earth.  New York: Clarion, 2002.
This is a very earnest book, and very determined to be wise and moral and cathartic; but in spite of (or maybe even because of) that, I find it very distressing.  It is trying so hard to be having the right [...]

N.M. Browne’s The Story of Stone

Browne, N.M.  The Story of Stone.  London: Bloomsbury, 2005.
There are two quite separate narratives–or at least they appear to be quite separate for most of the book, and in fact, the two focalizing narrators have only a peripheral relationship to each other even at the end–connected by their relationships to the same (third) character, one [...]