Unhooking the Moon: A Great Title and an Extremely Odd Book

Unhooking the Moon by Gregory Hughes

This book is not at all what I expected.  I knew it was classified as a children’s book, but I didn’t expect the writing to be quite so juvenile.  It was supposed to be written by an adolescent boy so it might have been an intentional choice on the author’s part.  I loved The Rat from the beginning.  She was odd and embraced her uniqueness to such a full extent that it was difficult not to love her.  All of the people The Rat and her brother (and the narrator), Bob, ran into during the story seemingly felt the same way – a bizarre array of hodgepodge characters that two kids came across on their surreal adventure from Canada to New York and trolling the streets of the city for their uncle.  The story was a bit darker than I expected.  I knew the kids parents died, but tons of light-hearted stories start with orphans.  The Rat has seizures that the doctors can’t explain and when she is recovering from them, she sees strange things, possibly the future.  She handles it well, but it is a little unsettling.  

However, for the most part, the first three-quarters of this book gave me a Pippi Longstocking kind of vibe.  They bury their dad in the backyard, smuggle themselves onto a train, live in Central Park, hustle for money in Times Square… crazy things happen and these kids are put in some odd scenarios, but they get through everything in a funny and dynamic way. 

Okay, SPOILERS AHEAD.  Seriously, stop reading now if you haven’t finished the book completely.

[I didn't really drink much tea while I was reading this one - it was so hot, I just wanted ice water and more ice water.]

I was completely thrown by the ending.  The Rat was always seeing angels and pedophiles, but I didn’t expect there to be actual pedophiles – I took them as her way of naming bad people – and children in real and scary danger.  The Rat, along with her motley crew of sidekicks, save the children from a horrific orphanage, but in the process almost everyone gets seriously injured.  Characters you know get shot and stabbed and attacked – they all live, but still…  What kind of a children’s book has a big gunfight climax while saving children from the pedophiles and murders running a twisted orphanage?  I enjoyed the book, but I think it would’ve been so much better had the author written with a more mature and polished voice and the book had not been marketed for children.  I picked it up expecting a light-hearted and funny adventure about two kids traveling on their own in search of their uncle after their father dies.  This book has that, but it has so much more that makes it pretty inappropriate for children.  The very, very end makes it even worse.  The Rat breaks.  When we catch up to modern day, narrator-Bob is 16, instead of 12 as he is when all the action happens, and The Rat is in a psychiatric hospital and pretty much catatonic.  She can walk if she’s led, but she doesn’t speak or acknowledge anything that is happening.  She has detached from reality… and she’s been like that for four years!  Bob likens it to them being separated by one-way glass with no door.  He can see her in there, but she can’t see or connect with him and he can’t get to where she is.  It ends with him promising to always be there for her and to figure out how to bring her back someday… WTF?

And if the Rat's condition couldn't be diagnosed or treated (which Bob disclosed fairly early on), how did Bob know that she would deteriorate (at the end, he reveals to the reader that his father warned him that that might happen)?  Why would someone assume deterioration if they have no idea why she's having seizures?  And this story is supposed to be (relatively) modern-day... how can no one figure out what's wrong with her?  It's just some mysterious and miraculous (if she really is seeing the future) condition.   

Overall, I liked it, but I think I would’ve liked it much more had I been even slightly prepared for the ending.

And to end on a lighter note, I loved this line:  "If people looked at the stars more often, they'd see how big the universe is and how small we are in it and then their troubles wouldn't seem so large."

While I like the line, I think lots of people would feel small in a bad way... but that's alright because I don't.

"It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at."

tea: all of the maté. because sleep is for sane people.
tunes: teenage shoegaze, e.g. Cherry Glazerr, Girls, Mr. Elevator and the Brain Hotel. also Courtney Barnett.

The Bell Jar. First off, it took me WAY too long to read this book. Ever since I saw the movie 10 Things I Hate About You (15-odd years ago), this book was on my list. That being said, I am really glad I didn't read this book when I was younger. I do not recommend it if you are not in a somewhat-stable place.

The Bell Jar is a narrative of insanity. Writer Esther Greenwood is intelligent, successful, and full of that dreaded word - potential. The novel opens in New York City, where Esther is at a prestigious internship for a women's magazine. Almost immediately upon her return to her hometown near Boston, Esther begins to lose her ability to read, eat, and sleep. She grows paranoid and suicidal. She is unable to write. She sees a frighteningly asinine psychiatrist, receives the 1960s' favorite treatment for mental illness, and attempts suicide before spending the remainder of the book in a fairly ritzy mental hospital.

One of the most striking things about this book is it's cavalier tone. As depressed as Esther is, and as truly dramatic as her situation is, the writing is extremely commonplace and dispassionate. It seemed a much more accurate depiction of depression to me. Esther talks about feeling "very still and very empty" and narrates as if she is watching her life rather than living it. I think this tone makes it all the more powerful.

I also enjoyed that - other than the psychological descent - The Bell Jar doesn't really have a throughline. It felt like a step above vignettes, which was both different/fun to read and helped give us the scattered, haphazard environment that Esther is surrounded by.

More than anything, though, I just fell in love with Sylvia Plath. Her writing is eloquent and real and poetic in an underscored kind of way.

Possibly my favorite quote from the book, other than the one I used to title this blog: "[W]herever I sat - on the deck of a ship or a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."