Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here

From the moment you start Anna Breslaw's witty, heart-felt SCARLETT EPSTEIN HATES IT HERE, it's pretty clear that Scarlett is not your ordinary teen--and Breslaw isn't your ordinary writer.

Scarlett's a smart, acerbic teenager who'd rather live on the boards of the fandom for her favorite TV show than interact with the real-live teenagers in her high school. When the TV show is cancelled, Scarlett, desperate to keep some of the top fanfic writers together, proposes a new twist on the show: fanfic with original characters. The only problem? Scarlett models these original characters on real people, including her long-time crush Gideon who has recently, inexplicably, joined forces with the Populars. And that's only the start of Scarlett's complications.

As other reviews have noted, this isn't a plot driven novel, so much as it is an intimate look at Scarlett's life, her struggles to fit into a virtual and real life that don't always have clear-cut boundaries, her strained relationship with both her mother and the writer father she idealizes (but who has left them behind for a new family in NYC). No one in this story is perfect, and that's part of what makes the story so wonderful--a perfect blend of humor and heartache. Really though, Scarlett's voice carries this story--she's the kind of person I would have loved to know in high school (though I'm afraid she would have been too cool for me).

Some language, discussion of sexual situations.

I'll Give You the Sun

 I'd heard a lot of hype about Jandy Nelson's newest book, I'll Give you the Sun, before I picked up a copy, so while I was looking forward to reading it, I was also a little hesitant. I've read too many books that didn't live up to the hype.

But Nelson's book does: it's vivid, powerful, beautifully written.

The story is told from the point of view of two twins, on two different timelines: Noah, at 13, and Jude, three years later. When the story starts in Noah's timeline, Noah is fretting about his increasing distance from Jude, obsessing about getting into the nearby arts academy, and falling in love with the boy next door.

Three years later, when Jude picks up the story, everything has changed. It's Jude, not Noah, who's at the fancy art school. Gone is the pretty, popular girl of the early narrative: Jude hides herself in baggy clothes, stuffs her hair under a hat, and does her best to be invisible. Noah is equally unrecognizable: he no longer creates art, he runs track, and the boy who fiercely resisted any kind of homogeneous impulse now blends in with the crowd. It's clear something has unmade their family, and that mystery is part of what drives the heart of the story.

But what I fell in love with here were the characters, not the plotline. Nelson has the twins so vividly realized that they jump off the page: Noah with his tendency to think of his own life in terms of artistic portraits, his sensitivity to color and emotional resonance. Jude and her adorable collection of superstitions and tendency to talk to her grandmother's ghost. While I didn't love everything the twins did (they both screwed up some pretty major things), I did love them, and it's to Nelson's credit that while the end wraps up fairly neatly, it doesn't feel too simplistic or clichéd--in fact, I was particularly impressed with the emotional wallop of the ending. I don't cry at a lot of books, but this one did it for me.

That said, there's a fair amount of language, sex (some action but lots of talking/thinking about it) and drug use, so it's definitely for more mature teen readers.

Some favorite lines:

"Love does as it undoes. It goes after, with equal tenacity: joy and heartbreak."

"Because who knows? Who knows anything? Who knows who's pulling the strings? Or what is? Or how? Who knows if destiny is just how you tell yourself the story of your life? Another son might not have heard his mother's last words as a prophecy but drug-induced gibberish, forgotten soon after. Another girl might not have told herself a love story about a drawing her brother made. Who knows if Grandma really thought the first daffodils of spring were lucky or if she just wanted to go on walks with me through the woods? Who knows if she even believed in her bible at all or if she just preferred a world where hope and creativity and faith trump reason? Who knows if there are ghosts (sorry, Grandma) or just the living, breathing memories of your loved ones inside you, speaking to you, trying to get your attention by any means necessary? Who knows where the hell Ralph is? (Sorry, Oscar). No one knows.

"So we grapple with the mysteries, each in our own way."

The End or Something Like It

Ann Dee Ellis' latest novel, The End or Something Like It, is deceptively simple. The opening chapters are just a single sentence apiece. And the voice (an authentic, quirky, 14-year-old named Emmy who's mourning the death of her best friend Kim the year before) is sometimes repetitive, sometimes simple, sometimes abrupt.

But for all that there's a strangely lyrical quality about the voice. I found Emmy wholly believable as a character in mourning. At the same time, despite the potentially depressing topic, the book itself isn't depressing: it's much more a believable portrait of friendship between two young women, and Emmy's recollections of Kim are bitter-sweet, funny (often), off-beat, and charming. The story switches between the present and the past (when Kim is still alive), as Emmy struggles with Kim's acceptance of her death and Kim's insistence that Emmy try to contact her after she dies.

As Emmy puts it, "Turns out I suck at talking to dead people."

Only she doesn't. She just sucks at talking to Kim. Other dead people--including her ex-earth sciences teacher, Mrs. Homeyer--she has no trouble seeing.

As the novel weaves back and forth between past and present, readers get a glimpse into Emmy's relationship with Kim (and understanding as to why Emmy feels so much guilt about her death) and Emmy's gradual re-emergence from a sort of mourning cocoon.

I thought it was lovely.

It's possible that I'm biased because I knew Ann Dee in high school--but I don't think so. I've read other books by people I know and like that I didn't like so well. I read this in an afternoon and I keep thinking about it.

Also, I'm fairly certain Mrs. Homeyer was modeled after a real teacher at the junior high we both attended (of the same name). I'm 90% sure I had to do those same word searches. (But then, my memories of some aspects of junior high are pretty fuzzy).