YA New York

I just read The Finishing Touches by Hester Browne. It’s solid English chick lit of the best kind, but as I read it I couldn’t help thinking about how many YA themes it touched upon.

The story centers around London’s last remaining finishing school, tracking girls from the 1980s and girls from the present, when the school is basically crumbling with an all-time enrollment low.

Finishing school is supposed to take place during a young woman’s “gap year,” the year she takes off between high school and college. Which means many of the characters are in their teens. Others, of course, are in their mid to late twenties, which seems these days to be the barrier between YA and non-YA.

The thing is, I think a lot of women in their late twenties go through a second adolescence of sorts. We have careers, learn how to cook and clean for ourselves, pay bills. But, at least in my social circle, suddenly everyone is pairing off (for life!), and there tends to be a lot of jealousy. Also a lot of “Who am I?” sort of questioning. When you’re twenty-five to thirty, if you aren’t sure of your career yet, that’s when you go back to school or start a new job. That’s when you say, “Forget it! I’m joining a book club so I can make some new friends!”

This particular novel deals with the “Who am I?” question more than most, because one of the main story lines centers around a twenty-seven-year-old woman trying to find out who her birth parents are.

But the other day I was reading a YA novel that wasn’t about high school, and I realized the line has blurred. Nowadays I keep wanting to say that good literature is for teens, and so all good books should go on the YA shelves. (Obviously not quite fair for the adults, but my reaction is one of, “Oh, you’re stuck in the plain old fiction and literature section, eh? How do you expect anyone to find you there?”)

Right. So there are books for teens that aren’t necessarily about teens. What do you define as YA? What are some books that are close, but don’t quite fit the bill?

The New York Times published this article today. It included interesting observations about why today’s teens don’t relate to Holden Caulfield.

Alas, one of these observations provoked the high school debater in my head.

Barbara Feinberg, in an e-mail to The New York Times: “Holden is somewhat a victim of the current trend in applying ever more mechanistic approaches to understanding human behavior … Compared to the early 1950s, there is not as much room for the adolescent search, for intuition, for empathy, for the mystery of the unconscious and the deliverance made possible through talking to another person.”

Emphasis added. I think that today’s YA novels, many of which are masterpieces, are addressing that need better than Holden does. It’s not because Catcher in the Rye is something teens can no longer understand because they don’t understand whining, or feeling alone, or wanting to experience something new. It’s because the current generation has good literature to read that documents their struggles.

For instance, my top two authors of ‘08, as you may remember, were E. Lockhart and Laurie Halse Anderson. They’re both writers who address Big Complex Issues, write well, and … let’s be frank. We’ve got better heroes for our time than Holden Caulfield could be. Studying Holden is like studying our parents.

Now, I haven’t read Catcher in the Rye in about five years, but I don’t think the fact that it’s a bit pathetic to the modern observer makes it completely obsolete. Wes Anderson has a whole career in making films — good ones — that are all basically about variations on Holden Caulfield.

Right. So what do you think? Talk amongst yourselves. Oh, and while you’re reading that article, tell me who you think today’s Holdens are? We’re not really stuck with Harry Potter, are we? I’ve got some more interesting characters in mind.

Michael Grant — yes, the Michael Grant of Gone and Hunger fame — stopped by today to let us know that his latest opens at number eight on the New York Times Bestsellers list. (The list will show up on June 21, as Michael said in his comment here.)

Woohoo! Congrats, Michael.

Want to hear something gross? Of course you do. So there’s this book Gentlemen, which has been sitting next to my bathtub for … quite awhile now. I’ve read it three or four times, (generally in the tub) and I was planning to do something big when I reviewed it.

Problem: I just picked it up and it seems that it’s died a tragic death. I mean, it’s no longer in readable condition. At all. Which, to be honest, is a good indicator that I liked it a lot.

Gentlemen is Michael Northrop’s debut YA novel, and it’s so awesome that it actually made me consider reading Crime and Punishment, that great opus by Fyodor Dostoevsky. And I’ve never been big on … you know. Hard-to-read classic literature.

No one but no one can make me read Dostoevsky. Except maybe Michael Northrop, it would seem.

Right. So about this book, already. Our protag, Mike, is one of the dunces of his class. This is sort of refreshing. We don’t generally get books about boys at all. Boys who are dunces, maybe even kind of unsavory? Inconceivable.

Mike and his friends are reading Crime and Punishment in their English class when suddenly they begin to suspect that their teacher has … well … lived out the scenario in the novel they’re studying. This gets Mike to actually read Crime and Punishment, but it also gets him and his friends into a heap of trouble. With crime, you know. And punishment.

Honestly? Michael’s book is refreshing. It’s different. Granted, it’s yet another (another!) bit of YA fiction that encourages us to tackle the big bad scary books. But it does it so well that I can’t help forgiving Michael. Also? I think maybe it’s time I went out and bought some Dostoevsky.

And I should probably clean up that pile of books next to my tub.

PS. Who are we kidding? That pile of books will never shrink.

Alas, I did not get to the NYC teen author reading last night, due to getting caught up in other work.

But I did finish reading Hunger.

A few quick words of advice for those of you out there who have yet to read Michael Grant’s newest novel: Don’t eat and read at the same time.

A few quick links before I continue: Hunger is a Gone novel, which was reviewed here back when it debuted. I also interviewed Michael back in the day.

He blogs at Stupid Blog Name. He’s invited me to blog there, although I must admit I’m a bit intimidated by the idea. Michael also has a website for this series at The FAYZ. (FAYZ stands for Fallout Alley Youth Zone.)

Do not attempt to read Hunger without first reading Gone. If you’re up for it, try to re-read the first novel before delving into the second: there’s a lot to remember.

Now, on to the actual review: Hunger, like Gone, is one of those big summer blockbuster kinds of books. It’s 592 pages long, which means you can drag it around with you for ages if you like. On a plane. To the beach. Or, if you’re like me, you can swallow it down whole in a day.

Short plot summary: Fifteen-year-old Sam Temple was elected mayor of Perdido Beach and the FAYZ after the adults all disappeared one day. Three months have passed, and now kids are starving. People who were friends are turning on one another. There’s no rewards system for working, so lots of kids just don’t show up. Apathy has taken over, and anger, and everyone is splitting up into factions. The monster at the bottom of the mine shaft is hungry, too, and it’s calling people to it.

So, right. Big summer blockbuster. A novel that is at once a book, an action movie, a horror flick, a bit sci fi, and a nice civics lesson.

What’s most interesting about Hunger is that Michael uses the story to explore various forms of government. A republic, of sorts. Capitalism. Dictatorship. So, those of you going into your junior year should be well-prepared for AP American History and/or Government after you’ve read Hunger. Seriously.

But it’s also a good story, considering Michael is one of those insanely prolific master storytellers. It’s interesting enough that you’ll have a hard time putting it down — even if you are trying to eat.

Hunger isn’t my usual cup of tea, I must admit. I tend to go for the girlier stuff, books about falling in love. Or faeries. Vampires, even. Anything that lets me escape from the real world for however long it take to read.

You don’t want to escape into the FAYZ. That terrible place where adults have popped out is just … total mayhem. It’s not a fun place. I wouldn’t want to live there. I wouldn’t want to visit.

And yet. And yet the novel sucked me in. In spite of the fact that I’m a squeamish sort, the kind of girl who doesn’t particularly like to imagine worms with teeth, or people with whips for hands.

::shudder::

All in all, I cannot in good conscience let you go through this summer without reading Michael Grant’s latest. Even if it gave me the heebie-jeebies. Even if I’m sure it will give you the heebie-jeebies. It’s worth.

Now get to work. You’ve got a lot of reading to do.

FYI:

A gaggle of teen authors will be doing their thing at the Jefferson Market Branch of the New York Public Library tonight. Six p.m., Sixth Avenue at 10th Street.

From the FaceBook page:

Micol and David Ostow: So Punk Rock
Elizabeth Scott: Love You Hate You Miss You
Delia Sherman: The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen
Jennifer Smith: You Are Here
Suzanne Weyn: Distant Waves
Jake Wizner: Castration Celebration
Jessica Wollman: Second Skin

Of these books, I’ve only read Distant Waves, but I can tell you that David Levithan, the venerable author, editor and event organizer, has excellent taste. (Oh, and Distant Waves is awesome.)

Hopefully I’ll be able to snag copies of some of these books for you tonight, as well as taking pics and writing up the event for those of you who are not in New York or who are unable to make it to tonight’s reading.

But if you’re free, and you’re in or near NYC, please do come. It should be a blast!

PS. Elizabeth Scott is crazy prolific. I just read Something, Maybe, which debuted in April, and it turns out that Love You, Hate You, Miss You is her brand new book out this month. Wow!

Liam Geller is handsome. Well-dressed. Popular. Also: a perennial troublemaker. Always saying something that upsets his father, or getting himself into a scrape. Like hooking up with a girl on his father’s desk.

That’s what finally gets him booted. After almost eighteen years, Liam’s CEO dad has had enough and announces he’s being shipped off to his grandparents’ house in Nevada.

Liam doesn’t like his grandparents, and they don’t like him. So his mother arranges for him to stay with his aunt Pete. Actually, scratch that. Pete is his uncle, his dad’s brother, but Liam thinks of him as “Aunt Pete” because of the time he showed up for dinner in a red dress. The time his dad lost it and then stopped speaking to Pete.

Right. So popular, cool Liam Geller moves into Pete’s trailer and antics ensue as Liam attempts to become unpopular. Uncool. Smart. He even puts pens into his shirt pocket, but nothing seems to work. He is cursed with the gift of popularity.

K.L. Going’s most recent book is a masterpiece: funny, smart, moving. It’s the kind of book you can relate to even if you, like me, were never a popular boy.

I previewed this book several months ago, and when I re-read it yesterday I remembered that it was something that deserved a review right away. So if you haven’t read it already, go check it out.

PS. Going, like so many other YA authors, makes us think about classic literature a we read teen lit. Maybe we’re trying to escape from reading, say, Hamlet, but Going won’t let us get away with that. So when you go out and pick up King of the Screwups, get yourself a copy of Hamlet to go along with it. Just in case.

A little over a year ago, Rachel Vail published a fantastic book called Lucky, about a thirteen-year-old girl whose family suddenly found themselves in reduced circumstances.

Gorgeous continues following the Avery family, starting from about the same place Lucky started but from the perspective of middle sister Allison, who wants more than anything to be … beautiful.

And the first sentence is a doozy. Guaranteed to suck you right in. Takes the whole Avery saga in a very strange direction. Makes you think, “You did what to whom???”

I won’t hold out on you. Here ’tis:

“I sold my cell phone to the devil.”

YES! We need more books involving people selling stuff to the devil. There have been a few good ones. (Soul Enchilada by David McGinnis Gill, for starters.) But we need more. And I’m glad Rachel is contributing to the genre.

Really, though, Gorgeous is not some bizzarro foray into the realm of religious fantasy. The whole “sold my cell phone to the devil” thing is a vehicle for exploring Allison Avery’s struggle with regular teen stuff: beauty, popularity, boys, and of course wealth.

I won’t tell you too much for fear of spoiling the plot, but the gist is this: Allison makes her deal with the devil. People find her more attractive. And then she accidentally finds herself sought out by the modeling industry.

Back when I reviewed Lucky I wrote that it was really refreshing for an author to tackle the subject of wealth in such a direct way. What I love about Rachel’s sequel is that she’s continuing to embroider the story of the Avery sisters (and their financial struggles), and she’s not sticking to a boilerplate to do it.

So. Great book. Twenty-seven gold stars, fifteen green stars, nine hundred blue stars and seventy-nine red stars.

If you haven’t already read Lucky, start there. Then check out Gorgeous while eagerly awaiting the final book in this trilogy, Brilliant.

And look out for an interview with Rachel here on the site some time soon.

Yesterday I told you I was reading Peace, Love & Baby Ducks by Lauren Myracle. And I went on a bit about how I learned my lesson about mocking Krazy Kristians after reading Pure by Terra Elan McVoy.

Well, Lauren really drove the lesson home. Here’s a quote to show exactly what I mean:

“How is saying that all Christians are fools different from Christians saying all non-Christians are fools?”

Nicely put, yeah?

But I do have to say that this book is definitely not a big in-your-face “Let’s all be Christians now” kind of thing. Actually, our protag, Carly, is definitely questioning. Her parents are agnostic, but she goes to a Christian school called Holy Redeemer. While she doesn’t like having religion crammed down her throat, she is definitely thinking about these things.

Carly has just gotten back from a summer work experience in the wilds of Tennessee, and this year she is all about being different. Standing out from the crowd. Wearing a dashiki (once). Unfortunately, it takes awhile before she realizes she’s hurting people she loves by mocking them for being … you know … not non-conformist. And she’s starting to question whether her ways of standing out aren’t sort of shallow.

Lauren manages to convey all of this without sounding the least bit preachy. (In fact, if there’s one person I can point to as a shiny example of non-preachiness, it’s Lauren Myracle.)

Hair disasters, sisterly jealousy, ridiculous racist comments made by people who are themselves ridiculous, cool guys who aren’t really cool, super-rich spoiled brats in Atlanta — this novel has it all. Oh, and baby ducks, too. Just like in the title.

Plus the cover (I can’t upload images while I’m here in Spain, where the interwebs suck, but I’ll put a pic up as soon as I get home) is awesome.

If you’re already a Lauren Myracle fan, you’ve already put Peace, Love & Baby Ducks on your TBR list. Bump it up to the top if you haven’t already. And if it’s not on your list yet … well, put it there already. Because this book is made of awesome.

Right now I’m sitting in my hotel room in Barcelona — it is ten p.m. here — where I have been reading Peace, Love & Baby Ducks by Lauren Myracle. As I began the book, I couldn’t help thinking of a book I read several months ago: Pure by Terra Elan McVoy.

Since I’m only a third of the way through the latest Lauren Myracle, let me tell you about Pure, which was blurbed by Lauren Myracle herself.

I went into it thinking I’d hate it, because the press release from the publicist said it was about a group of girls who all have purity rings — symbols of their promise to Christ that they will stay chaste until they marry.

See, I’m a really liberal kind of gal. My upbringing, however, was not. When I was four years old I had a recurring nightmare that Judgement Day had come, and I had missed it. (In the dreams, I would walk around my house looking for my parents, then go outside and walk up and down my block knocking on doors. No one answered, and I was all alone in the world.)

All that fear of going to hell kind of soured Christianity for me as I got older and realized I should stop trying to “save” my friends if I wanted them to keep being my friends.

So when I saw Pure sitting in my reading pile, I thought, “Should I even bother?”

Yes. Absolutely yes.

It’s easy to forget that there are different kinds of Christianity, and it’s not always about fear. Indeed, I believe the main message is supposed to be one of love.

So, back to the story: One of the girls goes rogue, by which I mean, she is unchaste. By which I mean she has sex. All but one of her four friends stop speaking to her.

Then the book doesn’t go off into a weirdo psychedelic Christian rant about the evils of premarital sex, ending up with the sinner begging God for forgiveness as she goes into labor. No, instead, McVoy put a lot of thought into this. She wrote about looking for passages in the Bible that specifically say premarital sex is wrong (and finding none), about what this promise to remain chaste means, what breaking it means, and about other promises. Promises to friends, implied promises to be faithful and forgiving, and the general gist of trying to emulate Christ.

While McVoy doesn’t write, “Teen sex is great, and everyone should do it,” she does take a stand against judging others. She also sheds light on some of the ways in which Christian girls can be particularly mean to one another, like starting mini holy wars at their schools. Her message is powerful, and deep, and moving.

What I like best about it is that it’s a good read whether you were raised Christian or Hindu, Muslim or Jewish, atheist or agnostic. In fact, it reminds those of us out there who identify as liberal Jewish Buddhist agnostics that we’re doing ourselves a disservice when we mock the wacky evangelicals.

It’s easy to make fun of Krazy Kristians, but it’s also unfair — . Lauren Myracle, whose books are just plain awesome, is a good example of that. So is John Green. And if you’re in the market for Christian fiction … well, you could do much worse than Pure.

PS. Peace, Love & Baby Ducks? Love it so far. Actually, it starts out with the protagonist spending her summer on Lookout Mountain, which straddles Tennessee and Georgia. There’s a pretty strict Christian school, Covenant College, at the top of that mountain, though Lauren doesn’t mention it in her book. Hey, Lauren! You ever hear of Covenant College?