Gold, by Chris Cleave

From the jacket: “Kate and Zoe met at nineteen when they both made the cut for the national training program in track cycling — a sport that demands intense focus, blinding exertion, and unwavering commitment. They are built to exploit the barest physical and psychological edge over equally skilled rivals, all of whom are fighting for the last one tenth of a second that separates triumph from despair. Now at thirty-two, the women are facing their last and biggest race: the 2012 Olympics. Each wants desperately to win gold, and each has more than a medal to lose.”

My take: It only seems appropriate that as I sat down to write this review, NBC began showing the Olympic track cycling heats.

It is spring 2012 and Zoe and Kate, who have known each other for thirteen years, are preparing for the London Olympics. The two women have spent nearly half their lives competing against one another on and off the track, and they expect their careers to culminate on their home turf in one final Olympic event.

Guiding them toward this goal is Tom, the Australian septuagenarian who has coached the pair for more than a decade after recognizing their potential so many years ago. He knows the two women nearly as well as they know themselves.

Kate has loads of natural talent and is willing to force her legs to do the work necessary to win. But her home life is complicated, as she and her husband, Jack, a fellow Olympic track cyclist are nursing their eight-year-old, Star Wars-obsessed daughter, Sophie, through a relapse of leukemia. Their lives are dictated by her treatment and needs and filled in with training schedules for the two of them.

Zoe, on the other hand, has no such complications in her personal life. Besides a handful of modeling gigs and more than a handful of one-night stands, her life is as empty as the sparse new luxury flat she just rented. For her it has always been about the cycling and about winning at all costs. She might not have Kate’s natural talent, but her head is always in the game and she’s willing to leverage any psychological advantage she can find or create. But with the natural course of her racing career starting to wind down, Zoe is starting to feel the emptiness in her life catching up at last.

When a new rule change jeopardizes their chance of a face-off during the Games, it throws both women into a panic. Will the strength of their relationship carry them through this challenge, too? Or will the stress of it all cause each of them them to tear away at her favorite opponent’s best known weaknesses? Can their friendship and their lives survive their quest for gold?

A book about the 2012 Olympics to read during the 2012 Olympics? What could be better, right? Well, take the author of the much lauded Little Bee and offer him track cycling as a vehicle for his novel.

Track cycling, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, takes place indoors in a velodrome, where competitors face off in a variety of situations. The race that Kate and Zoe are competing in is the sprint, which should operate exactly as you’d think it would. However, there are two things that make it a little different: One, the track is uneven, which means that the outside lane is tilted up. And, two, the rider in the front of a group creates a slipstream. This means that a following rider can conserve energy and surge past the leader with mere yards to go to win the race. And it means that a rider who opts to ride up the side of a race track can use the speed caused by the descent to their advantage. So what this means is that sprint track cycling involves a lot of head games. You’ll see riders barely moving their bikes, propelling them only as much as is necessary to remain upright. The rider in the front spends as much time looking back at their pursuer as they do surveying the course before them.

It’s a fascinating event and Cleave created two drastically different women to race it on the pages of his novel. Each of them is a little too one-dimensional (Kate is too self-sacrificing and Zoe is too manipulative) for my tastes, yet I found it really didn’t matter. Cleave is deft with his prose:

“It was a patient business, talking comets down to the speed of life.”

Or “… sometimes — in the rare moments when she wasn’t causing quite serious mental discomfort — being friends with Zoe was like being knocked dizzy by grace.”

And he neatly avoids the obvious plot traps that he lays and that a lazier writer might opt to fall into.

So despite your best intentions, you find yourself up at 3 a.m. compulsively turning page after page, desperate to find out how the story — and the characters’ lives — will turn out. Just like you get sucked into watching judo between two countries you might be hard-pressed to find on a globe in less than a minute, finding yourself glued to an event you don’t fully understand. Sometimes it’s just exquisitely compelling.

Pages: 325

NPR has a poll up on their website asking folks to vote on the best young adult fiction.

The poll isn’t perfect. Some books I’d consider a series (such as Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown) are listed separately, while others are lumped together as a whole (The Princess Diary books, for instance). Some books they left out because they’re aimed too young, but that seems inconsistent (I assume that’s why Little Women isn’t included, but Anne of Green Gables is). The same is true with adult books that have become YA staples.

However, for all its flaws, how often are we asked, rather than told, what the best of the best is? Regardless of whether you prefer stand-alones or series, modern or classic, I guarantee you will find some of your favorites on the list. I had to force myself to pass over books I like quite a bit in order to pick only the creme de la creme — the very best of the books I’ve read and re-read and hand-carry with me when I move, the ones that I routinely give as gifts, the titles that create a bond between me and another person just because we both love them.

(Just to alleviate a concern I had when I started: You don’t have to worry about keeping track; the rest of the list will gray out once you’ve hit 10 and you’ll have to uncheck selections to add any additional ones. Also, I don’t know when the poll closes, but it’s been up several days, so I probably wouldn’t tarry over your choices.)

Maniac Magee, by Jerry Spinelli

From the jacket: “Jeffrey Lionel ‘Maniac’ Magee might have lived a normal life if a trolley accident hadn’t made him an orphan. After living with his unhappy and uptight aunt and uncle for eight years, he decides to run — and not just run away, but run. And this is where the myth of Maniac Magee begins, as he change the lives of a racially divided small town with his amazing and legendary feats.”

My take: This is one of those books where if you judge it by its cover, you will miss out on a gem. Its cover makes it look like a typical sports novel, but it is so much more than that. (And, yes, I recognize that sneakily trying to get adolescent boys to pick it up may be part of the marketing plan.)

Jeffrey’s parents died in a trolley accident when he was a baby, so he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, who, unfortunately, couldn’t stand each other. They refused to speak to one another and found they could make that work by dividing the house into two and splitting Jeffrey’s time between them. But such an environment is not one for raising a healthy, happy boy, and eventually Jeffrey cracks and literally runs away.

He turns up a year later in the town of Two Mills, skinny and hungry and in shoes that are falling apart. The first person he encounters is Amanda, who is lugging her complete collection of books to school. After much convincing, she agrees to lend him a book to read. He also runs into a couple of other kids, including John McNab, who is striking out kid after kid until Jeffrey shows up. When the encounter turns sour, Jeffrey takes off running — and runs right across the tracks and straight into more trouble — this time with a boy called Mars Bar Thompson. The two sides of the town may not agree on much, but they share a belief that Jeffrey is a little nuts, dubbing him “Maniac” Magee.

Jeffrey does a great many things with grace and elegance — from running to knot detangling to child minding — but interacting with his peers (with the exception of Amanda) is a challenge for him, as is picking up clues about how his disregard for color barriers puts a great many people on edge. When the message finally does hit home, Jeffrey takes off running yet again. Will Amanda Beale and her family, two rival teenage boys, and a groundskeeper named Grayson be able to convince him to stop?

Set in what I’d guess to be the late 1970s, Maniac Magee gives us the story behind the folklore of a boy who helped to unite a town. It is sweet and more than a little bittersweet and I highly recommend it.

Pages: 184

The Witches, by Roald Dahl

From the jacket: “This is not a fairy tale. This is about real witches. Grandmamma loves to tell about witches. Real witches are the most dangerous of all living creatures on earth. There’s nothing they hate so much as children, and they work all kinds of terrifying spells to get rid of them. Her grandson listens closely to Grandmamma’s stories — but nothing can prepare him for the day he comes face to face with The Grand High Witch herself!”

My take: Our eight-year-old orphaned narrator is left in the care of his Norwegian grandmother, who instructs him in a variety of life skills, but most importantly how to spot a witch. A witch is a woman who is bald, lacks toes, and has claws instead of fingernails, a powerful sense of smell, pupils filled with fire and ice, and blue spit. Oh, and she hates children and wants nothing more than to eliminate them from the face of the earth. So when our narrator accidentally finds himself trapped in a ballroom full of witches in Bournemouth, we know he’s in for some trouble. But, it turns out, so are those witches.

For a long time, I thought I didn’t like Roald Dahl books. I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and (I believe) Charlie and the Glass Elevator when I was in sixth grade and I was unimpressed. But then, as an adult, I read The BFG and realized I was wrong. Subsequent readings of Matilda, Boy, and James and the Giant Peach reinforced this conclusion.

So I was excited to read The Witches when I realized it was still on my top 100 unread list.

I’m glad I had that stretch of Dahl books I found charming, because this decidedly went on the so-so list. I mean, it was fine. I can see why lots of people like it. But I didn’t (even with the knitterly addition of using a half-knit sock as a mode of transportation). I think the characters, with the exception of Grandmamma, all felt a little one-dimensional. Dahl villains always are, but for some reason, this protagonist felt less developed than did James or Matilda. Perhaps it’s the lack of a name for our protagonist. Or the dark ending. Or some other reason. But, regardless, The Witches falls a cut below Matilda and The BFG in my book.

Pages: 208

Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia MacLachlan

From the jacket: “Caleb doesn’t remember Mama, who died a day after he was born. But his older sister, Anna, says Papa and Mama sang ‘every-single-day.’ Now Papa doesn’t sing at all. Papa places an ad in the newspaper for a wife and he receives an answer from a woman named Sarah, who lives in Maine.”

My take: Told from the perspective of 10-year-old Anna, this is the story of a Kansas farm family in the late 19th century. Papa has advertised for a wife, and Sarah, who describes herself as plain and tall, has responded. She and her cat might be willing to move across the country from the Maine coastline to join them. In advance of her agreeing to come for a trial month-long stay, Sarah, Papa, Anna, and her younger brother, Caleb, exchange letters, asking and answering questions.

When Sarah arrives, it is an adjustment for everyone, but most particularly for the woman who has traveled so far and given up so much. Will Sarah overcome her homesickness and stay? Or will Anna and Caleb lose yet another mother figure?

I remember when this book came out. I must have moved past my historical fiction period into my contemporary fiction phase by that point, because I can think of no other reason why I would have skipped over this book. I am happy to report that it is charming and makes a lovely companion to the early Little House books and Caddie Woodlawn.

If you saw and loved the Hallmark Hall of Fame movies starring Christopher Walken and Glen Close, rest assured, you will find the book (and apparently its sequels) familiar. They tapped the novel’s author to write the screenplays for the film series.

A sweet, simple book, well worth the hour it will take to read to yourself or the few nights it might take to read aloud with a child.

Pages: 58

Touch Blue, by Cynthia Lord

From the jacket: “The state of Maine plans to shut down [Tess’s] island schoolhouse, which would force Tess’s family to move to the mainland — and Tess to leave the only home she has ever known. Fortunately, the islanders have a plan, too: increase the number of students by having several families take in foster children. So now Tess and her family are taking a chance on Aaron, a thirteen-year-old trumpet player who has been bounced from home to home.”

My take: Superstitious Tess, daughter of a lobsterman and the island’s schoolteacher, is worried. Her friend Amy’s family moved off the island last year, dropping the enrolled student population below the state of Maine’s minimum threshold. If the state follows through on its threat to close the school before the fall term begins, Tess’ family will be forced to move to the mainland. So, her family and several others have agreed to foster school-aged kids, in the hopes that this will convince the state to keep the school open. Unfortunately, this plan is not without its unknowns — one of which is Aaron, who has no interest in island life or his new foster sisters, but who does have an interest in finding his mother, whose parental rights were severed by the state.

I found Tess to be a sweet narrator. With her superstitions (touch blue for luck or don’t whistle on a boat) and her fear of change, you can see that she’s got a lot on her plate. And in her anxiety, she makes a lobster pot’s worth of mistakes in judgment. But, mostly, those mistakes are made with good intentions at heart, even if their application may leave something to be desired. Aaron, too, is believable as a kid who’s lost too many families to open himself up to the possibility that this one might stick — and that’s particularly brought to light when he finds out that the islanders are using his and the other foster kids’ presence for their own purposes. Little sister Libby and Tess’ parents have a wholesome, timeless feel about them, where you feel like they could have stepped out of Gone-Away Lake or its ilk.

A generally sweet summertime book with an old-fashioned feeling to it.

Pages: 186