Rachel Vail: Lucky, Gorgeous, Brilliant

 *** SPOILER ALERT***

The most interesting thing about this series of three books (Lucky, Gorgeous, Brilliant) was watching the same stories unfold from three different points of view. Three very different points of view, in fact--major events from one story don't even appear in the others. Also each one covers a slightly different block of time, which makes everything even more complicated and compelling.

That said, the girls are going through life events that I probably don't have as much sympathy for as I should. And I don't think that's my fault. They're portrayed as poor little rich girls who are losing some of their privilege because of a family financial crisis. They are incredibly spoiled and unaware of it. And they behave badly, acting out in trite, self-endangering ways that just made me want to slap them. Really, you go get drunk at a stupid party to get back at your parents?

I don't really know that the author realizes how unsympathetic extreme privilege is, especially when it is completely unappreciated by the characters. I'm guessing 99% of the readers are not as privileged as these girls. When their problems had to do with normal life stuff, like a teacher being unfair or wanting to write a good paper or having trouble studying, it was fine, but when your major life crisis is that your Steinway grand piano got taken away, well, boo-hoo. It's so over the top that it's ludicrous and I lost any connection I had with that girl. They have *another piano.* And it's not like we ever saw her playing it, or loving it, or connecting with it in any way. No, we *hear* that she played it a lot and then we see that she's sad when it's gone. That feels like she's sad because she doesn't have her huge status symbol anymore.

A lot of YA does this and I wish it wouldn't. There are so many common experiences at that age. Why focus on privilege, which is infinitely less common? This is why I like Sarah Dessen's books--the girls work, the guys work, they have exceedingly crappy cars if at all, and those cars need gas, which costs money. People have to do homework. There are chores. There are real problems, like in Lock and Key. You don't find characters whining about losing their Steinway.

Of course losing something you consider yours and care a lot about really matters, but it can be something less blatantly a symbol of egregious wealth. The porch swing. The hammock on the tree out back. The tree itself--that's something that you can't take with you when you go. See what I mean? It can be relatable. It can be something other than a Steinway grand.

Overall the series was fascinating because of the multiple points of view, and because of the characters finding their own identities (the most common YA trope) but the overwhelming emphasis on privilege and the selfish lack of perspective or sense of humor in the characters kind of left me cold. They seem like mean, cold, selfish girls who only care about themselves and their status and how they "perform" in their designated roles. 

Maggie Stiefvater: Shiver

** spoiler alert ** I've heard good things about this book, so decided to try it, even though I can't stand the YA books that use supernatural exoticism (vampires, fairies) as a stand-in for actual compelling drama.

I stopped reading this. It's a YA romance set in a supernatural world, but the romance is one of those "he stares at her across the room but she doesn't know he exists" type things that does nothing for me. It's not a story. And the heroine is in love with a wolf she doesn't know is anything but a wolf, which is just problematic all kinds of ways.

Sure, we know how it's going to work out, but how is that a recommendation?

YA SF needs to pull itself together and stop letting exoticism replace compelling drama. You can have both! You should always write a story that would be amazing even if the characters were plain old boring humans. If it's relying on fairies or vampires or werewolves to be interesting, then it's not a good story.

That said, the writing was gorgeous and vivid. I would love to see this author write more! But without the crutch of the supernatural. Authors really do the genre a disservice by failing to hold themselves to high standards of story independent of the supernatural.

When is a story not a story?

I'm reading Maggie Stiefvater's book Shiver, about a girl who's in love with a werewolf. I think she might be one herself, not sure. I just started it. It's one of those YA books where nothing really happens. I find that un-compelling even though it's a perfectly fine book. This seems to be more common with SF-ish ones. Why do you think that is? Sometimes people fall in love with worldbuilding and utterly forget that they have to TELL A DANG STORY. Something gripping that makes me want to turn the pages, sheesh.

There are enough clues that I'm certain what's going to happen. Even if I'm wrong, it's not a state of being that makes me carry the book around the house and read ahead breathlessly. And I'm home sick today. See. 

Who is it, Niven? I think Niven. The one who wrote dozens of stacks of novels that are all worldbuilding and no story. Worse is when someone is working out ideas about something and using characters to discuss it. Oh just kill me now.

So I'm in love with my new novel in progress, but I had always planned out this whole side of the story I was going to tell from Apollo's point of view, you know, explaining all that, but I'm absolutely not going to do it. But I am going to let people in the book think it up as a daft scenario among other daft scenarios. You don't have to explain magical realism--in fact, not explaining is part of what makes it magical realism. Even if it's more like Classics-al realism. Anyway I think it's infinitely more fun if we don't really know if someone is crazycakes or experiencing the ancient divine, or maybe those are the same thing anyway.

I mean, if you need the world to give you something, you find a way to make it give you that thing, and you see it the way that you personally would see it. Interpretation is reality what with how we don't have one without the other.

If your brain is peopled by saints, when someone appears who doesn't fit into the normal human world, you see a saint. If it's aliens, you see an alien. If it's classical mythology, you see the gods and the people from the myths. If it's tv, you see the characters and the actors. I'm certainly guilty of that one. When I first got here to not-Hollywood, I kept thinking I saw actors I recognized. My brain was set with that filter.

When I saw a hawk flying over carrying a snake, my mind went straight to ancient portents.

I wish we'd seen a lot more about how polytheism works in a modern setting in Caprica. You know I loved Caprica all kinds of ways, though I found almost all of the characters pretty hard to like, for various reasons. But my favorite thing is modern polytheism seeing devotion to various things as religion. Devoted to sports? Your god is x. Devoted to knitting and quilting? Your god is y. It's a way of seeing what's already there. We ARE already devoted those ways so calling them gods is perfectly logical.

Anyway, now I'm thinking a lot about the What's Going to Happen page-turning urgency of this book and I'm not so sure it's there yet, though there's definitely a lot of Is She Bananacakes? going on. But just like with Shiver, that's not enough. Must think about the story on top of that. I just thought of something between the end of that sentence and the beginning of this one, something that's already in what I've written so far but wasn't turned into story.

I have to go write that right exactly now.