summer vacation + young adult fiction

Last week my family went to The Middle Of Nowhere, MI. We stayed there for a week. It was great for me. Books, fudge, and a 32-mile bike ride. For my sister... well...

The showers were a little short.

The water was a little cold.

But she's still really pretty.

I began and completed two books over the week (aside from A Year of Biblical Womanhood and most of The Idiot: Lois Lowry's Son and Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.

It's been a while since I've let myself read popular fiction, but I liked them both. Why? They don't answer all the questions.

Lots of people on goodreads have been throwing fits over both books, because both leave lots of annoying open room at the end. They don't tie off all of the fraying ropes. There are things you want for the main characters that you just don't get. That they just don't get.

Both Lowry and Card, even within the context of weird, futuristic worlds where kids have unprecedented 'powers' and all of civilization depends on a teenager, stay true to reality. There is no deus ex machina. No implausible solutions to insoluble problems. This is probably more true for Son than Ender's Game, but I'd say it holds for both.

And even though there was no crazy 'perfect ending' that answered every question I might ask, there were... endings. Endings that resolved the main tension that had driven the plot to that point. They fulfilled my list of ending requirements that I came up with on the spot back in June. So I'm happy.

My biggest beef with Ender's Game was probably that the thing identified through most of the book as The Real Enemy is left completely undealt with and undiscussed after the climax. Hrumph.