Shine shine shine

I thought this book was going to one of my new favorites. I thought that up until the last chapter. The writing was so intensely strong, the love story something I could relate to, whatever. But the entire lack of conclusion felt like a roller coaster just stopped before even reaching the peak. There are some books that are meant to leave their main characters with no happy ending, with nothing but determination and the lessons they learned in the story. This book was not one of them, and Sunny, the main character, definitely was not one of those characters. She felt like two different characters between her current storyline and past storyline and there was no point where those characters met up to make a complete or even new character. It was a disappointing, is all I can say. Also, the depiction of autism both throughout the book and in the interview in the back of the book is... ridiculous? offensive? I recognize that Netzer wanted to write a character who loved her autistic son, and that was portrayed, but without having the experience of raising an autistic child, I don't really know if Netzer had the right to write about the world's reactions to a mother and her autistic child.

Was not quite sure where it was going, but loved where it went. Can't wait to read more by Netzer.

This was an unexpected delight. The love story of a man, Maxon, who uses pseudocode to define his verbal and emotional responses to the world and his wife, Sunny, born with complete alopecia in Burma. The real heart of the novel is the tension between Sunny's desire to fit in with the world as it is, and hide her baldness, as a metaphor for the things that make us different from others, coming to terms with wanting to be the hero of a world of one's own making, with those who are different from us being the outsiders.

The writing is gorgeous. The story beneath the story, of Maxon going to help colonize the moon is interesting and numerous backstories flesh out both characters as full, flawed people, not just subject to the plot.

Sunny is facing lots of challenges in her life, and they all pull this refreshing novel forward. See my full review here: http://cliffordgarstang.com/?p=3646