[This is a review of Morrissey's novel List of the Lost.
However I am unable to "connect" my post to the book as it is only available in the UK.

I also tried to "connect" this post to my own book because I mention it briefly, and I learned that booklikes has misspelled my name. Thanks so much, booklikes.]

I loved this novel. It was so strange and idiosyncratic, so different from anything else I’ve ever read. Morrissey writes like Daisy Ashford all grown up. Ostensibly set in Boston in the 1970s, the story actually took place in a surreal landscape that was not meant to have the verisimilitude of any particular time and place. I enjoyed the lyricism of the writing, and in particular I don’t think I have ever read any finer descriptions of death or awkward sex.

Usually in a book, you get a lot of warning when a character is going to die, but I was taken by surprise again and again and again here. And that’s what it’s actually like in real life. The random cruelty of death is put across very effectively in this story, and this is the realism created by the seeming unreality of the plot.

List of the Lost reminded me a lot of Gertrude Stein’s book of poetry Tender Buttons, which is also extremely unusual and non-conformist. Both of those books are so far from the mainstream that I struggle to explain/defend why I like them so much, because they’re indescribably lacking in point of reference. I think the key is that with these two books, I had to engage and grapple with them and so the experience is about me plus the book, rather than the usual experience where a book conforms to my expectations and plays a movie in my mind so I don’t really have to do any work.

I’m a writer, and in the publishing industry as a whole there’s incredible pressure to conform, conform, conform and please the gatekeepers and grab the reader by the throat in the opening paragraph. I really appreciate how Morrissey totally short circuited all that. It’s incredibly refreshing to see someone follow their own star and write whatever the hell they want and then get published by Penguin.

I was delighted or deeply moved from the first page to the last. One of the most affecting and true-to-life parts was the death of one of the character’s mothers. And something that just tickled me tremendously was an extended description of the TV show Bonanza. List of the Lost also surprisingly turned out to be something of a page turner. I started off reading it very slowly, wanting to savor it all and make sure I comprehended it, but by the end I was just racing through, wondering what would happen next.

As a big Morrissey fan, I enjoyed reading his time-honored themes (such as the perfidy of: the royal family, the police, the meat/murder industry, Margaret Thatcher, and child murderers) but this time through the medium of fiction. It was so his voice that I felt as though I was hearing him read aloud.

One of the most striking things was Morrissey’s iconoclastic disregard for what anyone thinks. It’s not just the evil people in power he’s unafraid to offend, it’s everyone. Does it seem backward and unhelpful to have the villain who’s a child molester and murderer also be a gay man who frequents drag clubs? Sure. Does Morrissey shrink from having one of his characters opine that some child victims are asking for it? No, he goes right ahead and includes this abhorrent idea. Although I’m usually so easily offended, none of this bothered me because I was just so taken with the irrepressible spirit of the story. (But trigger warning for these things!)

I can’t help but notice that a lot of people really don’t seem to like this book. I’m kind of baffled. Yes, it’s weird but it’s good. I do feel a special kinship with Morrissey’s unique sensibility, but so do a LOT of other people, and Morrissey fans are ten a penny. So...? I was wondering when I was reading it if part of the reason I loved it was just that I love Morrissey. But context can’t be escaped from, it’s always there, and if I like him wearing one hat why wouldn’t I like him wearing another hat, especially when he brings the same originality, passion, and elegiac quality to fiction as to songwriting. But I don’t think you need to bring some special knowledge to this novel in order to like it or “understand” it. In the opening, List of the Lost seemed plotless and it brought Balanchine’s plotless ballets to my mind. And I started thinking about what Balanchine said about watching ballet; you don’t have to know anything, you just open your eyes and look at it and think, Is this beautiful? Does this mean something to me? Do I like this? That was kind of what I was asking myself as I read this unusual book and the answer was always yes, yes, yes. But I am going to lend List of the Lost to my friend Rebecca who is one of the smartest people I know (and yet she does not listen to Morrissey and she teaches college English) to see what she makes of it. Obviously, as with any book, it’s a matter of taste, but where are the other folks who think this tastes delicious? Part of me wants to be this book’s champion because it isn’t being appreciated, but the rest of me realizes that this book can stand on its own two feet and does not need me of all people to be its champion. (Also, if Morrissey were unable to withstand bad reviews and mockery, then he could not be still alive today.)

Morrissey’s novel also made me think a lot about my own so-called writing. As it happens, my most recently published book was also a gothic romance. My number one concern was the portrayal and representation of marginalized people, but beyond that literally my only aims were to make the book as accessible and entertaining as I could. And now I feel like, why? Okay, I write YA instead of literary fiction, but what is so great about trying to please people? (Which by the way does not work.) Isn’t there more to writing than trying to churn out a potboiler that adheres to certain conventions of how a story is supposed to be told? What do I really have to say? If I cast aside everything I think I know about my narrative identity, who or what am I as a writer? Or am I even a writer? I believe I have a lot to learn from the unabashed individuality of List of the Lost.

Now I am going to get specific about some things that happen in the story, so if you don’t want to know what happens, it’s time for you to stop reading. Spoiler alert, okay?...

List of the Lost is about a college men’s relay team on the cusp of incredible success in their sport. The four runners are physically at the peak of perfection and they have an easy and loving friendship. Then they are at some sort of runners’ retreat, and in the woods they unexpectedly encounter a repulsive old vagrant who however has a sympathetic backstory which he relates in a long soliloquy. At that point I had to stop reading, so my mind was spinning about what would happen next. In the hands of a hack (i.e. like myself), the old man would lay a curse on them and then one by one some terrible supernatural thing would befall each runner and they would certainly not win their big race and perhaps some or all of them would die. Well, in a way that’s not too far off, but my version would be very Lois Duncan/Final Destination. What Morrissey actually chose to do, though, is for the old man to try to sexually assault Ezra, one of the runners. Ezra hits him and the man falls down stone dead. (Let me say again, people die very abruptly in this novel!) The friends hide the body and run off. Then not long after, Harri’s mother dies and while Harri is at the very bottom of despair, a drug dealer who may be some sort of ghost or may be just an ordinary drug dealer, sells Harri everything he needs to end his pain and die by suicide. The remaining three are wracked with sadness and start to question the point of everything. Then a ghost appears to Ezra asking him to uncover the body of her child who was murdered decades ago. Actually, I’m going to leave it at that. List of the Lost turned out to be far from plotless; there were a lot of exciting things that happened and there was a very clear trajectory to the action. But the plot was not the main thing. And I can’t deliver the “main thing” to you in a book review. You’re going to have to find out for yourself.

Top Seven:

Autobiography by Morrissey

This book gets the #1 spot even though actually I haven’t finished it yet. I figure you can only read a book for the first time once and I want to savor it. My girlfriend keeps all three copies we own locked in a trunk so that I won’t tear through it.

It is so rare that I can include human interest in this list! My girlfriend reads one copy while the other lies in readiness.

Turn Around Bright Eyes by Rob Sheffield

I wrote a long review here. This is a memoir about karaoke and true love.

Ziggyology: A Brief History of Ziggy Stardust by Simon Goddard

The author has some odd ideas, and the first 90 pages are about kabuki theater and the origin of the universe, but this is a really cool book. The conceit is that David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona was like a real person taking over Bowie’s life. There are a lot of crazy coincidences that will blow your mind. My favorite parts were 1) when Bowie finally saw the Velvet Underground live and then met Lou Reed but it turned out it wasn’t really Lou Reed at all 2) everything about Marc Bolan; he is presented as David Bowie’s doppelganger who is trying to sabotage him. Also there are some very nice photos, and the book design is gorgeous.

The cover

Wired Up: Glam, Proto Punk & Bubblegum European Picture Sleeves 1970-1976. ed by Mary Blount and Jeremy Thompson

A collection of insanely cool &/or indescribably weird ‘70s album covers, beautifully laid out art-book style. The pages open flat. There are some interesting short essays and interviews too. A few well-known bands are included, but the criteria is just distinctive European album cover art from a time when people would buy records based on what the sleeve looked like. My girlfriend gave me this book for Chuannukah which was great because it was something I really wanted but never would have gotten for myself.

So my girlfriend has learned how to have lucid dreams, and the next frontier is for me to mentally send her a picture while she is sleeping, which we both know is impossible but it’s fun to try. I used an image from this book for one of the pictures. This practice is very restful for me because when I wake up in the middle of the night instead of worrying about one thing and another, I can just think, “Red background, two glam Asian girls with long hair in kimono-style minidresses and silver knee high go go boots, Ride Captain Ride.” Then sometimes I fall right back to sleep.

Bowie: Album by Album by Paolo Hewitt

I debated with myself over whether or not to include this because I haven’t really read it yet, just looked at the pictures, so I wasn’t sure if it counted as a book I’ve read. Last year I didn’t include David Bowie Styles in my Best of 2012 because I only looked at the pictures. But I decided that I did read this in a coffee-table-book kind of way, even though this is more than a coffee table book. It’s just lovely.

Calling Dr. Laura by Nicole Georges

Fun, touching, lesbian, Portlandish graphic novel about a young woman finding out that her father is alive even though her mother said he was dead.

The Lost Daughter by Mary Williams

A memoir about growing up poor in a chaotic, neglectful family while her Black Panther father was imprisoned. One bright spot was going to a posh summer camp run by Jane Fonda. Mary confided in Jane Fonda about how she had been sexually assaulted, and Jane Fonda adopted her (in every sense except legally.) Mary had many adventures including working in Antarctica and running a non-profit for Sudanese “lost boys,” and then finally reconnected with her biological family. I felt there was something missing, a sense of the writer being able to sum up her whole life so far and say what it was all about, but I didn’t really care because it was interesting.

What Else?

Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road From Debt to Freedom by Ken Ilgunas

Kid pays off his college debt in three years by working in grim conditions in Alaska, then decides he can get through grad school with no debt if he lives in his van, and learns what freedom and autonomy really are.

After Visiting Friends by Michael Hainey

There was always some mystery surrounding Hainey’s father’s death, so Hainey finally decided to use his journalistic skills to uncover the truth. 

American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics by Dan Savage

You don’t have to agree with Dan Savage on everything to like this book. The parts that I remember best are when he has the head of the National Organization for Marriage over to his house for dinner so he can debate him, and the heartbreaking part when his mom dies.

Next Up: my favorite part! Best of 1913, and bonus 1813 and 2113!

Have I mentioned how handsome my cat is?

Top Ten:

Homeland by Cory Doctorow

Sequel to Little Brother. Whistleblowing, kidnapping by government agents, peaceful protests aided by technology, nerdy activism, the “War on Terror,” and Burning Man. This book is perfect. Very brief review here.

Rapture Practice by Aaron Hartzler

You don’t see a lot of YA memoir. This one is really terrific. About a boy growing up in a strict fundamentalist Christian family. Turns out, he’s gay. That sounds a bit ho-hum, but Hartzler tells his story in a really nuanced, compassionate, and funny way.

Proxy by Alex London

In my review, I said, “Think M.T. Anderson's Feed meets Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron, with some queer content thrown in.” In a world just like ours (only more so), a few are super-rich and everyone else is in debt they can never pay off. When the rich break the rules, their proxies are punished for them. What happens when a Patron and Proxy meet? I realize that this summary makes it seem kind of porn-y, but it’s not.

This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales (Author’s original title: “Last of the Famous International Party Girls,” then “My Suicide Playlist.”)

Elise has been bullied at school forever and is getting quietly desperate. Then she stumbles upon a secret nighttime warehouse dance party and meets dreamy Char (short for “DJ This Charming Man”), who teaches her to be a DJ. Elise’s life is completely transformed by music and meeting people who. . . it’s not that they don’t care about being cool, they just have a wildly different sense of what being cool means.   

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

I kept reading reviews of this book, and the synopsis always made me say, “Feh.” But after encountering so many rave reviews, I decided to try it, and I loved it. Let’s see if this synopsis makes you say “Feh.”

It’s 1986, in Omaha, and the story is told in alternating viewpoints. Eleanor’s life is awful because her abusive stepfather won’t allow her to have things like toiletries and new clothes. Because of the above and the fact that she’s fat and has a kooky sense of style, everyone at school thinks she’s a freak. Park, who sits next to her on the bus, thinks so too, but over time he lets her read his comics over his shoulder. Then he notices she has Smiths song titles written on her notebook, but it turns out that she’s never actually heard the Smiths because of course she has no cassettes. This is the most depressing thing Park has ever heard, so he makes her a tape. True love blossoms.

This book kind of has everything because it’s nerdy, it’s sexy, it’s sad and it’s uplifting. Also mostly it seems like stark realism but there’s one pivotal thing that the abusive stepfather does that in the context of the novel is creepy, but when you compare it to real life, it’s like, wow, if only real abusive adults would leave it at that and not do the actual stuff they do. So it’s kind of a mix of realism and wish fulfillment. The writing is so strong that it actually made me question one of the core elements of my being: the fact that I hate the Joy Division song “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” Eleanor and Park describe this song so lovingly and make it sound so awesome that I thought, “Hmm, I must be wrong.” But no, I still don’t like it.

Also, there’s a the lack of diversity in YA and it’s very rare to have an Asian/biracial protagonist (Park is Korean and white) especially in a love story, so that was cool.

Darius & Twig by Walter Dean Myers

Two friends, a writer and a runner, have big ambitions, but it’s hard to get by in Harlem where they live. Walter Dean Myers is a national treasure—no, he’s a treasure for the whole planet.

More Than This by Patrick Ness

This is no ordinary book. The really cool cover that has a tiny door in it led me to hope that might be the case, and then my dreams came true. As the book opens, the main character Seth drowns. Then he wakes up, in what seems to be his childhood home in England, but the whole neighborhood is deserted. Or is it? You can’t take anything at face value in this book. If you look back at my review (in Best of 2013: Fiction) of The Arrivals by Melissa Marr that has a somewhat similar plot, you’ll see that I questioned whether whether true conceptual originality is even possible. Well, this novel shows that it is, perversely because it plays with the tropes that we’re all so accustomed to. Is any of the stuff that happens to Seth even really happening? If that sounds annoying, well, it is. When I finished the book, I felt frustrated, because even though the story was delivering the true nature of reality (as follows: you have no idea what’s real), I expect a book to have a certain novelistic sense of closure and explanation because it’s not real life, it’s a book. But then I kept on thinking about this book for a long time so I decided that it was a very profound reading experience where a little bit of frustration was okay. Similar to the experience I had with The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann except that this book is quick and fun and easy to read and has a lot of action and also queer content.

Stealing Second: Sam’s Story by Barbara Clanton

Full disclosure: Barbara Clanton is a writer friend. I have read almost all of her books and enjoyed them all. This book is in a series about lesbian high school baseball players, and this is my new favorite in the series. Each book in the series is told from a different POV. This one is about Sam, a poor little rich girl who doesn’t have much of a relationship with her parents, but luckily she has a close friendship with her childhood nanny, who has stayed on as a sort of family retainer. Sam has a girlfriend Lisa who she’s very happy with but Sam doesn’t feel ready to come out yet. There is a big plot twist that took me by surprise. Brief review here.

Another 365 Days by KE Payne

Sequel to 365 Days. Basically a lesbian Diary of Adrian Mole. Fluffy and fun. I love the main character Clemmie’s daft ways and the fun British slang like “fit as the butcher’s dog.”

The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau

It’s not the plot that makes this book great. This is standard dystopian fare—teens living under evil regime must compete in a contest where only some will come out alive, &c. It’s just really tight and well-written and fun. A total page turner.

What else?

Fan Girl by Rainbow Rowell

A girl’s first year in college seems doomed because all she wants to do is write slash fanfiction and her identical twin sister wants to individuate herself from her, but then there’s a dreamy boy.

Unthinkable by Nancy Werlin

Companion novel/sequel to Impossible. A girl who has been trapped in a fairy realm is told she can leave, if she destroys her family.

The Reluctant Assassin by Eoin Colfer

Victorian orphan and child FBI agent must foil evil time travel plot.

Thorn Abbey by Nancy Ohlin

A retelling of Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca, set in a boarding school (just like in New Girl, one of the 2012 retellings.) Has a cool supernatural element and twisty ending. 

The Culling by Steven Dos Santos

It’s that rarest of creatures, a gay dystopian YA novel! Teens living under evil regime must compete in a contest where only some will come out alive, plus queer content.

Shadows by Robin McKinley

Maggie lives in a world where magic is possible but forbidden. She doesn’t like her new stepfather because he has strange shadows that follow him around.

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

I admire this book because it is the first YA novel that has two boys kissing on the cover. I think it was clever of Levithan to base the book on the true story of two guys breaking the world record for longest kiss. I esteem Levithan for promoting diversity in YA even further by having one of his seven gay male teen main characters in the book be Korean-American and another be transgender. And in theory I appreciate the idea of having the book narrated by a Greek chorus of gay men who have died of AIDS. Everything about this book gave me the warm fuzzies, except for the reading it part. To be completely candid, I was incredibly bored every single second I was reading this book and I couldn’t wait for it to be over. It’s fair to say that I encountered this book at the absolute lowest point in my life (so far), and that may have something to do with my inability to jump on the love train for Two Boys Kissing.

In The After by Demitria Lunetta

Zombielike creatures have taken over the world but Amy has managed to survive for several years with a toddler in her fortress-like apartment. A chain of events leads her to a compound that’s safe from the creatures, but will this protected colony turn out to be a dystopia?

The Loop by Shandy Lawson

Ben and Maggie are forced to repeat the same two days that end in their deaths, over and over.

Moxie and the Art of Rule-Breaking by Erin Dionne

A girl gets involved in an art heist and treasure hunt in Boston. This book is actually Middle Grade (for pre-adolescents), not YA.

You Look Different in Real Life by Jennifer Castle

Along with four other kids, Justine is the subject of a series of documentaries (like the 7 Up series.) That was all very well and good when she was little, but now it’s ruining her life.

All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill

A girl must travel back in time to kill someone. You won’t be surprised by anything that happens, but hey, time travel is always fun.

Tides by Betsy Cornwell

It’s about selkies! Also featuring eating disorders, transracial adoption, and queer content. Why do paranormal stories always involve a romance with a really creepy age gap?

The Shade of the Moon by Susan Beth Pfeffer

The final (?) book in this series about what happens when the moon is knocked out of orbit, unleashing cosmic destruction on the earth.

The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry

Thriller about a girl who wakes up with amnesia and someone is trying to kill her.

Dance of Shadows by Yelena Black

Girl discovers sinister happenings at prestigious New York City ballet school. Full review here.

Next up: 2013 Non-fiction/Memoir

This is taking longer than I thought, so it might be a few days.