It All Boils Down to a Name: Siobhan Vivian’s The List

Well, there’s definitely no way for someone to say that this book ended happily.

Siobhan Vivian’s The List paints a . . . sad? Realistic? Overly negative? Though provoking? (fill in the blank?) way of looking at the gender standards in high school. And any which way you choose to answer that prompt, the answer lands you somewhere in a not-so-pretty place, at least as far as realistic YA Lit goes.

The List begins with just that: a list. It’s a story told by 8 girls in a high school who are selected as the prettiest and ugliest by grade, spanning the first week of school leading up to the homecoming dance. It is apparently an annual tradition at the school, and those indoctrinated in the history of the school’s social scene know to expect it and do. Even in just hearing the synopsis, one has to expect some of the reactions: obviously anyone named ugliest isn’t going to be happy about it, and anyone named prettiest is going to be really, really happy–indeed, their primary concern is likely to try not to come off as smug. However, what we also see in this book is social stratification within a relatively small school–a school in which people generally know each other, where reputations can spread far and wide because there’ s not too far and not too wide to spread. Interestingly, we also see the diverse ways in which people can respond to such a list, and how that can serve to either solidify their place in it or else cast it (well, or them, depending) in an exceedingly doubtful light altogether.

What I Liked About It:
1. Yeah. People are mean. Anyone saying that a list like this couldn’t actually exist, well, I assume you’ve been out of high school for a long time.

2. The girls all have very different personalities and very different takes on the situation. But here’s what I really liked: none of them are flat. There’s no one bad or good person; all of them are treated as complex individuals and, while I’ve read a few critiques that have suggested that there was just too much happening in the book with so many different narrators, I kind of disagree. I actually think it gave the author room for a lot of different perspectives and a lot of different chances to demonstrate the emotional strain that the list causes, for those on and off it.

3. There are morals involved here without being preachy.

4. The girls aren’t all brainiacs or airheads–there’s a diversification to the list in terms of personality and interests that makes for a more interesting read.

5. The book is super engaging. I was enjoying listening to this on Audible, and found myself walking a little further for a little longer, simply because I wanted to listen to more!

What I Didn’t Like:

1. There’s virtually no diversity to the girls themselves, period. They all seem to be white, some variation of middle class, and all typically heterosexually American. To that end, it does nothing to address greater social issues that would have made for an intriguing layer of meaning to this.

2. The parental and authoritative responses to the list are unrealistic, period. Understanding that political climate is changing in secondary education, it seems that a principal–especially a younger female one–would have taken a far more proactive stance about the list. And though the list is posted everywhere, all over the building, the first day of class, apparently none–exactly not a single one–of the teachers cares? Addresses it? Has issues with it? Does anything about it?

3. The girls are all different, but they do have a habit of being represented as somewhat one-note, even as a static one-note. Which is disappointing, and probably could have been mitigated if a layer of diversity had been added to the girls.

4. The guys are completely unscathed. NO list, NO repercussions for the list, NO repercussions for taking advantage of those on the list, NO problems with girls for their actions in relation to the list. Just . . . nothing. They get away with acting basically however they please and face no consequences.

5. The representations of parents are weird. They represent a variety of parenting styles, but we only catch glimpses of them, with no greater meaning really attached to them and rarely substantial influence by them on the lives of the girls.

6. Quite the twist at the end, even though I was somewhat confused by the responses of the characters involved in it.

Overall:

I really actually enjoyed listening to this book, and it’s only now as I distill my thoughts on it that I realize that there are aspects that I’m not a fan of. However, I think it makes for an interesting read and brings up a social double standard that’s pretty interesting.

This book’s been around for a while, though I just got around to it this week. Anyone out there read and have any thoughts?

Watching the World Fall Apart in Tommy Wallach’s We All Looked Up

One of the questions that seems to copy throughout the world wherever I travel, and regardless of what I’m doing at that time, is the age-old one: how will I die? Where will I be? Will I be healthy or ill? Will it be sudden and unexpected or slow and painful?

Ok, ok . . . so that’s technically more than one question, but they’re all sort of inter-related. But it’s also kind of intriguing to hear what people’s greatest fears are related to this. While some seem to dread the idea of lingering beyond their friends and loves ones, for example, others hope that it’s short, sweet and without suffering.

Reading Tommy Wallach’s We All Looked Up, for me, felt like The Breakfast Club for the slightly morbid. The book itself tells the story of a handful of teens who all attend the same high school and follows the paths of their unique and, ultimately, overlapping stories as they continue through their day-to-day lives. So what makes it morbid? They (and through them, we, the readers) learn early on in the story that an asteroid is going to be hitting the earth. Perhaps that’s not morbid in and of itself, but there’s something decidedly goosebump-y in thinking about how everyone on earth is potentially going to die, as well as in how the earth itself may end. But here’s what kept it truly interesting (at least for me): there’s never a 100% guarantee one way or another that the end will come. 2/3 of the officious science people say yes and humanity will end, while the other 1/3 still believes that it won’t happen and that there are too many outside factors affecting whether the asteroid will actually make contact.

The novel follows a handful of these high schoolers, from different backgrounds and social groups, with different belief systems and parents. They are each different and unique, yet all united under the weight of the overwhelming question of what to do when the world is likely going to end before you set foot on a college campus, before you finally get laid, before you understand your parents, before, well, life really begins. And that’s the Breakfast Club aspect of the story, though this analogy has been run through a number of YA books, and so is almost trite at this point.

While I enjoyed the author’s portrayal of the different teens and their different families, homes, goals and personalities, it did feel like the cross section he focused on wasn’t as diverse as that normally seen in YA books. However, I actually felt like that added to the book’s believability.

What I Liked About the Book:

1. Well, the realistic characters. Kind of already covered that, but they weren’t your cookie-cutter versions, which made them all the more interesting. But beyond that, I really appreciated how it addressed issues like teen sex, relationships and peer pressure, which I felt was a refreshing take on otherwise trite categories.

2. Then narrative voice shifts, which helps to get into the skin of the different characters. And this is important, because the “main character” is actually multiple characters.

3. Impending doom: always an intriguing backdrop for any teen angst and life dilemmas!

4. Interestingly, we get an almost dystopic the-hellions-have-taken-over-the-earth feeling to the last third of the book. This isn’t completely different from the idea in Stephen King’s The Stand: when shit hits the fan, how will people really and truly respond? Will we be the good citizens we believe ourselves to be? The trusty neighbors and relatives and friends? Or will we resort to the lowest common denominator, allowing society with all it’s rules, laws and responsibilities, to break down with us?

5. Underlying the entire end-of-the-world plot line, each of the teens we follow has their own narrative, in counterpoint to the gloom and doom. I really liked this technique by the author, and actually found the contrast between the two to be more interesting at times than either one independently.

6. LOVED the tension in addressing the question of law and governance!! It’s constantly being called into question on so many different levels throughout the book. From the question of parental authority, to the amount of control a partner or a teacher or a principal can exert, to the issue of how much power police and the military have to act and then, finally, what the federal government can and can’t do. All the while, we see the teens constantly questioning the deletion of their first amendment rights, of their legal rights and of their rights generally, as citizens.

What I Didn’t Love About the Book:

1. The almost-absence of any real responsibility for any of the teens. No chores, no responsibilities to the family or household, just time spent either at school or with friends, the end.

2. The almost-absence of any true parenting. We see the extremes of over-control and no control, but apparently pretty much all the parents in this town checked out once their kids hit high school?

3. Despite the fact that this is an intriguing exploration of the psyches of a variety of different people/characters, to be perfectly honest? There were several points at which I felt my mind wander. When I was just . . . bored. I think the book is a bit longer than it really needs to be, with a lot of teen angst-y parts that probably could be alluded to without being fully hashed out. But also, there’s an over-reliance on details that really aren’t necessary to the story.

4. I’m not sure I completely buy 100% the fluidity of the barriers that lie between the different worlds of these characters. I just . . . don’t.

5. Although I understand that this story is much more a delving into the psyches of the different teens narrating the book, I would’ve liked to have had a chance to know a bit more about what’s happening in the rest of the world. Not just directly relating to the asteroid’s approach, but how are people in other countries–or even in other cities in the US–handling this? Are they still sending kids to school? Still going into work? Has the police state ratcheted up? What about violence? Looting? Are people responding to the impending crisis with illegality or are they generally being more positive? I guess just more details would have nicely rounded the picture, and given better context as to the course of action the teens in the book are taking.

Overall:
This was a good read. Not the most amazing thing ever, but it was engaging and, as I had the pleasure of listening to this one via Audible, I have to say that the audio narration utilized an ensemble cast, which really helped in separating out the different voices. This one’s worth the read, but go into it with some patience and the knowledge that the asteroid hitting the earth? Definitely not the point of the story.

Anyone else have a chance to read this one? Or just ogle that amazing cover? 🙂

A New Superhero’s Coming to Town: Jeremy Scott’s The Ables

One of the biggest critiques I’ve heard of YA lit–especially that involving dystopic/fantasy/superhero type writing (think Veronica Roth’s Divergent series or James Dashner’s The Maze Runner series) is what about those with disabilities? Now, I hear the arguments against already: depending on the world, the time, the setting, the plot line, the type of powers, etc, disabilities may be obsolete or else irrelevant altogether. But doesn’t a more diversified, realistically represented cast of characters present a truer-to-life depiction of what we know?

Jeremy Scott’s The Ables dives right into a world in which almost all of the primary characters have a disability of some sort or another–whether they’re blind, deaf, have a learning disorder or a developmental one, they’ve been lumped together in a special ed class in the town of Freepoint, America. Though they generally don’t know it (at least not until they’ve had “the talk” with their parents), they’re all superheroes with an inherited superpower of some sort that they’re trying to learn how to use. Trying being the key operative here, as “special ed” is more to do with the fact that they have some attribute that conflicts with their ability to utilize their superpower than that they are, well, special ed.

As the school decides to have the equivalent to a very Harry Potter-esque Triwizard Tournament, in which the students create teams and try to rescue people from bad guys using their superpowers, the “special ed” kids want to have a go at it, too. And they make a darn good argument (with a little supporting help) for the fact that, together, they’re able to use their powers pretty effectively. And that, as a team, they function even better than most of the other individuals in their school.

Yes, you’re right: cue shenanigans. Between schoolwork, practicing for the tournament and eating an awful lot of pizza, the “special ed” team becomes, well, a team. And they have their own evil villain to fight–one that doesn’t come and go with the tournament, either.

What I Liked About the Book:

1. The author really does a great job of trying to imbue his characters with a sense of righteous indignation tempered with senses of humor and an underdog-will-win mentality. They’re not stupid: they know the odds are stacked against them, but capturing that great 12 year old mentality, they really want to give it a try anyway, and that mindset just jumps off the pages.

2. Great comic timing–especially “the talk” which, while drug out a bit longer than strictly necessary, sets the tone of awkward adolescence brilliantly.

3. There is a sense of fairness and humanity that the story addresses that I haven’t seen in a YA book since Rodman Philbrick’s Freak the Mighty. But this is a book that would appeal greatly to 12-13 year old boys, undoubtedly!

4. The book is savvy both to the idea of families and familial responsibility as well as to other responsibilities: school, chores and friends. It makes for a nice balance that, I think, more closely mirrors a realistic depiction of YA life than the stories in which the protagonists seem to have no responsibilities, no oversight, no nothing other than whatever they seem to want to do at any given moment.

5. There’s action, and the author doesn’t wimp out and play the mercy card at key moments.

What I Didn’t Love About the Book:

1. I think this is really a middle reader book, not YA, and while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it was certainly not what I was expecting going into it.

2. I listened to this on Audible, the version of which is narrated by the author. I didn’t enjoy his narration, however, and think he would have been very much better served to have hired a professional reader. He read so fast it reminded me of those Micro Man commercials from back in the day! It seriously felt like he performed the reading and someone decided that it was too long, so they decided that, instead of his rereading the book a bit faster, they’d just speed up the recording. And while this might not seem like an issue, let’s be clear: it’s distracting.

3. It was really, really predictable. Like, super predictable. As in, I would have given up, but the book had received such great reviews, I assumed I was wrong about it. But there was really no great mystery here.

4. Interestingly, the author uses the word “Custodian” as a name for the superheroes, leaning on the traditional definition rather than the more modern one which is synonymous with janitor. Of course, the boys, upon learning this term, proceed to rag on how much it sucks to have such a title because they’re not janitors and don’t want to be referred to as them. I thought this was pretty unfair and unnecessary for the plot line, and it was one of the few points that the author brought up somewhat repeatedly which struck me as being fairly hypocritical, in light of where the rest of the story was headed.

5. I was disappointed in how the character Donnie was portrayed in the book. I don’t want to spill the beans, but I invite you, dear reader, to take a gander and not come to the conclusion that it’s not really fair.

Overall:

The book was . . . okay. As a middle reader book, it’s great, and it’s nice to see a book with an all-male team of characters. On the other hand, it’s incredibly predictable and so not overly engaging as a YA book. I thought the premise was fantastic, but the execution could be improved upon.

Anyone else out there have any thoughts? Any enlightenment to share on this one?

If You Can Get Past the Stereotypes, Christina Baker Kline’s Orphan Train Isn’t a Bad Read

Every so often you have a day. You know what I mean: the kind of day when you just wish you could go back to bed and call in sick to life. Then you read about someone who has had it way, way worse, and remind yourself that you’re being a baby and need to just grow up. So if you’re looking for one of those books to knock you back into the stratosphere, zinging a hole through your halo of self pity, here’s a great one.

I picked up the audiobook of Christina Baker Kline’s Orphan Train on the recommendation of my dad, and while it took me a little while to work my way into it, I generally enjoyed this unique story. I can’t say that I have any knowledge of these orphan trains, nor can I say that I’ve read a lot of realistic fiction stories about orphans in general, and was lured in by these “new” topics. On these points, the author demonstrates an impressive mastery, and does an even more impressive job of weaving in facts with the stories. As I read, I  found I was also intrigued  by the structure of the narrative: one story follows orphan Molly, a 17-year-old goth girl of Native American ancestry, and the second tells the story of Vivian and her experiences as an Irish immigrant turned orphan in the early 1900’s, ultimately shipped out of New York City to the mid-West on an orphan train.

The two narratives interweave and overlap fairly well. Molly meets the wealthy 90-something-year-old Vivian while completing a community service project after she’s caught trying to steal a copy of Jane Eyre from the local library. Her boyfriend’s mother works for Vivian and, despite her dislike of Molly, asks if Vivian would be willing to allow Molly to clean her attic for this community service project. (Of course, Vivian is kept out of the loop as to Molly’s thievery, believing that Molly is performing this chore as community service for school). Vivian of course agrees, and Molly embarks on her attic cleaning adventures.

Molly herself is understandably prickly, having been tossed about from one foster home after another. Her current home really isn’t much better, with her foster parents–Ralph and Dina–not the best fit for her, either. But as her hours of community service tick by, Molly recognizes Vivian ad more to her than just an old lady whose attic she’s cleaning; she realizes instead that Vivian has become a friend, a sympathetic familiar knowledgeable about the aches and pains of being an orphan bounced through the foster care system. It is through this bond that Molly learns of Vivian’s life and struggles, just as Vivian learns of Molly’s.

What I Liked:

Molly’s not a saint. She messes up (ok, maybe stealing a book from the library isn’t the worst thing she could have done, but it’s still not a good thing), she can be mean (defensive technique for survival), she can be deceitful (again, defensive), the list goes on. There’s something that just rings false when a protagonist is an infallible perpetual victim, and to avoid that, the author did a good job of giving Molly a personality. Could she have been given more of a personality? Definitely–but there’s at least something here to work with. In many ways, I thought she was a dead ringer for Matt, the goth girl too-old-for-foster-care but still-a-darned-good-though-misunderstood-student in Kathryn Erskine’s Quaking. (Yes, she’s that much of a stereotype).

I liked that Molly was biracial: again, as I’ve mentioned before, it’s great to see authors who are willing to present diverse characters. Her boyfriend is also biracial, though of a different background. Unfortunately, racial matters are not a large issue in the context of the book, though Molly’s Native ancestry is linked in limited ways to her perspective of the world, and as she proceeds through the story, it seems to become increasingly important to how she sees herself. However, her perspective on this identity, what it means to her, etc, is not explored, and her boyfriend barely even acknowledges his.

The story itself had a number of twists and turns. Some were pretty predictable, some were not, and it was this mixed blend that made the story interesting and kept the pages turning. It certainly painted a unique picture of the children subjected to this orphan train, as well as a parallel to the fate of foster care kids today.

What Wasn’t So Great:

Yes, there were twists and turns in the plot. But my, this story could be predictable. I’m not much of one to harp on this point–I prefer to lose myself in the narrative rather than focusing on what’s going to happen next–but even I had some difficulty with this.

Vivian’s younger self, although told in retrospect and thus perhaps being given the rose-colored lens treatment, is overly perfect. She seems to never do anything wrong; she never wants for anything above or beyond the most humble and meager of wants; she never complains about her place or her lot; she never engages in questionable behaviors; she is a good student who values education. I had some difficulty swallowing all of this, particularly in light of the number of challenges she faces in her life. I think a fault might have made her come to life more as a character. Though we here many references from the infamous Anne (of the Green Gables variety), Vivian’s way too good a kid to be similar, even if they share a hair color and lack of parents.

Dina, Molly’s current foster mom, is such a flat stereotype it’s alarming. Now, because I agree with the author’s “agenda” with the negative traits that she stereotypes in Dina (I’m pretty ultra liberal, and Dina’s perhaps the exact opposite), I wasn’t upset by her embodiment of these traits. The fact that Dina’s a living wicked stepmother, modernized and every bit as ugly as anything the Brothers Grimm dreamed up, did. In fact, that so many of the characters in the book–Dina being just one of them–are quite so one-dimensional bothered me quite a bit. And kind of bored me. And ultimately just frustrated me.

After such a lengthy blending of narratives, the ending comes quite suddenly, and rather quickly at that. It felt like one minute we were hearing about how weird old Vivian had a strange schedule and no relatives, and the next she’s accepting Molly as a long-term tenant in her house and surfing Youtube for panda videos. Oh, and her long lost daughter, but that’s just sort of thrown in there.

I also found the ending implausible: so Ralph and Dina were really just in it for the child support money? Really? And Molly and her boyfriend Jack just make up, no problems? And Vivian’s just willing to take in a 17-year-old she doesn’t really know and isn’t legally supposed to have? And Vivian’s daughter’s just totally cool with connecting with her birth mother who decides out of nowhere to contact her for the first time? Hm.

Final Thoughts:

Hm. Meh. I really enjoyed the historical aspect of this–that an author did the research and put together a compelling piece on such an otherwise unbelievable doing (the orphan train), while simultaneously trying to put a face on orphans today. Too bad, then, that this was so riddled with stereotypes. At the end of the day, I had trouble truly engaging in the characters and the one-dimensional nature of them made the story more predictable than it needed to be. As a result, it was a lot less interesting. It’s a good book, with a unique story to tell, but it’s not the best one out there.

What did you think? Anyone else out there pick this one up and have similar thoughts? Anyone else out there pick this one up and completely disagree?

James Dashner’s The Maze Runner: Quite the Mixed Bag

Happily, I finally finished James Dashner’s The Maze Runner (despite the annoying substitution of words used throughout). The plot line (probably well-known to the world by this point, what with the movie coming out last week) focused on Thomas, one of the last kids to be added to the boys (all boys) at the Glade, outside the Maze. These boys, sort of like rats, are forced to try to find a means of escape by risking the perils of the maze daily (the maze changes each day) to get out.

Interestingly, they do not wish to escape because the community they’ve created is bad. Even Thomas notes that it’s actually a well thought out and organized community. What seems to encourage people to want to leave is more the possibility that they have a home/family somewhere; the fear that they’ve done something wrong and so have been punished by being placed in this self-governing environment.

After Thomas comes, the one and only female to the Glade, Theresa, arrives and remains in a coma for the first half or so of the book. In the Glade, each boy has a different assigned set of responsibilities, anything from trash removal to butchery to you name it, they’re all assigned. After Thomas proves his worth and mettle, he decides to be a runner, along with Minho (general society badass and all-around cool dude).

Here’s what I liked:

a. The writing is clear and the plot is pretty fast-paced. NO wasting time on too much description/emotions!

b. Loved that there’s an ensemble: different races are represented, though they all tend to be similar in personality and interest (I assume this is because their memories were wiped at some point).

c. I liked how they honestly work hard as a community to organize themselves and be smart about what they’re doing: no falling apart from greed, Animal Farm style, and no rough savagery, Lord of the Flies style, either. This is a unique take on (whether the boys realize it or not) a utopic (though artificial) world. It I had to compare it to another, I kept thinking Lois Lowery’s The Giver came closest.

d. It’s great that every character is fallible. There’s no one perfect character; all of them are imperfect, which makes them all the more human. But (and perhaps more intriguingly) no one character is all bad, either–every character is dynamic, which is all the more interesting when the cast of characters is so large, and one of the failures that I see in some of the more popular YA action series.

e. At the risk of spoiling the plot, I LOVED the juxtaposition of the world they return to at the end! (No more spoilers–I promise!)

What I wasn’t so psyched about:

a. For a YA action book, I didn’t feel that this reached the same levels of The Hunger Games, Divergent, Legend, etc. I didn’t feel the same tugging on my heartstrings as I did for the characters in these other series, perhaps partially because of the annoying insistance on word substitution.

b. I thought that a number of the mysteries were sort of obvious. Somehow this group of children, really, were able to create an entire self-governing structure to keep them all alive and existing into the future on their own, but couldn’t figure out WICKED? Or the phrase that keeps repeating itself on the maze walls?

c. How in the world did Albe become leader??

d. Here’s where I think I really failed the author in going into the story with an open mind: I was actually listening to this book, and the narration was *terrible.* The narrator kept poorly pronouncing words and lacked any inflection of emotion whatsoever. Minho was pronounced repeatedly as “Meeenho,” almost as if he was trying to make it a Spanish name of some sort, and for some reason the word “fatigue” was repeatedly pronounced as “fat tig” instead of “futeeg,” to my great and constant annoyance.

e. Though Dashner himself has noted that he intended this series for the 15 year old+ crowd, I really felt that it was written for the tween crowd. I could see a 12-14 year old really finding this story entertaining and getting into it, but an older teen finding the lack of emotion (and the unwillingness for the boys to see any positive in their new-found independence from adult authority) to be difficult to stay engaged in.

In all, this was a good read, but I really did (poor narration or no) feel that it lacked the heart that we see with some of the other popular YA action series.  I’m dying to see the movie, so will reassess after taking a gander!

What did you think? Anyone our there have strong feelings one way or another? Anyone wish the plot line had turned differently than it actually did? Anyone make the mistake of listening to the poorly narrated audible version of this?