Putting Makeup on Dead People

Title: Putting Makeup on Dead People
Author: Jennifer Violi
Reading Level: Young Adult
Release Date: July 26, 2011

Donna comes to a startling revelation at the funeral of a classmate. She wants to be a mortician. She hasn’t cared about much since her father died four years ago but she can feel that this is something she really wants. She has just been going through the motions with her friend and family but with this decision, everything in her life starts to change. There is a quote from Rumi in the book that says, “Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are a hundred ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” Donna decides to try to find her way to do that, whether it is spending time with her new Wiccan best friend, learning to “love the whole person” in mortuary school, being with her new artist boyfriend, or just finding out who she is.

Right after reading this book, the grandmother of someone close to me died. I was always horrified by the idea of looking at dead bodies and had always managed to avoid it in the past. I’m so glad I read it because it really helped me understand that the funeral, the makeup, the viewing, they were all for us, the people who were still living. And the people who do the work behind it are giving dignity to our loved one and the chance to mourn and say goodbye for us. This was the perfect book at the right time for me. Even without this, it is an excellent story.

The Bottom Line: Putting Makeup on Dead People is an excellent book about finding yourself in the face of what other people think is right for you. And you can find out a little bit about being a mortician along the way.

The publisher provided me with an advanced reader’s copy of the book for this review. Putting Makeup on Dead People has an expected release date of July 26, 2011.

Pretty Dead

Title: Pretty Dead
Author: Francesca Lia Block

Reading Level: Young Adult

Location: YA Block

Fans of Twilight will most likely pick up Pretty Dead as a read-alike. Sadly, many of those fans will be very disappointed. Francesca Lia Block is a talented writer who revolutionized both the fantasy and LGBT genre for teens in the 90s and 00s. When I heard she wrote a vampire story, I had high hopes. I read the book in one day but didn't realize until after finishing it that the reason I was flying through it was because I wanted to finish and read something good.

Quite different from the heroines of other vampire books, the beautiful 100+ year old Charlotte Emerson is constantly in a state of sorrow, despite being immortal, beautiful, well loved and extremely wealthy. It’s as if Block read Poe and Plath and transferred that melancholy into a vampire story, minus the good execution. Charlotte has seen everything from the bombing of Hiroshima, to Woodstock, to September 11th- all at the age of seventeen. She is immortal and perfect in every way. However, she is overcome by her constant wallowing of her immortality. She has a very close relationship with her brother (some scenes suggested a little too close, which was creepy). When he dies in the early 1900s, she tries to continue her life, despite being devastated.In present day when her best friend Emily dies suddenly, she starts to turn back into a human. Things get even weirder when her maker (and decades long lover) William comes back into her life after separating years before! The ending is extremely anti-climatic.

The reader will most likely not connect to the characters. The flowery, pseudo-intellectual prose will not be appreciated by teens looking for a fun vampire story or characters they can identitfy with. Although there are a few interesting moments, it’s obvious that this contrived story was simply Block trying to market off the vampire craze. Instead, it reads like terrible fan fiction you would find on the Hot Topic message board.

Bottom Line: Judging from this letdown, Pretty Dead sounds less like a book title and more like Block's (once present) storytelling ability.