#102: American Youth

American Youth, by Phil LaMarche

(New York: Random House, 2007)

Summary:
"American Youth is a controlled, essential, and powerful tale of a teenager in southern New England who is confronted by a terrible moral dilemma following a firearms accident in his home. This tragedy earns him the admiration of a sinister gang of boys at his school and a girl associated with them. Set in a town riven by social and ideological tensions an old rural culture in conflict with newcomers this is a classic portrait of a young man struggling with the idea of identity and responsibility in an America ill at ease with itself."

Opening Line:
"The two boys walked the high ridge at the center of the wood road, avoiding the muddy ruts along the sides."

My Take:
As far as I remember, I liked it well enough and appreciated that it was well-written. Didn't absolutely love it or have a tough time putting it down, though.

#32: The Last Time I Saw You

 

The Last Time I Saw You, by Elizabeth Berg (New York: Random House, 2010)

Summary:

"From the beloved bestselling author of Home Safe and The Year of Pleasures comes a wonderful new novel about women and men reconnecting with one another -- and themselves -- at their fortieth high school reunion.

"To each of the men and women in The Last Time I Saw You, this reunion means something different -- a last opportunity to say something long left unsaid, an escape from the bleaker realities of everyday life, a means to save a marriage on the rocks, or simply an opportunity to bond with a slightly estranged daughter, if only over what her mother should wear.

"As the onetime classmates meet up over the course of a weekend, they discover things that will irrevocably affect the rest of their lives. For newly divorced Dorothy Shauman, the reunion brings with it the possibility of finally attracting the attention of the class heartthrob, Peter Decker. For the ever self-reliant, ever left-out Mary Alice Mayhew, it's a chance to reexamine a painful past. For Lester Hessenpfeffer, a veterinarian and widower, it is the hope of talking shop with a fellow vet -- or at least that's what he tells himself. For Candy Armstrong, the class beauty, it's the hope of finding friendship before it's too late.

"As Dorothy, Mary Alice, Lester, Candy, and the other classmates converge for the reunion dinner, four decades melt away: desires and personalities from their youth reemerge, and new discoveries are made. For so much has happened to them all. And so much can still happen. 

"In this beautiful novel, Elizabeth Berg deftly weaves together stories of roads taken and not taken, choices made and opportunities missed, and the possibilities of second chances."

Opening Line:

"Dorothy Shauman Ledbetter Shauman is standing in front of the bathroom mirror in her black half-slip and black push-up bra, auditioning a look."

My Take:

I've read a few of Berg's novels over the years and my general impression is that they're solid if a bit inconsistent. I remember really enjoying Range of Motion, though none of the others stick in my head quite as clearly. Five chapters in and I'm most taken with Dorothy's humanness and vulnerability so far; Mary Alice seems just too meek and perfect, and Peter too stereotypically in hound dog, dump-your-loyal-wife-for-a-younger-woman midlife crisis mode. Lester has potential, though the long-ago loss of his pregnant wife and his absolute lack of interest in anything romantic since then seems a bit melodramatic. If nothing else, it'll be a good lazy weekend read after a busy week.

Not awful, and a fairly quick read, but not especially funny, entertaining, or memorable, either.

#80: The White Devil

The White Devil, by Justin Evans (New York: Harper, 2011)

Summary:
"The Harrow School is home to privileged adolescents known as much for their distinctive dress and traditions as for their arrogance and schoolboy cruelty. Seventeen-year-old Andrew Taylor is enrolled in the esteemed British institution by his father, who hopes that the school's discipline will put some distance between his son and his troubled past in the States.

"But trouble -- and danger -- seem to follow Andrew. When one of his schoolmates and friends dies mysteriously of a severe pulmonary illness, Andrew is blamed and is soon an outcast, spurned by nearly all his peers. And there is the pale, strange boy who begins to visit him at night. Either Andrew is losing his mind, or the house legend about his dormitory being haunted is true.

"When the school's poet-in-residence, Piers Fawkes, is commissioned to write a play about Byron, one of Harrow's most famous alumni, he casts Andrew in the title role. Andrew begins to discover uncanny links between himself and the renowned poet. In his loneliness and isolation, Andrew becomes obsessed with Lord Byron's story and the poet's status not only as a literary genius and infamous seducer but as a student at the very different Harrow of two centuries prior -- a place rife with violence, squalor, incurable diseases, and tormented love affairs.

"When frightening and tragic events from that long-ago past start to recur in Harrow's present, and when the dark and deadly specter by whom Andrew's been haunted seems to be all too real, Andrew is forced to solve a two-hundred-year-old literary mystery that threatens the lives of his friends and his teachers -- and, most terrifyingly, his own."

Opening Lines:
"Outside a cool evening awaited. The perspiration on his back and neck turned icy."

My Take:
Halfway through and still trying to decide. Got off to a slow start -- Gothic fiction isn't usually my thing -- but I do like stories set in school settings and it is picking up a bit. TBA.

(Later) Decent as those things go, but as I said, Gothic fiction isn't really my bag, and I don't know that this book was enough to win me over to the genre. Oh well; nothing wrong with expanding one's literary horizons.

As noted above, the book's opening is fairly unremarkable, with Andrew arriving at Harrow as a brand-new sixth-former (senior) feeling like he's stepped into a wholly alien world. The sole American at a British boarding school, and a rare transfer where most students begin as shells (seventh graders), Andrew does not make friends quickly -- not to mention that the rumors about his expulsion from his last school for drug use have crossed the pond with impressive speed. Only dorm-mate Theo Ryder is at all friendly or welcoming to Andrew, and within a few days, Theo is found dead. Contrary to the jacket blurb above, Andrew isn't blamed for Theo's death at this point, and the remaining residents of the Lot (Andrew's and formerly, Theo's house, or dorm) continue their studies, shaken but not really permanently changed.

Or so they think. What Andrew can't tell anyone at first, for fear of being deemed crazy and sent home, is that he not only found Theo's body ... he saw him die, strangled by a mysterious, white-haired boy who was there one moment and (without running away) simply gone the next. When the autopsy attributes Theo's death to a rare but non-contagious lung disease, he tries to put the vision from his mind. At the same time, Harrow's poet-in-residence and Lot's housemaster, Piers Fawkes, has been commissioned to write a play about Harrow's most famous alum, Lord Byron ... to whom Andrew bears an uncanny resemblance. Andrew is cast in the lead role, and begins to forge tentative, unlikely friendships with both Fawkes and the school's sole female student, headmaster's daughter Persephone Vine.

Unfortunately, the spectral white-haired boy doesn't give up that easily. Late one night, Andrew sees him a second time, when the boy leads him to a prefect's bathroom in the Harrow of yore, where a perplexed Andrew prevents him from being raped by a gang of older, larger students. Later, he recites a bizarre verse which Andrew learns (with the help of Fawkes and the school's archivist, Judith Kahn) comes from an obscure Jacobean tragedy performed at Harrow some 200 years earlier. This coincidence convinces the skeptical Fawkes that Andrew's ghost isn't just in his head, and the two become engrossed in discovering who he is and what he wants.

Until two more students fall ill, with symptoms similar to Theo's ... but which now, on closer examination, seem to indicate TB. This ratchets up the urgency and publicity of their search, especially as one of the students is Persephone.

From here on out, the book does get considerably more gripping and hard to put down. Though I'm not typically a fan of ghost stories, I did enjoy the climax and resolution of this one. If you like boarding school novels with a touch of the supernatural, give this one a try.

#70 - Big Girl Small

Big Girl Small, by Rachel DeWoskin (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2011)

Summary:
"Judy Lohden is your above-average sixteen-year-old -- sarcastic and vulnerable, talented and uncertain, full of big dreams for a big future. With a singing voice that can shake an auditorium, she should be the star of Darcy Academy, the local performing arts high school. So why is a girl this promising hiding out in a seedy motel room on the edge of town?

"The fact that the national media is on her trail after a controversy that might bring down the whole school could have something to do with it. And that scandal has something -- but not everything -- to do with the fact that Judy is three feet nine inches tall.

"Rachel DeWoskin remembers everything about high school: the auditions (painful), the parents (hovering), the dissection projects (weird but compelling), the friends (outcasts), the boys (crushable), and the girls (complicated), and she lays it all out with an unparalleled wit and wistfulness. Big Girl Small is a scathingly funny and moving book about dreams and reality, at once light on its feet and profound."

Opening Line:
"When people make you feel small, it means they shrink you down close to nothing, diminish you, make you feel like shit."

My Take:
This was a happy accident. Picked this one up at the library for who knows what reason; I guess just because the title or the cover caught my eye. And I'm glad I did. Stayed up way too late getting into it last night, and then finished up today after knocking off work (had no choice, system was down. Really.)

On one level, the jacket blurb nails it: DeWoskin does have an eye for nailing those details that make high school both memorable and excruciating. The compulsion, even though you know you shouldn't, to throw your loyal but equally-outcast friend over when a pretty, popular girl invites you to hang out. The all-but-total paralysis that can affect otherwise strong and independent young women when That Guy deigns to give you the time of day. The simultaneous love and irritation with parents and younger siblings. You get the idea.

Then on top of this, this fairly short book has a lot to say about the tension -- strongest in adolescence, but never really absent -- between our longing to fit in, and our desire to stand out. Owing to her stature and proportions, Judy can't really help doing the latter when she transfers to the local performing arts high school, and hopes less to belong then to go unnoticed. With a few exceptions -- dancer Goth Sarah, nerdy but kooky Molly, and surprisingly, gorgeous Ginger -- she sort of succeeds (despite being the only junior admitted to a prestigious senior voice class). That is, until BMOC Kyle turns out to be surprisingly friendly and candid, even offering to drive Judy home. You know early on that things between them don't turn out well -- in fact, they go badly enough to convince Judy her life is over, and send her from her loving (if occasionally overprotective) family in Ann Arbor to the dingy Motel Manor in Ypsilanti -- but I won't spoil more than that; part of the book's art lies in the way Judy and the author roll the trauma out slowly, piece by piece.

A tremendously compelling story, with a fitting ending.

#17 - Songs for the Missing

And this one pretty much lived up to expectations. Songs for the Missing, by Stewart O'Nan (New York, 2008) isn't the first families-of-missing-teens book I've read (see The Local News, for one), but it's definitely one of the best -- probably because it neither wraps things up neatly, nor does the usual tug-at-the-tear-ducts stuff you might expect.

Summary: "An enthralling portrait of one family in the aftermath of a daughter's disappearance. 'It was the summer of her Chevette, of J.P. and letting her hair grow.' It was also the summer when, without warning, popular high school student Kim Larsen disappeared from her small midwestern town. Her loving parents, her introverted sister, her friends and boyfriend must now do everything they can to find her. As desperate search parties give way to pleading television appearances, and private investigations yield to personal revelations, we see one town’s intimate struggle to maintain hope and, finally, to live with the unknown. Stewart O'Nan's new novel begins with the suspense and pacing of a thriller and soon deepens into an affecting family drama of loss. On the heels of his critically acclaimed and nationally bestselling Last Night at the Lobster, Songs for the Missing is an honest, heartfelt account of one family's attempt to find their child. With a soulful empathy for these ordinary heroes, O'Nan draws us into the world of this small American town and allows us to feel a part of this family."

A good, solid read. In addition to Kim's parents and sister, Lindsey, we also see how her disappearance reverberates in the lives of her boyfriend, J.P., and her best friend, Nina. Certain small details are handled especially well: J.P. and Nina's guilt, first at not telling and then at telling the police about Kim's connection to a skanky, 30-year-old drug dealer (no, he didn't do it); the Larsens' inclination to both overprotect Lindsey in the wake of her sister's disappearance, and shelter her from too much direct involvement with the search; their struggle to visit and explain things to Roger's elderly, nursing home-bound mother; the over-the-top cheesy memorial buttons and songs that flow from the community; the local crazy lady (doesn't every town have one?) whose obsession with the case ultimately leads to an important discovery. If I had a book club, this would be a good book club book.

126 - Second Helpings

On a web site, in the guest room,
Wasting lots and lots of time,
Surfed a blogger, now a slacker,
'Twas yours truly, Hazelthyme.

Yep, that pretty much explains what I've been doing these last few weeks while I haven't been blogging. Reading? Some, but not nearly as much as usual. I could blame my absence on spending far too much time trying to read this book before admitting it Just. Wasn't. Gonna. Happen. and giving up (I've been on a bit of a history kick since reading A Short History of the United States last month, but this wasn't the best way to indulge it); on the focused, brilliantly successful job search efforts I've been mounting (between Thanksgiving and New Years? Get real.); on hours and hours of painstaking Christmas preparations ... but none of it would be true.

Anyway, several weeks ago, I finished Megan McCafferty's Second Helpings (New York: Three Rivers, 2003) -- the second in her Jessica Darling series, for those who admit to following these things. I sent it back to the library weeks ago, so had to raid Liv's book blog for the jacket blurb:

"Jessica Darling is up in arms again in this much-anticipated, hilarious sequel to Sloppy Firsts. This time, the hyperobservant, angst-riden teenager is going through the social and emotional ordeal of her senior year at Pineville High. Not only does the mysterious and oh-so-compelling Marcus Flutie continue to distract Jessica, but her best friend, Hope, still lives in another state, and she can't seem to excape the clutches of the Clueless Crew, her annoying so-called friends. To top it off, Jessica's parents won't get off her butt about choosing a college, and her sister Bethany's pregnancy is causing a big stir in the Darling household."

After being very much underwhelmed by Perfect Fifths, I was a bit skeptical about this one, but found myself pleasantly surprised. OK, OK -- I really liked it. Sure, Jessica is self-absorbed, but that's part of what makes her character so believable; she is, after all, in high school. And maybe certain aspects of her personality -- feeling smarter than most of her classmates, longing desparately to break free of a stifling suburban home town, struggling to Go Through the Motions of senior year, especially in the wake of 9/11 -- hit a wee bit too close to home for me to be objective, but frankly, if this stuff strikes a chord with me, I'm probably not the only one. Where McCafferty really excels here is in both telling the story from Jessica's perspective and giving us just a glimmer of insight into where that perspective falls short. Is Jessica's childhood friend Bridget, now the class beauty queen, really as shallow as Jess thinks, for example? Who is the mysterious author of the anonymous, gossipy Pinevile Low e-mails making the rounds, anyway? Is Jessica's ex-crush turned Columbia undergrad, Paul Parlipiano, truly the gay best friend of her dreams? And of course, will she and Marcus Flutie ever finally get it on?

Yes, most of these are leading questions and the answers (except possibly the Pinevile Low one ... unless I'm just thick) may not surprise you -- but how McCafferty gets there and how much she makes you care made for an entertaining read, at least for me.

121 - Reality Gap

#121 was Reality Gap: Alcohol, Drugs, and Sex -- What Parents Don't Know and Teens Aren't Telling, by Stephen Wallace (Union Square Press, 2008).

Dust jacket excerpt: "On one side of the reality gap that gives this book its title are parents' wishful perceptions of what their teens are up to when mom and dad aren't watching. On the other side is the truth. For decades, the gap has been widening -- damaging and even destroying young lives. In this often alarming but ultimately hopeful and life-saving book, Stephen Wallace, the chairman and CEO of SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions), shares groundbreaking research revealing what teens aren't telling their parents."

OK, so the title and blurb sound a little hysterical. And I know, I know -- I swore off the fear-mongering perils of adolescence tracts all of, what, a month ago? Forgive me; I was weak. (Besides, this one was already in the bull pen when I finished Disappearing Girl and made said vow. And heaven knows, if I don't always read my library books in the proper, preordained order, Bad Things just may happen.)

This will not be a marathon review akin to my last 2, but sometimes, I guess low expectations are a good thing. I didn't agree with all Wallace's points, and he does tend to go over the top at times ... but he did have some useful ideas, and his research methodology (a 6-year, randomly-sampled national survey of middle and high school students) seemed on the whole fairly sound. The book's central thesis is that a much higher percentage of adolescents are engaging in risky behavior (drinking, using drugs, driving dangerously, having sex, and contemplating suicide), and at much younger ages, than their parents tend to expect. Some of the summary stats Wallace throws the reader's way:

• 20% of 8th graders and 50% of 12th graders report consuming alcohol within the past 30 days. 20% of 8th graders have been drunk at least once, and 30% of 12th graders have engaged in at least 1 episode of binge drinking.
• 46% of 12th graders report at least some drug use; those who do use drugs begin, on average, at 13.
• 25% of middle schoolers and 2/3 of high school students have engaged in sexual activity other than kissing; over half of high school students report having had intercourse.
• 33% of teen drivers don't wear a seat belt; over 60% speed and/or talk on their cell phones while driving; and 20% have driven under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Based on the research methods he outlines in the introduction, I'm inclined to think the above numbers fairly accurate, although I do wish he'd been a bit clearer in some of his definitions. For example, does the percentage of teens who use drugs include anyone who's ever taken a toke of a joint, or even bummed a prescription-strength pain reliever off a friend? Or does it only count repeat or habitual users? Likewise, "sexual activity other than kissing" can encompass a wide range of behaviors. One might argue that any illegal drug use or sexual activity is in appropriate for adolescents. At least for drugs and alcohol, this does seem to be Wallace's argument. While I tend to agree when it comes to illegal drug use, I'm not so sure about alcohol -- and even if I were, the way I'd approach teen drinking or drug use might well vary based on whether my child got caught with beer at a party once, or was coming home drunk every weekend. Wallace does distinguish between 3 categories of adolescent behavior around risky decision-making (avoiders, who eschew alcohol/ drugs/ sex altogether; experimenters, who indulge occasionally; and repeaters, who do so regularly), and acknowledges that "knowing where a teen falls on this continuum of decision-making is crucial, because this information allows us to plan our communication, prevention, and intervention strategies accordingly," so this oversight is somewhat surprising.

After a chapter outlining the prevalence of various dangerous behaviors, Wallace proceeds to the "Risky Business" chapter, discussing why each of these activities is dangerous. When it comes to alcohol, he repeatedly comes back to the point that teens whose parents allow them to drink at home, even if it's just on special occasions, are almost 4 times as likely to drink with their friends as are those whose parents allow now underage drinking whatsoever. Maybe I'm being self-serving here, but I'm not sure I buy it -- or at least, I'm not sure there's not some third factor at work here (e.g., perhaps some of the parents who never allow drinking have religious prohibitions against it, which their kids would also be likely to have). As the chairman of SADD, it's not surprising that Wallace wants to take a hard, absolute line against teen drinking, but I'm also not sure it tells the whole story. Granted, drinking or possessing alcohol is illegal if you're under 21, which opens you up to a whole host of potential legal problems. Additionally, alcohol is a factor in many bad decisions about sex, driving, and other risky activities -- perhaps more so for teens, who are still fairly new to all 3. I'll even allow that excess drinking may be more dangerous to children and adolescents, whose brains aren't yet fully developed, than to adults. That said, however, the fact that many (granted, not all) adults can drink safely in moderation, and that many other countries allow at least some teens to drink without negative consequence, suggests that this isn't as simple an issue as he'd have us believe.

One interesting concept Wallace puts forth, which I hadn't really considered before, is that of decision points: predictable times when first-time experimentation with certain behaviors is likely to take place. He argues:

"Negative risk-taking tends to increase throughout adolescence. This trend presents an inherent problem -- an inverse correlation of parental persuasion. The younger teens are, the more likely they are to listen to the views and directions of their parents. Yet the behaviors their parents find most troublesome don't often appear until later in adolescence, when their opinions hold more limited sway. But by discussing certain issues before they are likely to become relevant, parents lay the groundwork for good decision-making by well-prepared teens. 'Early and often' remins an important catch phrase in educating young people about healthy choices -- before they 'jump the shark.'"

He goes on to suggest that drinking tends to increase between 6th and 7th grades, drug use between 8th and 9th, and sexual activity between 10th and 11th, and to explore the reasons why kids may choose at these times either to drink (or smoke, or ... ) or not.

From here, it's an extended and not particularly ground-breaking few chapters on how to talk to your teenager. (Summary: Don't avoid tough topics; bring them up in a casual, non-judgmental way; make your values and expectations clear.) Similarly, while I agree in principle with the idea of gradually shifting responsibility from parents to teens as the latter grow up, this isn't exactly new information.

So, in a word, eh. While I may now be thinking about locking up my liquor cabinet sooner rather than later, this certainly isn't a life-changing read.

#62 - Bad YA habits, take 2 - Sloppy Firsts

Gotta love insomnia. Not. Baffling because it's rarely a problem for me, but this makes twice this week I've gone to bed at a reasonable time and lain there for an hour or so before acknowledging that my mind's racing a mile a minute and I'm Just. Not. Tired. Perhaps it's time to lay off the evening caffeine.

Anyway, once I faced facts and made my way down to the living room to read, I knocked off Sloppy Firsts, by Megan McCafferty (Crown, 2001) in about 2 hours. Y'know, it was a lot of fun; I really wish I'd had something like this to read back when I was in high school. The first of what's now a 5-book series, it chronicles a year in the life of New Jersey high school student Jessica Darling. As the book opens, on New Year's Day of her sophomore year in high school, Jessica's best friend Hope has just moved to Tennessee, leaving her rudderless and very, very lonely. Her remaining "friends" -- gossipy rich-girl Sara; sexually adventurous Manda; and beautiful but dim childhood pal Bridget -- drive her crazy with their vapid prattle, and while most girls would die for a crush or a rose from hunky, athletic old pal Scotty, Jess just finds it annoying. Her parents, preoccupied with older sister Bethany's upcoming wedding and Jessica's performance on the school track team, have little patience with her drawn-out moping about Hope's absence. Honestly, what's a self-respecting, cynical brainiac to do?

Perhaps it's to be expected that two very different individuals intrude to throw off Jess's angsty adolescent equilibrium. (Who was it that said there are really just 2 plots in all of literature: A Stranger Comes to Town and Somebody Takes a Trip?) One is Hy Wallace, a hip NYC fashionista whose sudden arrival in Pineville just doesn't make sense. The other is notorious stoner and Lothario Marcus Flutie, who, impressed at hearing Jess con a guidance counselor and grateful for a bizarre favor she does for him, slowly insinuates himself into her thoughts. This presents two problems: first, Jess has no interest in feeding Sara and Manda's thirst for rumor-mongering; and second, the absent Hope loathes Marcus.

You'd expect the ending to be fairly predictable, but it wasn't -- at least for me. I don't know if McCaffrey had one or more sequels in mind when she wrote this one, but I still liked the resolution -- it's neither too neatly wrapped up, nor too obviously a "stay tuned for volume 2" cliffhanger. I don't know that I'll go crazy for the series like many people did for the Twilight books (bor-ing, IMO -- with apologies to my vampire-lovin' sister-in-law) ... but I'll certainly read the others if they turn up.