The Heretic's Daughter

Written By Kathleen Kent
Original Publication Date: 2008

Rating: 2 Stars

Book Notes:

Well, it's been a while.  This book took me quite a while to get through.  I just started a new job and I needed to be focused on that; besides, my new boss has been changing my schedule every 24 hours, so it's been hard to find much time to read.  I think it's finally settling down, so the reviews should come quicker again.  I will not let this job affect my reading.

Page 151

Finally the story's picking up!  Maybe I'll actually finish this sometime in the near future!

Review:

As a modern-day Pagan, with roots in modern Wicca, I was incredibly excited to finally find this title used, for cheap (hey, I was unemployed for a long time).  I had been wanting to read it for quite some time, as I have read a fuckload about the Salem Witch Trials, and love to visit the place.  To read a fictional account of real people who were part of the fiasco sounded awesome enough.  Add to that that Kathleen Kent is directly related to Martha Carrier?  Sounded like a gold mine to me.

Unfortunately, I found myself incredibly disappointed.  I guess I was hoping that because Kent is related to these people that she would have had a journal or something that would have added something more to these events that swept the colonies.  Maybe my hopes were simply too high.

I found the first 151 pages fairly boring, they were the day to day life of Sarah Carrier, daughter of Martha Carrier - one of the women hanged for witchcraft.  They were boring, but they did a decent job of exploring the conflicted relationship that every woman/girl has with her mother.  We love her, we hate her, we resent her, we need her, we blame her, we rely on her, we take her for granted.  By the end of the novel, I had actually decided that this relationship building part of the novel was more interesting than the Witch Trails themselves.

I thought it would get more interesting and pick up, once the Witch Trails came to Sarah's front door.  Damn, was I wrong.  I felt very little emotion come up from the page when Sarah's mother was arrested.  I felt very little when her brothers were arrested.  I felt very little when Sarah was arrested.  It plodded.  Somehow the drama of the Witch Trails was made boring.  Seriously, how is that even possible?  I've read completely non-fiction accounts of the events and they were less boring than this fictionalized account.

Some of the absolute best writing came from the last 50 pages or so, when Sarah is describing the prison scene and how the women either came together or pulled away to survive.  That, was the only part of the novel that I didn't label as boring.  The human emotion was truly raw and awesome during this time.

Identical

Written By Ellen Hopkins
Original Publication Date: 2008

Rating: One and a Half Stars

Review:

I finished this book last night and I'm still not entirely certain what I want to say about it or how I want to rate it.  I wanted to sleep on it, mull it over - I'm still at a loss.  So, I'm just going to start writing and hope that whatever spills out gives me an appropriate star rating.

What the back of the book says: "Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple.  As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family - on the surface.  But behind the facade, each sister has her own dark secret."

First of all, during the entire book, I couldn't remember the girls' names, so I was calling them Twin 1 and Twin 2.  I'm probably just going to continue that into the review, because that'll let me have more of a stream of consciousness, try to get this all out.  

Twin 1 is being raped by Daddy, and Twin 2 wants to be raped by Daddy.  I almost had to stop reading on page 25.  

"...And if Daddy would just stand

still for me, I'd happily tap his core."

I threw the book against the wall at that point and walked away.  I was pissed, and honestly, I still am.  That was a clue that perhaps this book was written for the shock value, and not entirely for tackling the issue.  I know it's a hard issue to tackle, but I've read books with similar subject matters and none of them have left me with a book on the other side of the room and twitching.  Shock value is not synonymous with tackling difficult issues.  One of the reviews I read on Goodreads, that I can't find at the moment - if you find it, let me know and I'll link to it - called this book "trauma porn."  At this point I am inclined to agree.

Thank Gods after that point the I want to fuck Daddy, erotic language was largely dropped, because that's what made it seem like Hopkins was just trying to get a rise out of us.  There were definitely other scenes that I felt were written for their shock, rather than their value, but nothing that got such a disgusted reaction from me.

Twin 1 is the "weak" twin, who can't say no, is the lead in the school play (Grease).  Twin 2 is the "strong" twin, getting stoned daily, sleeping around with her dealers.  Both twins have eating disorders of various types, and deal with their pain in less-than-healthy ways.  Mom is always away, she's running for Congress, only returning for photo-ops.  Daddy's a judge and he's also an alcoholic, control freak.

It was almost a 600 page book, and I had the big twist figured out in the first 150 or so.  I think if I hadn't figured it out, I would have stopped reading.  It made some of the shock value stuff seem less out-and-out shock value.  I'd explain why, but if you still plan to read this, or are reading it and haven't figured out the big twist, I won't give it away for you.

I think that Ellen Hopkins is an incredibly talented author, I actually enjoyed the prose - and I am not a poetry person, not even a little.  What soured this book for me is that I didn't think she was actually tackling the big issue, I think she was writing to get a rise.  And she got one, but not in a good way.

I think that I'd be interested to read Crank, because that was based on her daughter, so it will probably be less shock-value and more actual value.