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Book Loot: Week Ending November 21st, 2010

November 21, 2010 Book Loot
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New Books:

Surprisingly restrained considering my afternoon(s) spent in Kinokuniya in Sydney.

Marginalia

I’ve had an amazing week. Words cannot even begin to express just how great it has been. I saw my favourite band the Manic Street Preachers for the first and second time, met them after both shows, and got a photo with Nicky Wire and James Dean Bradfield. This is a band that has shaped, influenced, changed, and inspired me for over twelve years, so this week was pretty damn important to me and they didn’t let me down. I was on the barrier for both shows, right up the front, screaming and singing my little lungs out. Amazing. And, to have the band be so gracious and attentive to their fans was just a bonus. Meeting fellow fans has also been an encouraging experience.

So, as it was, I didn’t exactly spend much time worrying about blogging. The only conclusion that I’ve managed to reach is that I want to continue writing about books and reading with enthusiasm and sincerity. Posting is going to continue being slightly irregular while I try and “figure things out.” Trust me, I am cringing as I write that. It sounds like the “it’s not you, it’s me” of book blogging.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan (2010)

April 26, 2010 Book Reviews
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Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan (2010)I’ve been in the news a bit lately. Well, sort of. A young lass with the same name as me has attempted to become the world’s youngest person to sail unassisted around the globe. Imagine if our paths crossed, the socially awkward, bookish J.W. and the seafaring prodigy J.W: hilarity and valuable life lessons, I’m sure, would ensue. Basically, this is the concept behind John Green and David Levithan‘s collaborative novel, Will Grayson, Will Grayson. Two young men, both of them named, you’ll never guess, Will Grayson, are slightly troubled and questioning kids whose lives intersect by chance one evening in Chicago in a porn store called Frenchy’s. Lives are changed, and lessons are learned; and all of it is told in the characteristically hilarious and touching writing of John Green and David Levithan. Together they manage to make teenaged characters into the kind of teenager you wish you had been at that age, smart and funny, yet endearingly clueless about the intricacies of life and love.

Will Grayson 1 lives by a rule which has never failed him yet: don’t care about anything and just shut up. Essentially, this is his way of protecting himself from getting hurt. His best friend, the three hundred pound, musical loving, openly gay Tiny Cooper is the centre of his universe. In Tiny Cooper, Green has written another fantastic best friend character, whining and self-centred as he may be, he’s also laugh out loud hilarious. Enter a burgeoning relationship with possibly gay Jane, a best friend who is writing a musical about his fabulous self, and Will 1 finds his tried and true method of getting by beginning to falter.

“NO. No no no. I don’t want to screw you. I just love you. When did who you want to screw become the whole game? Since when is the person you want to screw the only person you get to love? It’s so stupid, Tiny! I mean, Jesus, who even gives a fuck about sex?! People act like it’s the most important thing humans do, but come on. How can our sentient fucking lives revolve around something slugs can do. I mean, who you want to screw and whether you screw them? Those are important questions, I guess. But they’re not that important. You know what’s important? Who would you die for? Who do you wake up at five forty-five in the morning for even though you don’t even know why he needs you? Whose drunken nose would you pick?!”

Will Grayson 2 is a little harder to love, depressed, angry, cruel – he shuts everyone out in the most abrupt manner. He’s fending off a not-really-friend’s unwanted attention, dealing with his father’s absense, his rampant depression, his sexuality and retreating into the haven of an online relationship with Isaac. This Will is much harder to connect with as his reluctance to reveal himself to his peers and family also extends to the reader. However, as his life begins to change through a chance encounter with Will Grayson 1, he becomes not altogether likable – this could be a case of hitting too close to home though – but we can understand the why he acts the way he does.

she asks me if i took my pills before i ran off this morning and i tell her, yeah, wouldn’t i be drowning myself in the bathtub if i hadn’t? she doesn’t like that, so i’m all like ‘joke, joke’ and i make a mental note that moms aren’t the best audience for medication humor. i decide not to get her that world’s greatest mom of a depressive fuckup sweatshirt for mother’s day like i’d been planning. (okay, there’s not really a sweatshirt like that, but if there was, it would have kittens on it, putting their paws in sockets.)

As the two Will Graysons meet, relationships blossom, lives and attitudes change and an epic musical is written and performed. Adolescent relationships and friendships are dealt with all the emotional seriousness they are felt with at that age, and the wealth of pop-cultural references and sassy dialogue prevent things from ever getting too heavy. Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a fun read from two well established young adult authors, and the quirky hijinks and supporting characters make it a vibrant look at adolescence.

Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan (2007)

September 23, 2009 Book Reviews
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Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

I generally avoid teen literature/young adult literature, most of the time I don’t find it particularly engaging, relevant or intellectually stimulating. A friend and I both read and loved Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist last summer. (And then we also went and saw the movie at the Moonlight Cinema – botanical gardens, twilight skies, comfy beanbags and a picnic, that was a really great night.) Nick and Norah was effective because it captured that anxious adolescent romantic energy, without any unnecessary moralizing or simplifying. So when it comes to the teen literature genre, I am willing to make an exception for Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s collaborative efforts.

This time, they tackle the messy, often complicated, notion of friendship and love. Naomi and Ely have lived in the same building since they were young, they have grown up together, shared everything. Their friendship begins to collapse when Ely breaches the “No Kiss List” and kisses Naomi’s boyfriend. The story is told, unlike Nick and Norah which was told entirely by the titular characters, from the perspective of a number of different characters, all involved in the aftermath of the broken friendship.

“I knew for the first time that when you say a couple is splitting up, it’s not just the relationship that’s splitting. In some way, everyone involved gets split up, too. Each of my moms was splitting. Each of Naomi’s parents was splitting. Naomi was splitting. I was splitting. And the reaction to that—my reaction to that—was to hold on as strong as possible. To try to hold things together. Because to let go would be the end of everything. To let go would be a murder of what once was.” (Ely)

Where the novel succeeds is in understanding the delicacy and colossal importance of friendship in the lives of young adults. The relationships between all of the main characters feel, for the most part, true to life. The multi-narrator technique allows us to see how each individual sees things, the disparity with how other characters interpret events, and how this leads to conflict. Particularly touching, out of all the narrative strands, is Bruce the Second’s coming to terms with and confronting his sexuality. This issue is dealt with a supreme sensitivity and never feels overwrought.

“It is not easy. Things that matter are not easy. Feelings of happiness are easy. Happiness is not. Flirting is easy. Love is not. Saying you’re friends is easy. Being friends is not.” (Ely)

At times it is difficult to understand or empathize with Naomi’s frustration with Ely, her reasoning isn’t clear. She has feelings for Ely despite knowing he is gay, but can’t manage to grasp that their life together is never going to be anything more than friendship. Although she is clearly confused and hurt by Ely’s actions, her actions seem to be driven by an unyielding tenacity to her impossible idea of how things should be. Her emotional and personal revelations are inadequate in comparison to the changes that the other characters are going through. Her burgeoning relationship with the young doorman Gabriel at times feels a little forced, just so that she can have her happy ending.

Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List displays an awareness of the heightened emotional response in situations of confrontation and conflict in friendships, and there is real compassion for the struggles of the characters, even when some lack complexity and urgency.