Sarah Dessen: Dreamland

This was a tough book to love because of the ultra-passive heroine, but I did love it. It's something I watch out for in my own writing, and let me tell you, my first finished novel was all passive heroine all the time. But I'm currently writing something else that's all about a passive heroine waking up to that fact and snapping out of it in the first paragraph of page one--and how terribly hard that is for her and for everyone else around her to accept. It's like getting out of a nice warm bed into cold water, every single time she has to do something instead of allowing things to happen to her. And everyone around her shoves her right back into that old mode every time she moves a muscle.

So let's just say I'm very interested in the literary tradition of the passive heroine (you can trace it back to early saints' lives, at least) and that makes this book fascinating to me.

I have some dumb complaints I'll just get off my chest right away. Most of the girls' names started with C, which drives me crazy trying to keep them straight. The characters were very different, but why not go for some variety? I can think of a reason why not: they were all different versions of our heroine, different choices, different options that she didn't take. But still.

Other very dumb complaint: a merry-go-round is a merry-go-round, the low-tech round thing that you push and jump onto at the playground. Something nearly made me close the book and walk away on about page two, when the author referred to an actual merry-go-round as the low-tech version of one. Anyway. Letting it go.

This book could almost be subtitled: The Perils of Passivity. We watch Caitlin (not Cassandra, or any of the other C people) let herself be drawn into cheerleading, which she hates, and almost lets herself be drawn into a relationship with a boy she barely knows, just because it's expected of her. There's lots of inner dialogue about how she hates this, she doesn't like this boy, she doesn't want to do this and that, but she goes along with everything. The one choice she makes the whole book is stepping away from the football boy the others have chosen for her and turning toward Rogerson, the abusive drug dealer boyfriend. And even that is just accepting an invitation, not so much making a real choice of her own. Choosing from A or B that are in front of you is a choice, but just about the weakest possible thing.

Caitlin's choices are always: allow, put up with, go along with, avoid, be silent, cover up. She does seem to choose how long to wait before sleeping with Rogerson, which honestly doesn't fit with the rest of their relationship. He beats the hell out of her over nothing so I don't see a guy like that respecting her enough to let her tell him when that is going to happen. That jarred for me. Especially someone as utterly passive as Caitlin.

The weakness of the book was that Caitlin never, ever learns to stand up for herself. The abusive relationship isn't revealed because she grows a backbone or tells someone, despite tons of opportunities. She never does stand up to Rogerson, or confront him, or even tell him NO when he's belting her across the room. Instead, in the most utterly passive denouement possible, she gets knocked to the ground and *refuses to get up,* lying on the wet grass being kicked, which infuriates Rogerson because of course he told her to get up and she should do what she says. And one of the ladies at the big party sees this out her window and calls the police and her mother.

I wanted Caitlin to resist in some way. Some tiny way. She never resists at all. She literally never speaks about any of it to Rogerson. I would have been happy even if her day at the lake was a tiny gesture of rebellion and she got out from under his thumb for one afternoon that way, but even that was utterly against her will, dragged out there by her friend who won't take no for an answer (nobody in Caitlin's life ever takes no for an answer--she never enforces anything) and then when she finally does start walking, too agitated at not being able to reach Rogerson to tell him where she is, her friend's boyfriend drives her home. And that's even weaker. She can't even make anyone drive her home!

So I found this book infuriating, in a lot of ways that I think you're supposed to find it infuriating. Caitlin was certainly raised to be invisible and passive, with an overly involved mother who manages every second of her life. But where's the story if she never learns any better? Where's the story if the most passive character ever never stands on her own two feet even for one second? Her family sends her off to a treatment center for months and she seems to get better, deals with the emotional and physical abuse, quits her drug use, faces her fears. But again she never instigates or does anything.

And when she gets home, it's to a big comforting family that's going to take care of her again, her beloved sister back home from running away, a display of her photographs hung on the wall by her loving neighbors. She didn't do any of it. She didn't fix anything, or solve anything, or stand up to anyone, or ever even win an argument, except the one time her mom tried to take her jacket off and Caitlin wouldn't let her, because of the bruises. Which would be significant except it had no effect on anything at all.

Brilliant things: the inevitable slow descent into disaster. Brilliantly written. The comfort of passivity, letting things happen. Caitlin's self-loathing was amazingly well written, despising her own weakness and passivity even while she let everyone else rule her life. That claustrophobic feeling of being trapped by circumstances.

I'm very glad I read this book, for my own work and because Caitlin is a very real, compelling character, even if I wanted to yell, "Snap out of it!" about eighteen million times. But maybe we all need to hear that once in a while.