If You Want to Make God Laugh by Bianca Marais

IF YOU WANT TO MAKE GOD LAUGH by Bianca Marais deserves a spot in your “to be read” pile. The story takes place in South Africa in the mid-1990s as Mandela is elected president.  There are three narrators: Delilah, a former nun and aid worker; Ruth, her flamboyant, alcoholic sister who is about to get a divorce; and Zodwa, a young Zulu girl struggling with her sexual orientation and an unexpected pregnancy. Originally from South Africa, Marais intertwines the characters’ stories with the changes in that country, its racial conflicts and attitudes, and the growing AIDS epidemic. The white middle-aged sisters, who had been estranged for decades, reunite at their family home and are forced by economics to learn to live together. Delilah carries guilt and regret for past actions, saying “the past wasn’t a place you could just walk away from; it was something you carried with you your entire life, and year upon year as your arms got weaker, the burden just got heavier and harder to bear.” Ruth sees signs in everything and alludes to her “belief that I’ve been having a lifelong conversation with the universe just as profound as the one she’s [Delilah’s] been having with God.” One of those signs is a pair of knitted blue booties and the subsequent abandonment of a newborn baby on their porch. The decision to foster this black child is not an easy one and the story is full of loss and hardship mingled with love and courage. There’s a thread of feminism, too, with comments on “it was a girl’s duty to grin and bear it. No matter what any man did, she absolutely wasn’t to make a fuss. … a dysfunctional way to be raised.” Yet, the sisters and Zodwa persevere and find their way in this well-written second novel.  As Ruth says, “Maybe we’re all born with that piece of us missing and our life’s journey is about finding it. Finding the one thing that makes us whole.”

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

Earlier this month, Simon & Schuster’s Atria imprint released US AGAINST YOU by Fredrik Backman; it is the sequel to Beartown, a book which has generated some lengthy discussions at our high school. The stories in both novels take place at a small town where hockey championships are truly a focus and “kids get raised with the philosophy ‘the stats never lie.’ Either you’re the best, or you’re everyone else.” As the new novel opens, reverberations from a sexual assault by one of the key players are still being felt and there is talk of disbanding the team. “The idiots won’t say it was Kevin who killed Beartown Ice Hockey, they’ll say ‘the scandal’ killed the club. … their real problem isn’t that Kevin raped someone, but that Maya got raped. … Women are always the problem in the men’s world.”

The story is classic Backman (he also wrote A Man Called Ove and others), with much empathy for those with less power and with anger against the bureaucracy: “it is divided in the way that all worlds are divided between people: between those who are listened to, and those you aren’t” OR “sports are only sports until someone who doesn’t give a damn about sports has something to gain from them, then sports suddenly become economics.” Once again, Backman gives readers much to discuss in US AGAINST YOU which received a starred review from Library Journal. 

Wrecked by Maria Padian

Wrecked by Maria Padian is an extremely powerful book about sexual assault on campus which will speak to high school students, especially girls. Here, Jenny, a quiet student, goes out drinking and subsequently accuses a fellow student (Jordan) of rape. She asks her freshman roommate, Haley, to act as confidante and advisor in the campus hearing process. The situation quickly becomes even more complicated because of Haley’s attraction to “math dude” Richard who lives in the same campus housing as Jordan. College administrators, parents and lawyers all add adult perspective, although their emotions and motivations are often in conflict with the students’ own choices.

Haley and Richard tell most of the post-party events in alternating third person chapters, with occasional flashbacks to the fateful night. I agree with the starred review from Booklist which described Wrecked as having “a swift, excellently crafted plot, exceedingly readable prose, and painfully relatable characters.” School Library Journal calls Wrecked “a book that all young men and women should read,” recommending it for students in grade 10 and up. Our copy is on order.

Numerous sources and statistics are available about this important subject. In addition to the media coverage of the Brock Turner case at Stanford, CQ Researcher has published a recent 2014 report and Jon Krakauer’s Missoula provides another (non-fiction) overview of college sexual assault.  More information:

• Journalist’s Resource: http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/public-health/sexual-assault-rape-us-college-campuses-research-roundup
• Campus Sexual Violence Resource List from the CDC http://www.nsvrc.org/saam/campus-resource-list
• NPR article on what High Schools can do http://www.npr.org/2016/08/09/487497208/to-prevent-sexual-assault-schools-and-parents-start-lessons-early