The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender Paperback – September 22, 2015

Why I chose this book:Honestly, I knew nothing about this book before I opened the cover. Even after reading the synopsis, I couldn't tell you what it was about. I had no clue why I wanted to read it so badly, but I did. So, I filled out a purchase request at the library, and when it came in--slightly before the release date--I had to sneak a peek. And I almost couldn't put it down. 4 Things You Should Know:1. This is not your grandma's love story.Ava may be the main character, but the book is about more than just her. The women of the Roux family have a long and sorrowful history of ill-fated love, which Ava catalogues faithfully, beginning with her great-grandmother. Told from Ava’s contemporary point-of-view, she chronicles the lives and deaths of her ancestors, as well as the peculiarly tragic ways in which love made fools of them. Ava herself does not reach the story of her own life until the middle of the book. When I encounter a novel like this, one that reaches far back into the ancestral well of despair, I usually grumble, sigh, and settle in for the ride, prepared to make the requisite investment in past lives and hoping the payoff at the end will be worth it. However, this was not the case. At all. I was as riveted by the three previous generations of Roux women as I was by Ava herself. Each character was so carefully recorded, each taking turns in the spot-light, that my heart was breaking alongside of theirs at every turn of the page.2. Is this real life?Magical realism--the straight-faced portrayal of events and circumstances so obviously otherworldly--is one of my favorite literary devices, and Walton folds magic into her prose so beautifully, I never question the little oddities that plague the Roux family. Her great grand-mere simply dissolves into a pile of dust. One great aunt transforms into a canary, the other carves out her own heart, and they both insist on haunting Ava’s grandmother. Ava’s mother has a nose able to distill someone’s very essence from the air. Her brother is a fairly mute boy with a talent for drawing maps and talking to ghosts, while Ava herself is born with the speckled wings of a bird. All these things seem highly unbelievable, yet Walton so tenderly relays these facts that I don’t doubt her for a single syllable.3. WhimsicalityQuirky, eccentric, playful, quaint. Call it what you want, but Walton’s writing is marvelous. Literary without being pompous and whimsical without reaching the outlandish, Walton’s writing had me swooning from page one. Her seamless fusion of magical realism and a documentary-like structure melds in the gentle cadence of her lyrical prose. Every sentence had me rapt, and I could’t turn the pages fast enough.4. Let me count the waysWalton tackles every kind of love you can think of, from filial, to platonic, unrequited and purely lustful. She unrelentingly shows how each of these can destroy you, and how that destruction can define you. But she also demonstrates the maddeningly human quality of choosing, again and again, to love. She begs the ultimate question of why it is we love, and presents an answer both poignant and optimistic.Final ThoughtsHeartbreaking, haunting, and yet strangely hopeful, this book was so very unlike anything else I've read. It was oddly whimsical and literary, two things that don't often pop up in YA. But it was also heartfelt and utterly engrossing. Less than three pages in, I was hooked. By fifty pages, I was on Amazon ordering my own copy, knowing full well I would finish the book before the package even came. The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender just may be my favorite read of the year.More reviews at [...]

I really enjoyed this book. I was inclined to give it five stars, but I also tend to give anything I like five stars, so I'm trying to make my personal rating system a little tougher and save the five-star ratings for all-time favorites.The prose is lyrical, the plot is interesting (if a little odd, requiring you to stop wondering where it's going and just enjoy it), and the characters are worthwhile and unusual. It took me a bit to get used to the storytelling style, but I wound up enjoying it quite a lot. It's strange and beautiful, so it lives up to its title. I'm really glad I read it.The book takes a lot of very unusual things for granted (people turning into birds, being able to read omens, slowly fading away until turning into piles of ash, etc), which made for a very darkly whimsical read. The weirdest thing about it, which shouldn't have worked but somehow did, is the point of view. It's told in the first person by Ava, the main character. At the same time, she's essentially an omniscient narrator who knows more than it seems like she could about what other characters are thinking and feeling (especially when she's recounting stories that happened long before she was born). I'm not sure why it worked for it me, but it did, and it was lovely.Now for what I didn't like:*spoiler alert*Next paragraph tells the ending of the book, so don't read it unless you've already read the book.I think that the moment that most of the plot builds to (if you haven't read the book and don't want it spoiled, I'm trying to bury this spoiler in a paragraph of text so it doesn't jump out--so stop reading now!) is the violent attack on the main character, Ava. I understand why it happens and it is necessary to the plot. However, I don't love the use of rape and attempted murder as a character development tool: before she's raped and her wings are cut off, Ava cannot fly and feels out of sorts with her life; after the attack, she has a long convalescence, but her wings grow back with pure white feathers (instead of speckled brown) and she is able to fly. It could be interpreted as growth through adversity, but I just think there are a lot of potentially unintended messages being conveyed (e.g. that the rape "purifies" her or is necessary in some way to her development and freedom as a human being). This isn't a huge issue, because I know this isn't the only way to interpret these events, but it is something that trips me up in books (the same thing happens, at least symbolically, in the Disney movie Maleficent).

Gosh... I just loved this book!Written with a refreshingly creative pen...adore the character development and resilience and strength of the female characters.Highly recommend for the dreamers of possibility

Escogí este libro por una recomendación y no me arrepiento de nada. De los mejores libros que he leído, sin embargo, no es para todos. Tiene rasgos de realismo mágico. Se sigue a tres generaciones de mujeres a través de sus vidas y vemos como el amor nos afecta.

A beautiful cover and lush writing. It's my all time fav book and I don't see why you won't order it. It's magical realism and content warning for rape and abuse but just read it because it's such a unique read. Not a love story but so much about love.

J'ai dévoré ce livre. Bien écrit, poétique, intéressant... une de mes meilleurs lectures depuis longtemps!

This is a beautiful and simply heartwarming tale which left me enchanted.Don't be fooled - although (at least partly) written from the view of a 16-year old girl (who also lent the book its title) it's less of a ya novel, but more of a family saga, covering 3 generations, 3 different places and various haps and mishaps.The style reminded me of certain Tim Burton movies, the french movie "Amélie" or the series "Pushing daisies". So people who like these kind of things will most certainly also fall in love with this story.The characters are all odd and quirky, yet utterly delightful and endearing.A number of charming details and enjoyable occurrences or oddities as well as a lighthearted pace easily balance out the slightly tragic keynote of the novel.It's difficult to be more specific on the storyline as it is such a rich and varied flow, featuring more than just one main character.Once picked up it is hard to put the book down. It strongly pulls the reader into its own little world and also reads very fluently. No annoying language or spelling mistakes.After finishing it, I didn't want to read anything else for a while (which rarely ever happens as I usually am addicted to books) - it was enough to just let this story settle a bit and store it in my heart.