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Yellow Cake (2011)

by Margo Lanagan(Favorite Author)

3.33 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1849921113 (ISBN13: 9781849921114)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

David Fickling Books (PB)

review 1: Lanagan, M. (2013). Yellowcake stories. New York: Random House/Knopf. 225 pp. ISBN: 978-0-375-86920-4. (Hardcover); $16.99.Many folks routinely tell me that Margo Lanagan’s books are for adults—precisely why I like to recommend them to students and high school teachers! Ever since Black Juice burst onto the scene, winning a Printz Honor and teaching people like me new ways to consider elephants (among other things), I have relished each new collection of short stories and each new novel. Yellowcake is no exception. While many of these ten stories feature death in various guises, what readers will discover (sometimes after much painful soul searching—and re-reading) is the fiercely beautiful celebration of life. Take Into the Clouds on High, for example. In this sto... morery a mother feels a calling. This “calling,” however, is one that will take the mother from the family and into the hereafter or into heaven or, most basically, into death. Her son, Marcus, must navigate the mother’s departure, and help guide the father and the family along. As with any Lanagan story collection (White Time, Red Spikes, Black Juice), Lanagan eschews simple problem/resolution approaches in favor of characters muddling along and trying to figure out what to do while lost in a very different world than the one most readers recognize. These ten stories include many that were originally published elsewhere (Into the Clouds on High is the only story written specifically for this collection). This collection of stories is perfect for those high school readers (or adults) who appreciate a challenge, one that forces them to daydream and speculate, sometimes while hanging on the thread of a story and the ideas generated by the strange and twisted world that is Lanagan.
review 2: Interesting and haunting stories. A few will really stay with me. I enjoyed the first two, and Catastrophic Disruption of the Head, but others left me wanting more or even more confused. From the inside flap, I thought the stories would start normal and then sneak me into the strange. I feel that there were some cultural differences that I didn't quite get in some of the stories.I also wonder how this is billed as YA. It reads on a more adult level to me (especially how dark Catastrophic Disruption of the Head read). Could be my reading experience, but I worry that this is really more of an adult title being marketed as YA just because of her previous works (I admit, I could be wrong. This was my first reading of the author). less

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