Going Bovine by Libba Bray

I'm going to break the format, guys.
I'm gonna do it.
Don't even try to stop me.
I'm too excited.

See, Going Bovine is incredible. Incredible.
It's better than the also-amazing Gemma Doyle Trilogy.
I swear upon all that is good and true that I am not kidding.

See, there's this kid, Cameron. He has mad cow disease. He's going to die. Up until now, Cameron's life has been a painstaking study in apathy. He's a C+ student with a fondness for pot, who rather likes the idea of wandering into another person's life, and staying there. Neither joy nor wonder has entered the equation since that one time at Disney World. He was five. Eleven years later, as his mind begins to spongify and die on him, he starts to learn what it means to live.

It starts with Dulcie, an atypical angel (hallucination?) who tells him that there's a cure held by a mysterious doctor, but he must quest for it. Also, he has to save the world while he's at it.

Now, Cameron's pissed about the whole dying thing, so he asks himself a question, and that question is "Why the hell not?"

That one question sets him off on a cross-country journey with feathers and personal ads as his maps and a video-gaming dwarf with a wicked 'fro and a Norse lawn gnome as his stalwart companions. They meet physicists and monsters, drag queens and jazz legends. They get lost. They get drunk. They find necessary parts. They fall in love.

But the beeps of hospital monitors are never far off. So is it real? Does it matter?

And dudes, it is so frickin' good. I don't even know if I can convey how much I loved this book.
First off, it's about so much, but not in a convoluted, I-am-trying-too-hard-to-say-everything-ever sort of way. It's about important things. Little things. Things that we think are little but turn out important.

It's about love. Life. Dying. Mythology¹. Happiness. True Things. Popcorn.

Plus it's funny. Really, laugh-out-(very)-loud funny. Libba Bray manages to do this thing with her writing where she makes you want to pee your pants laughing (or, you know, just annoy the crap out of your roommate) one paragraph, then makes you cry with the aforementioned "True Things" the next. More than a few times, it's the same paragraph².

Finally--and this is something I'm officially uberimpressed with--Libba Bray can write from the perspective of a sixteen-year-old male better than any other female author I can think of. Never once did I lose the sense of Cameron's guy-ness. It was awesome. So yeah. Many, many compliments to the chef.

So basically, I loved it. Hands down my favorite book of 2009.

Do I even need to say it?


Going bovine, and yours...


1.There's a reference to Iphigenia. It practically made me die of delight.
2. I even dog-eared a bunch of pages due to the beauty/hilarity of passages. I never dog-ear my pages. It usually makes me angry. But this time, I kind of had to.

Lisa Mantchev...

... rocks! First of all, she wrote a fabulous book (which we reviewed recently). And then she granted us an interview. See? Rockin'.

To recap our format: The first part = nine normal questions, the second = seven fill-in-the-blank questions and the third = a list of eight favorite YA books, for your reading pleasure.

So, without further ado, we present our interview with the lovely Lisa Mantchev.

Yours,

Part the First
1. If you could play any role in any production during any period in history what would it be, when would it be, and why?
I'd love to be in the original production of the Peter Pan musical. Or My Fair Lady. Or...

2. Of Bertie's hair-coloring adventures, which is your favorite?
That's a tie between the Cobalt Flame of the original book and the ones that haven't happened yet. I'm considering colors for the third book right now!

3. Have you any advice for aspiring authors/actors?
Treat the writing like a job... put your backside in the chair, log the hours, behave professionally both online and off.

4. Who's your favorite Disney Princess?
Belle from Beauty and the Beast. She always had her nose stuck in a book.

5. So one morning you're taking a stroll in your neighborhood, right? It's pretty cool. The sun is shining, the birds are singing... it seems that nothing could go wrong. Until you trip on a crack in the sidewalk and land in a bush. When you get up and brush yourself off, you realize you're not on the street anymore. In fact, it looks as though you've stepped into a different time. You've stumbled upon a secret garden and it is now, inexplicably, dusk. Straight ahead, there is a crumbling wishing well. A wren alights on your shoulder and tells you that the well will deliver a letter--written by you--to your teenage self. What will you write in the letter?
"Dear Lisa,

When you get to college, there's a chance you'll start writing a lot of thesis papers and drop the creative writing for several years.

DON'T.

Love,

You In The Future"

6. What was your favorite book when you were a teenager?
I read Diana Gabaldon's Outlander until the cover fell off. And no, I didn't drop it in the bathtub. Repeatedly. Stop looking at me like that! *flees*

7. Ask yourself the question you wish we'd ask you. Then answer it.
What's your favorite holiday? Oh, I'm so glad I asked me that. Halloween, definitely. It's all about the costuming, the candy, walking in the dark with flashlights, pumpkin cake, hot apple cider... I love Christmas, too, but that holiday comes wrapped up with more stress. Halloween is just about the joy, the glee, the CHOCOLATE.

8. The works of William Shakespeare obviously play a huge part in Eyes Like Stars. What is your favorite of his plays? Bertie's favorite?
I personally love Much Ado About Nothing (hence Bertie's full name of Beatrice) and Taming of the Shrew. Bertie's favorite... probably A Midsummer Night's Dream, considering who she spends her time with...

9. Have Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed got anything to say to us?

Peaseblossom: The answer is forty-two!

Moth: No! The answer is always "chocolate cupcakes!"

Mustardseed: (shoving him) That was my line!
Cobweb: I, for one, am outraged by the total lack of manners being displayed here today...

(The others sit upon him and stuff tiny, dirty socks in his little piehole.)

Part the Second
1. If I were a faerie, I would... sparkle all the time instead of just in the sunlight.
2. If I could be anything other than a writer, I would be... Queen of Quite A Lot.
3. If I ruled the world... dessert would be mandatory.
4. Unicorns are awesome because... they are transportation and impaling device all in one.
6. High school was... better in retrospect than I thought it was at the time.
7. Yesterday, I... painted my garden fence. And part of my arm. Also, my knee. And the sidewalk.

Part the Third
List your eight favorite YA books.

1. The Shoes series by Noel Streatfeild

2. The Looking Glass Wars series by Frank Beddor

3. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

4. A Little Princess and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

5. Anything by Terry Pratchett

6. Flora Segunda by Ysabeau Wilce

7. Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink

8. A Most Improper Magick (forthcoming in 2010) by Stephanie Burgis