The City of Ember

"There is nowhere but here."(page 89)

It was a late Saturday afternoon after having lunch with marivee that I first spotted The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau while browsing in Borders Bookstore. I'm probably the last person on planet earth who hasn't read this novel. The book's cover with the light bulb caught my eye and when I picked it up, marivee recommended that I read it. My local used bookstore didn't have a copy so I borrowed it from the library where I work. (If anyone's curious, we had the novel cataloged in the YA section.)

I'm now wishing I'd bought the book because I had to take all my notes on a separate sheet of paper, rather than in the margins like I normally do. This story was engrossing!

DuPrau is excellent with switching POVs. The omniscient narrator hangs over the city in darkness, and the reader becomes intimately familiar with all that is happening in Ember. Imagine a world without the convenience of light and washing machines, sweet pleasures such as pineapples or colored pencils...

Until the end, you may wonder where the story is really taking place. Our sense of time and location is as faulty as the electricity in Ember. Character's names are odd, which also add to the mysticism of Ember. The various jobs children must do aid the story. I love that Lina is a Messenger because in our most fearful times, we need communication, we crave that sense of connection the most. This is made even more evident when Mrs. Murdo takes care of Lina and Poppy later in the novel.

Most of all, I'm impressed by her language. DuPrau's writing is concise; she doesn't overburden the reader with flowery language (a weakness I have yet to correct in my writing). In other words, her writing doesn't call attention to itself, rather it serves her story and her characters well. Her use of dialogue, particularly in the opening, is skillful.

Though some of the plot is driven by Lina's and Doon's naivety (telling the guard about the mayor's thievery was just dumb), these two 12-year-old characters remain likable, vulnerable, and clever. Also, Lina and Doon are the perfect compliment and contrast throughout the story that readers benefit from two POVs.

With all these successes, I still had 2 questions nagging me at the end of book #1. If the mayor had a handheld electric megaphone, why didn't anyone in the city have a handheld flashlight?! Also, because the reader is given so much information about how the citizens must reuse everything, I found myself wondering what happens to those who die. Where did they take Granny when she died? Shouldn't the doctor or someone have reused her organs some kind of way? At the least, I would have expected to see a ceremony since those in the City of Ember seem to be big on such traditions. I guess some readers would have found recycling body parts a bit morbid but why not go all the way with the setting? That's just me, I guess.

There are so many meaningful themes in this novel that I have to wonder if it all happened organically for DuPrau or if she had a sense of what she wanted the novel to be about before she revised. According to her web site, DuPrau says she shelved the first version of her manuscript and came back later to revise; the whole process took about 2 years. Still, that seems awfully quick to me and I'm sure that once she submitted her work after those 2 years, she still had some editing to do for her publisher.

Overall, I loved the story and I plan to read the next installments, book #2 and book #3 very soon.