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A review by lawralthelibrarian
The Green Man by Michael Bedard
4.0
When O (just O, not Ophelia) goes to stay with her father's sister Emily (just Emily, not Aunt), she's already wary of poets and scared/excited about becoming one. Poets are crazy, Emily being the most convenient example. This is not the meat of the story, but it was interesting to see O's reactions to reading about the lives of poets, increasingly "crazier" as the book goes on, alongside Emily's growing eccentricity about an evil magician in her dreams. Of course she's crazy; even O, who grows close to Emily, thinks so. But as Emily ramps up the precautions and weird things start to happen, including a dream boy for O and a dream haul for Emily, O starts to believe.
This book is not without flaws. The biggest for me being the jump from nothing to everything that happens in a few different instances. First, O and Emily's relationship. They start prickly, which is understandable considering they don't seem to know each other at all and one of them is a chain-smoking septuagenarian and the other is a health-food eating teenager. Then suddenly, they're close, in a routine, and friends, not just I-don't-want-to-see-you-have-a-heart-attack friends but actual friends. The second being Emily's suspension of disbelief. She goes into the summer afraid of the legacy of crazy poets, her aunt being no exception. She doesn't believe Emily's story about the evil magician who returns to town only when August 8th falls on a Saturday in a leap year (so many details!). She worries about her aunt talking to herself in the shop when she thinks she's alone. And then, out of nowhere, she can see and is fine with the ghosts of poets hanging around; she doesn't talk to them like Emily does, but she treats them like any other fact of life of used bookstores. You have dust, you have teetering towers of books, and you have ghosts. But until it's actually happening, an evil magician is just too much? The book does span an entire summer, and it's hard to tell how much time has passed at any given point. For all I know, there's a skipped month there in the middle. If that had been more clear, I might have been more able to make that jump with O.
All that aside, I loved this book. It is not super suspenseful or super action packed, but I had a really hard time putting it down. It's compelling. And packed in with a compelling story is O's (and to a lesser extent Emily's) musings about poetry. I'm not a big poetry fan and not one to like a book with teen angst poetry scattered about. Luckily, this was not that kind of book. The poetry O writes is not about tru lurv and it is (blessedly) sparse. Bedard manages to convey her love of poetry and writing without showcasing her and her fellow poets' work. Instead, he showcases their passion.
Though there is romance, it is beyond chase (it's more of a crush), and though there is an evil magician intent on killing children, it is not scary. I think this book could skew young or old for the right reader. The kind of middle grade or high school reader who is always reading, longs for old bookshops, secretly (or not-so-secretly) dreams about what would happen if magic was real, and does a lot of scribbling in notebooks. You know the one.
Book source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers
This book is not without flaws. The biggest for me being the jump from nothing to everything that happens in a few different instances. First, O and Emily's relationship. They start prickly, which is understandable considering they don't seem to know each other at all and one of them is a chain-smoking septuagenarian and the other is a health-food eating teenager. Then suddenly, they're close, in a routine, and friends, not just I-don't-want-to-see-you-have-a-heart-attack friends but actual friends. The second being Emily's suspension of disbelief. She goes into the summer afraid of the legacy of crazy poets, her aunt being no exception. She doesn't believe Emily's story about the evil magician who returns to town only when August 8th falls on a Saturday in a leap year (so many details!). She worries about her aunt talking to herself in the shop when she thinks she's alone. And then, out of nowhere, she can see and is fine with the ghosts of poets hanging around; she doesn't talk to them like Emily does, but she treats them like any other fact of life of used bookstores. You have dust, you have teetering towers of books, and you have ghosts. But until it's actually happening, an evil magician is just too much? The book does span an entire summer, and it's hard to tell how much time has passed at any given point. For all I know, there's a skipped month there in the middle. If that had been more clear, I might have been more able to make that jump with O.
All that aside, I loved this book. It is not super suspenseful or super action packed, but I had a really hard time putting it down. It's compelling. And packed in with a compelling story is O's (and to a lesser extent Emily's) musings about poetry. I'm not a big poetry fan and not one to like a book with teen angst poetry scattered about. Luckily, this was not that kind of book. The poetry O writes is not about tru lurv and it is (blessedly) sparse. Bedard manages to convey her love of poetry and writing without showcasing her and her fellow poets' work. Instead, he showcases their passion.
Though there is romance, it is beyond chase (it's more of a crush), and though there is an evil magician intent on killing children, it is not scary. I think this book could skew young or old for the right reader. The kind of middle grade or high school reader who is always reading, longs for old bookshops, secretly (or not-so-secretly) dreams about what would happen if magic was real, and does a lot of scribbling in notebooks. You know the one.
Book source: LibraryThing Early Reviewers