Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (by Chris Crutcher)

Chris Crutcher is a giant in American YA literature, having won the Margaret A. Edwards Award already in 1997. By that time he already had 8 publications under his belt (not counting individual short stories), but much of the Award was probably because of the vital Staying Fat for Sarah Burnes (1993), in which everything that makes Crutcher into..err Crutcher is present: a focus on sport, the supporting role of the coach/teacher in a teen’s life, the responsibility of the parents as the teen grows into adulthood and of course, the friendship between teens. Also, he does not shy away from what one would call “issues”: abuse, abortion, intellectual freedom… it’s all there in Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes.

Initially connected through their common outcast status, Eric (who was fat) and Sarah Byrnes (who has horrible burn scars in her face because of an accident that occurred when she was 3) have been friends since forever.  Once Eric – or ‘Moby’ as he came to be called – discovered swimming, he started to slim down. He stayed fat for an entire year because he feared he’d lose Sarah Byrnes’ friendship, if he suddenly wasn’t anymore, but Sarah Byrnes is a tough kid, who doesn’t care about that at all! That’s why it’s so painful for Eric to see how this tough person who didn’t let her ugly face (his and her own words) get the better of her, just stopped speaking one day and is now in a hospital, where she just sits and stares catatonically… Eric knows something else is going on and wants to find out before it’s too late.

Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes shows the personal growth of not one (main) character (Eric), but of several. Obviously there is Eric, but Crutcher includes an important storyline of Mark Brittain whose insistence on what is right(eous) and moral, and what isn’t, has landed him in big troubles. Now he has to take responsibility for his actions, actions which may have been instigated by the pressure he’s been under since he was born! It’s not hard to see why a topic like religion – always a hotbed of controversy USA! – is not often tackled in a YA novel, but to his own credit, Crutcher does it, and even has the decency to show us the different sides of the argument (although the “liberal” point of view is clearly the implied better option!). If you don’t agree with the implied message, you might take offense here (and judging from the many challenges this book has received, I’m guessing a lot of people have!), but the cat didn’t one bit. Chris Crutcher totally Judy Blumed his way into the cat’s favor!

And another poignant question, though, might be: given the fact that this was published in 1993, when today’s teens weren’t even born, does it pass the test of time? And, yes, it’s true, the kids today may not get all the references in the book. They might know about Rocky Balboa and The Far Side, but I don’t see them getting the winks to Raymond Burr, Leave it to Beaver or even Scarface. That being said, the book surpasses its temporal allusions and is definitely worth being called “a classic”. It’s the type of story that sticks. It’s about being more than what people would usually call “your shortcomings”, or “your handicap”. It’s about getting challenged and true friendship and loyalty and looking beyond the obvious, the apparent, the superficial… If that’s not contemporary, I don’t know what is!

Clean (by Amy Reed)

Amy Reed’s debut novel Beautiful didn’t much leave an impression on the cat. However, when a student tells you that the book they just read was “one of the best books they’ve ever read”, you  better make sure you order more of that author, because you know they’ll come back for more, so I had to go out and order Clean.  Unfortunately, this sophomore book didn’t leave any lasting impression, either… (by which I in no way want to belittle this particular student’s reading experience!).

Beautiful still had a certain focus and drive, and that is exactly what Clean misses in my opinion. In Clean we meet 5 teens in rehab, each with their own drug of choice, each with their own background, each with their own set of problems. The only thing they have in common is their addiction.  The way we meet them is too disjointed, though, to make me really care about any of them. I mean, when you read about 5 teenagers in rehab, I guess you should at least feel some of their pain, some of their anger, some of their fear, some of their emotions… but sadly, I didn’t feel anything at all. The fragmentary structure of this novel is just not working for me. Once you get somewhat familiar or close to one of the protagonists, their narrative is cut short for another patient’s narrative or a snippet from their group sessions. This type of structure seems too haphazard for the topics dealt with, despite the fact that Reed’s flow (as in Beautiful) will get you through this in no time.

Most of all, though, this book felt unfinished and underdeveloped. It was more like a draft of a book, than an actual fully developed novel, with 5 clear protagonists who each have their own equally important storyline. If Reed had focused on just Olivia, or Christopher, or any of them really, this book could have been a lot more powerful and I may have cared more about the characters than I did…, which was lukewarm, at best.

Finally, I also think Clean was not researched as well as it should have been. Olivia, for instance, has more than one life-threatening condition, and treating one, but not the other while it’s so abundantly clear to everyone that she is starving herself, is just not how “real” therapy would work. Olivia would not just have been in a regular “rehab” center!

If students come up to me and ask for more Amy Reed stuff, I’ll order it, for sure, but I think I’ll pass on reading them myself, thank you very much…

 

PS. no special cover this time…

33 Snowfish (by Adam Rapp)

After having read 3 Adam Rapp YA novels, so far there are a couple of constants. Thematically, violence and abuse are always key elements in his novels. Stylistically, on the other hand, Rapp is almost Faulknerian in his insistence on voice.

In an almost naturalistic way Rapp shows the influence one’s social conditions and environment have on the human character. And when one grows up in a highly violent environment, violence invariably begets violence. However, it must be made clear that there is absolutely no gratuity to the violence you encounter in 33 Snowfish. Boobie, Custis and Curl behave in a way that appears incredibly crude and cruel, and it really is, but it’s not violence in the “Fuck you, you fucking fuck” Joe Pesci kind of way. These kids behave the way they behave because they have had to grown up in situations that are so tough, so completely caught off from any form of human decency, a world in which violence, brutality and abuse are the norm rather than the exception. In a 2000 interview with Adam Rapp, Ann Angel aptly describes Rapp’s characters as “naively innocent adolescents caught in violent and emotionally isolated places”. The fact that someone like Custis – a 10-year-old! – is almost “naively violent”, in his acts as well as in his use of language, is what makes a lot of what happens to him so tragic: he’s never known anything else.  In that same interview Rapp says: “I am not interested in romanticizing or sensationalizing violence. I am interested in honoring what I know to be true.”

In the end though, especially Custis’s behavior is just that: the way he behaves. And it is a triumph of the resiliency of the human mind and spirit that he can get to a point where redemption seems possible after all that he has seen and done. However, we don’t need to be naïve or mistaken, either. Kids like Custis don’t all make it. Custis is boy who escaped from his pedophile kidnapper. Boobie is an arsonist who probably also killed his parents in his latest act, after which he just takes his baby brother to sell on the streets.  Curl is a 15-year-old drug addicted prostitute. There’s no way all three can beat the odds and Boobie and Curl’s stories show us the other options, both of which are as realistic as Custis’s chance at salvation is.

Style-wise, 33 Snowfish is not all that different from The Children and the Wolves (in which you also get three voices) or Punkzilla. In 33 Snowfish we get Custis (whose narrative dominates the novel), Curl and Boobie (whose voice consists of drawings only, drawings that are as basic and nihilistic as Boobie’s own acts and intentions). Language and voice are ways for Rapp to explore the world of his characters and both almost create the story. Stream-of-consciousness is then the almost logical narrative device to carry a character’s voice, giving the novel a certain cadence and musicality that is almost unique in YA literature today. It should come as no surprise that Rapp refers to William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying in the motto of 33 Snowfish. Like Faulkner, Rapp seems to believe that a true exploration and evocation of a character’s situation can only be done from the inside, not from a detached impersonal point of view (as could be equally tempting considering the subject matter). We get as close to Custis, Curl and Boobie as narratively possible, which is why in the end – despite the horrible things that these characters do and say – a reader can “sympathize” with them. Not pitying them or feeling sorry for them, though, but understanding them and thinking and feeling with them. Custis, for instance, is never guilty of self-pity (so the reader shouldn’t be either), but he acts and reacts in accordance to what he encounters in life, and as it just happens, what he encounters in life is painful, cruel, even nauseating.

In another interview way back in 2000, Adam Rapp claims to “admire Cormac McCarthy’s phenomenal gift of language”, but she shouldn’t be worried. He’s blessed plenty with that gift himself. As for the cat, I think I’m ready to read that Faulkner book again now.

Beautiful (by Amy Reed)

Beautiful by Amy Reed is Thirteen as a book, focusing on a good girl – 13 years of age – gone terribly bad: (unwanted) sex, alcohol, drugs,… you name it, and Cassie is experiencing it. Moved from tiny Bainbridge Island to one of Seattle’s suburbs, Cassie consciously wants leave her good girl image behind. We learn in the beginning that at her previous school she was not one of the popular girl which she desperately wanted to. There the “good girls” were the popular ones. At her new school she wants to be different, popular… and here the popular people aren’t the goody two-shoes, but the bad boys and girls. As such, Cassie befriends Alex, who introduces her to the world of sex, drugs and more.

There’s nothing uplifting about a story like Cassie’s: the friendship with Alex is one based on power. The relationship Cassie has with a popular high schooler is equally one that is based on power and submission. At no point you get the impression that this is something Cassie really wants – despite her initial resolve to “change her image”. It quickly becomes a downward spiral, which is both realistic – such is the way of drugs when mixed with hormonal 13-year-olds apparently – and unrealistic at the same time. Time and again the reader is pointed to the fact that Cassie is really smart, but none of her actions show that. Also the fact that she continues to get all As in the smart classes despite her increasing drug habit is not exactly realistic. At one point there’s a glimmer of hope, when Cassie makes friends with Sarah, Alex’s half-sister who’s been placed in Alex’s family because her father abused her. With Sarah there seems to be a real bond, until that too is of course nipped in the bud.

Beautiful hardly tells an original story (Ellen Hopkins fans will love this!), but luckily Amy Reed’s style is fluent and entertaining enough to keep you going. Plotwise, it’s also hard to get past the derivative nature of this book (it really is exactly like Thirteen), but Reed manages to keep her reader guessing at times, for better or worse… What happened to Cassie’s family to have them move in the first place. What’s up exactly with Alex and her mother? What about Cassie’s parents? Again, some of these elements add to the tension, but others just feel more like “underdevelopment. All in all, Beautiful is a bit of a mixed bag: compelling for the tale that is being told, but not exactly standing out in originality or execution…

Short Cuts

I Will Save You (by Matt de la Peña)

Kidd Ellison has the worst of lives. Away from the mental facility Horizons where he ended up after his mother killed herself (after she killed her abusive husband), he now lives in a tent on the beach, employed by Mr Red. In I Will Save You Matt de la Peña plays with narrative timelines as the reader has to figure out the links between Kidd and Olivia, Kidd and Mr Red, and especially Kidd and Devon, a guy Kidd met at Horizons but who now also turns up at the beach.

The book actually starts at the end of it all, when Kidd somehow pushes Devon off of a cliff, and then goes back to tell the entire story in flashback, memories, dreams and notebook entries (Kidd writes in his philosophy of life notebook). This disjointed chronology may throw you off at times, but it actually enhances the sense of desperation Kidd feels. The only thing this broken and vulnerable kid wants it to save Olivia, but when the mysterious Devon arrives and starts his devious schemes, everything Kidd wants is threatened. Even though you know from the start that something is up with Devon – there are clear hints throughout the book – I’m sure some readers will still be shocked at the ultimate twist at the end of the book.

I was a bit surprised to see this listed as a YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers, because it’s not exactly a “quick read”. On the contrary, it really does require some effort from the part of the reader. I don’t see my reluctant readers picking this up ‘quickly’. In any case, I Will Save You is a deeply moving and engaging book about a boy with an extremely troubled past and whose future is far from bright. Definitely one of the saddest books in a long time…

4 stars

 

My Swordhand is Singing (by Marcus Sedgwick)

Marcus Sedgwick is a cat favorite. One of the only writers to successfully publish work for children and young adults, his foray into the ‘darker’ genres is remarkable. In My Swordhand is Singing Sedgwick takes on the myths of the vampire. In his version of the age-old myth, there are no melodramatic romances. There are also no shining and sparkling über-creatures and irresistible doe-eyed maidens. Instead, Sedgwick focuses on the folktales that have been told all over the world, all through the ages. He sets his story in the 17^th century in the dead of winter somewhere in Eastern Europe. We get the story of a father, Tomas – a drunk – and his son Peter, both woodcutters and not liked by the villagers where they have settled. In this tale we get gypsies and the evil of the Shadow Queen. In this tale we get the ‘hostages’ (vampires), who’re only after one thing and it’s not making out with the living!

Sedgwick’s horror is so different from the fantasy horror that is usually associated with Vampire stories these days. If anything, it looks like for once we get a writer who has done his homework researching ancient folklore instead of romanticizing it. My Swordhand is Singing is by no means Sedgwick’s best work, but it already shows what this unique writer will attempt in later books too: a focus on setting (eerily so), an interest in the past, and gothic-like retellings of old tales.

3.5 stars