Lower East Side Librarian

I'm not going to tell you what this novel is about because if I'd known before I read it, I wouldn't have done so. I grabbed the bookjacketless novel off the shelf at Barnard because I loved the author's previous novel.

In Roth's future dystopia, people are divided into five factions, based on shared aversions to particular evils (selfishness, cowardice, lies, divisiveness, and ignorance). They get to decide at age 16, whether they want to stick with the faction their parents chose or try their luck with a new one. If it were me, I'd pick Erudite, the faction that thinks that ignorance is the world's greatest problem, but it turns out that in Roth's vision, the Erudite are fascistic.

Alice Bag, whose name was Anglicized from Alicia in elementary school, and whose last name is a moniker from her late 70s punk band The Bags, shares her coming-of-age story in short, episodic chapters, that are not unlike punk songs. They're hard and fast and sometimes leave you wanting to slam into something. The essays are not polished, a characteristic that takes nothing away, and adds to their authenticity.

A 14-year-old Edward R. Murrow enthusiast takes on a private school secret society. Iris is a sad person, as are the other two narrators, but reading the book doesn't make you feel totally blue the way some stories about depressed people do.

I knew Alison Bechdel was brilliant, but I didn't realize she was so smart. Her memoir about her relationship with her mother is multilayered, in that it's about psychology, psychiatry, and psychotherapy; literature, feminism, and aging & menopause (maybe I'm reading these last two into it a bit), as well about how Ma & Alison Bechdel did or didn't and do or don't get along.

I mentioned in my review of Delirium, the first book in Oliver's dystopian trilogy, that I was already halfway through Pandemonium when I was writing that review. I didn't mention that in order to procure Pandemonium, I left work about 90 minutes earlier than usual (since the closest branch of NYPL that had it was closing at 7). In other words, I was hooked.

As I write this, I'm halfway finished with the second book in the trilogy that begins with Delirium. My sister was right that Delirium is way better than Oliver's first book, Before I Fall.