Category Archives: Young Adult Fiction

February 10, 2014 · 7:50 pm

Divergent and Insurgent: Reading for Pleasure and Diminishing Returns

Seldom have I been so excited about a book while reading it and then so utterly disappointed by its conclusion. So it was with Vernoica Roth’s *Divergent* and then *Insurgent*. I have no comment on the final book in the trilogy because I won’t be reading it. Why did I bother with the second, you ask? Well, I was so captivated by the first half of *Divergent* that I went and bought the second book and lest I be one to squander my (tiny) book buying budget, I had to read the second out of deference to Not Wasting Book Money. The gap between my enthusiasm and my eventual feeling about the book is hard to retrospectively bridge. That is to say, it’s hard to find something good to say about the series when I now have so many complaints, but I *must* have found something worthy and exciting if I was willing to pay for it (note: I am not library-monogamous, just library-preferential).

So what did I enjoy? The world-building aspects of this series are terrific. Like The Night Circus, the physical space imagined by the novel is captivating. So, too, the initial characterization of Tris (a characterization that takes a decided turn for the wooden and flat as she reacts and acts without any consequence to character development) and her confusion of what and who she is. The mystery elements: where are we in time and space? What kinds of cultural, social, political forces are at work? What’s the allegory here? compel the reader to keep reading with an urgency and a pleasure often misplaced in Literature that wants to slow you down enough to savour each word or sentence.

Reading *Divergent* was certainly an exercise in reading for pleasure. In much of my graduate and undergraduate discussions of literature outside the classroom my peers expressed discomfort or disbelief that “reading for pleasure” might even be possible. Having such extensive training in being critics,  how, they wondered, might it be possible to turn this critical eye “off” long enough to enjoy a book? Trained to say “no” and “but,” (how) could we allow for appreciation and commendation? I suppose I could argue that the two aren’t mutually exclusive: it is possible to find pleasure and retain critical faculties. I think I could also argue that books get read – or we read – with different intents and purposes. That the same book can be read by the same reader with different foci and attention. Putting aside the precision and attention of close reading and allowing – or abdicating? – attention to the pleasures of plot and character might well be possible (I think they are). It’s tempting to be self-depricating and say I was just a poor critic, unable to notice that worth being critical. But I’m not: I’m a good reader. So I suppose it’s an argument for the dialectic: that a reader can take pleasure from a text and simultaneously be aware of its problematic bits. *Divergent* has troublesome politics, Tris and Four have an imbalanced sexual relationship and her gender gets worked out and worked over in disturbing ways, choice and freedom get bizarrely dichotomized against violence and power.

So if it’s true that I could enjoy *Divergent* and still be aware of its problematic politics, when did I stop enjoying it altogether? I’m tempted to say it was when Four’s named turned to Tobias and I stopped being able to remember him as a sexy and mysterious instructor and could only think of him as a predatory creep, but I think it’s more basic: I stopped enjoying *Divergent* and I disliked all of *Insurgent* because the writing was bad. Really, really bad. Written for a movie and without the subtlety to pretend otherwise kind of bad. Written without the attention of an editor bad. Written as if the reader might not have ever read anything else before bad. BAD. Which is not to say that *Insurgent* doesn’t have its share of ideological issues, just that before the reader can start to think about those she has to get past the terrible writing, lack of character development and uninteresting plot. It will make a terrific movie, I’m sure, because it was written to one.

I almost wrote “Avoid both,” but I don’t think I should. *Divergent* is pure pleasure. Read it and enjoy. Just don’t – for the love of God (and boy does Veronica Roth love God – capital G) bother with the second or third.

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February 3, 2014 · 2:23 pm

The Fault in Our Stars: Crying in Public

Almost any list you read of “the best” Young Adult Fiction will list John Green’s *The Fault in Our Stars*. It’s an incredibly popular book, in no small part, I think, because the tragedy promises (and delivers) the cathartic release. For me that meant loud, wet crying in the pub where I read at lunch.

It reminded me a lot of Looking for Alaska in its exploration of questions of what makes for a meaningful life, what happens after death and how do we – the living – make sense of both.

I have to say that while I had a strong emotional reaction to *The Fault in Our Stars* I didn’t find it the most compelling YAF I’ve ever read, nor did I find its response to these questions – what’s the point of living/dying? – particularly insightful or moving. Whereas *Looking for Alaska* presented a fresh (and momentarily comforting) proposition of why we might live and what happens when we die, in *The Fault in Our Stars* the response is something akin to “tragedy” – like “It’s tragic when people die because they don’t get to keep living and making meaning.” I think one way TFIOS gestures towards the complexity (to put it lightly) of life and death is in thinking about how big or small the impact of one life can be and the resonance of that solitary soul on those that encounter it. One line by Hazel’s father drove this home for me – he’s explaining to her why her life/death matters to him by observing that it’s “an extraordinary privilege to love you.” I think this is the closest the book gets to a unique exploration of the thematic questions. By gesturing to the impact of the single (lost) life on those who continue living, to the privilege and responsibility of loving, mourning and remembering one another, *The Fault in Our Stars* sees the potential of relationships – connections with other people – for being the reason for living and the solace for dying. But it’s a grabbing, reaching kind of answer. The novel gets overly caught up in the emotional manipulation of the graveside scene at the expense of a deeper exploration of these questions.

Which is not to say there isn’t good work being done in the novel. I was struck by its exploration of the guilt felt by those who live particularly in the character of Hazel’s mother (rather than van Houten who seems too obvious a caricature of the grieved parent) who embodies the balance or the dialectic between grief/loss and a will to keep making meaning. I appreciated the tension in the relationship between Hazel and Gus between humour and suffering, the calm humanity each expresses to the other in moments of humiliation and suffering. The love of the two for one another is believable, if perhaps in the Romeo and Juliette (and often compared couple to these two) believability of those swept up in circumstances and passion (rather than a love that you might believe endures through mortgages and menopause).

All this to say I was certainly moved by the story – if my gross crying is to be believed – but I didn’t (after all) like it all that much. I especially don’t think it belongs at the top of the YAF must read lists – many other books look at these questions in fresher, truer ways. But sure, it’s still wildly popular. In fact, I bumped into a twelve year old girl in line at my local bookshop  and recommended not reading the ending in public and she told me “she’d be careful.” I hope as readers we’re all careful. Careful not to let our emotional reaction be mistaken for brilliant writing.

 

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November 18, 2013 · 1:31 am

Looking for Alaska: Making Meaning *You Should

On the prompting of my childhood/adolescent/lifelong friend, J., I’m testing out a new way of starting reviews. At dinner last night she told me that she skimmed my reviews as quickly as possible to find out whether the book was worth reading, without spoiling the read itself (it’s true I’m prone to spoilers). She asked whether I might include some kind of rating system in the first paragraph to alert would-be readers to the urgency, necessity or avoidance of a particular read. Less keen on the scale of 1-10 model, she suggested something like “must,” “maybe” and “don’t.” So I’ll try it out and you can let me know what you think. I think 3 choices is a bit limiting, so I’ll go with five: Urgent Priority to Read (5), You Should (4) If You’re So Inclined (3) You Shouldn’t (2), Priority to Avoid (1).

For John Green’s *Looking for Alaska* I’ll offer a “You Should” rating.

And now for the proper review:

My high school Philosophy teacher, Mr. M, approached the existential philosophers with a certain (albeit appropriate) skepticism. He suggested that the existential questions, while worth considering, were most often ignored by “the masses” or easily solved by “making meaning” (given that life has no inherent meaning to an existentialist) in one of two ways: creation or destruction. He fingered all of us in the room and urged us to consider how we might make our own meaning. I (obviously) still remember this lesson and often reflect on whether my desires to have babies or write a novel are borne more out of panicked impulse to make my life count for something than from any intrinsic desire to have a [baby] [novel] [marathon completion]. 

John Green’s *Looking for Alaska* has its own Mr. M in the form of the curmudgeonly Religion teacher who pushes his students to think beyond memorizing names or dates and to think instead about the implications of religious questions in their everyday lives. But more than a teacher figure, the text asks and answers the same question: What can we expect out of life? What makes life meaningful? What responsibility/authority do we have to make our lives worth living? 

These questions are explored against the usual drama of teenagers at boarding school: pranks, lust, foreign exchange students and too much calculus. Think John Knowle’s A Separate Peace rewritten for 2006 and with a massive online cult following. 

It’s a brilliant book not for any particular innovations in plot – that much is pretty staid – but for its novel answer to the question of what makes life meaningful? I won’t do too much spoiling in giving the answer, but the novel took my usual atheist angst about my inevitable death and consumption by worms and brought to it a fresh and even (gasp) hopeful promise about why life (and death) might be meaningful.

And for the intended teenage audience I imagine these questions and the answers presented in *Looking for Alaska* are ever more urgent. That the novel does not gloss or diminish the poignancy and “reality” of these questions for an adolescent audience seems at once both respectful of its readers intellect, but also of its readers complex emotional life. I appreciate that much young adult fiction – including that which I read when I was myself a teen – doesn’t shy away from the difficult, confusing and overwhelming. But this book more than many others I’ve read presents these questions as *actual questions* and sees the problem of answering them as one that all people – not just young people – have to muddle their way about answering. I guess it offers the reader some responsibility, too, to sort out for him/herself what the answer might be. 

And so because this is a book that asks difficult questions and presents compelling – and fresh! – answers, and because it gives funny/smart/round characters a chance to grapple with these questions/answers, and because it’s set at a boarding school and who can resist a good boarding school story (hello Harry Potter fans) I’ll give this book its (4) You Should rating. Go read it. You Should for the book’s sake and because it will help you look/be hip and cool with the teenage crowd (so hot right now). 

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May 1, 2013 · 11:43 pm

Daughter of the Forest: Strong Female Protagonist?

I liked a lot of things about Juliet Marillier’s *Daughter of the Forest*: the first person narration of Sorcha, the bildungsroman plot, the subtle but convincing romance narrative, the retelling of Grimm’s *Six Swans* (a story I couldn’t recall the end to and so was allowed the mystery of the climax) and the magic of nature/women that suffuses character and plot. 

I don’t read an awful lot of fantasy and so my read of this one may be hampered by this limitation. I did, however, find myself slightly annoyed that by all appearances and actions Sorcha – and her brothers – are flawless characters/heroes. Without exception each of them possesses unique powers, admirable strengths and characteristics and can do no wrong – even when doing very, very, wrong. A little character complexity never killed a story.

I was also annoyed that the central problem of the narrative – that Sorcha’s six brothers have been turned into swans and she must sew them shirts from nettle flowers without speaking a word to anyone – is introduced with the most illogical and sparse of explanations. Almost without introduction a witch – Oonagh – arrives and marries their father. Then just as hastily a spell is cast – how? why? with what means? – and the brothers are swans. I fully appreciate that magic operates in the narrative – and I’m fine with that – but without meeting Oonagh in a substantive way and understanding her motivations the spell reads as a far too convenient way for the problem of swan-brothers to take place. 

What I *did* love with the slow and unpredictable introduction of the romance with Red (though in a similar vein to my complaints about Oonagh I found Simon’s revelation of love to be completely without precedent or foreshadow). I believed their romance, I wanted them to find and love one another, I wanted them to be happy. I was quite content with the conclusion to the novel that allowed the ‘happily ever after’ with the tiny qualifiers that lead to the next book in the series, but *not* as is often the case with fantasy, the cliff-hanger ending that compels an immediate read of the next book in the series. 

I do have some questions about the “strong female character” here. For all her courage and bravery in making the shirts, all of Sorcha’s decisions are in response to the commands of a patriarchal figure. If not her father or brothers than the “queen” of the forest who acts in the same capacity by commanding Sorcha down a particular path that disregards her desires or aspirations. Complicating this structure are the few scenes when the brothers, with extreme lack-luster, offer to remain as swans so she doesn’t have to endure such torment (torment that extends to a very problematic rape scene). And her response – that of course she will endure the torment because she loves them – is unsatisfactory because this reader was never convinced it was a genuine choice. 

So yes – great pleasure in reading this book – I could scarce put it down (thanks E. for the recommendation!), but in my enjoyment questions about the politics and plotting of an otherwise captivating tale.  

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