Two Great YA Novels and a Bit of a Rant

I ended up reading two YA novels for this week, both of which relate in various ways to the issue of gender. Bottled Up by Jaye Murray is perhaps one of the most enjoyable and well-written “problem novels” I have read in a long time. It tells the story of Philip “Pip” Downs as he struggles (no surprise here) with school, family, peers and self-identity. While the themes woven throughout this novel are basically familiar, it is Murray’s ability to create believable, likeable, flawed characters that is most appealing to me. What is surprising is that while the major characters are male, the author is female; I am not attempting to present any perceived sexist claims with regard to authorship, merely that I have found there to be very few writers who can effectively write believable first-person narratives of the opposite gender (Wally Lamb has been able to do this in such popular novels as She’s Come Undone, and even Joan Bauer also managed to create fairly believable adolescent boys in her novel Sticks, but for the most part, novels such as Park’s Quest, written by Katherine Paterson fall short). Murray has also based much of the interwoven plot and subplots on the real lives of teens with whom she has worked through her psychotherapy practice; perhaps her ability to present real experience in a fictional work adds to the emotional authenticity. While there is some drug use in Bottled Up, Pip’s smoking of pot when he cuts class is never sensationalized, never romanticized; rather what the reader sees is a young man who has been told by his alcoholic father at home that he is stupid and will amount to nothing and whose teachers and peers largely disregard him at school. Only when he is given “one last chance” by the school Principal do events unfold, leading the reader to better understand why Pip does what he does in order to get by, and “getting by” is what he does through much of the book. The picture Murray creates is one less of hackneyed “teen angst” and more of a subtle commentary on the social and familial contexts that create an almost un-navigable limbo for outwardly resilient, yet inwardly fragile adolescents. Through razor-sharp insights, evocative vignettes of growing abuse from his alcoholic father and evidence of Pip’s increasing sense of disillusionment, Murray shows a young man caught between wanting to opt out of school, life and relationships by following in his father’s footsteps and wanting to be role model for his 6 year old brother whom he tries to protect. Ultimately, I think Bottled Up is a realistic and emotionally accurate depiction of life for some of today’s adolescents, whom I think comprise our own “lost generation”. Who are the role models for adolescents when parents are disengaged? What happens to children in families where siblings parent each other, because parents are not there physically or emotionally?

The second YA novel I read is The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga. I have wanted to read this book since it came out last year because the protagonist, aka Fanboy, is writing a graphic novel as a way to address the issues he sees impacting his life. Although he is in many respects the stereotypical computer, comic book “geek”, at least as perceived by his peers at school, in reality he is an articulate and resilient teenager who puts up with the sort of bullying that seems pervasive in school today. While some of the plot is predictable, in the end The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl is not your typical clichéd YA problem novel. There is no real closure at the end, but I think that is appropriate because none of the “issues” that characters deal with in YA novels can be easily resolved in 200-350 pages. Barry Lyga infuses the main characters of Fanboy and Goth Girl (who serves as the antagonist in this novel, more so than obnoxious peers at Fanboy’s school) with both depth and complexity; I did not always like these characters and at times their actions were “astonishing” (not to be precious!), but perhaps that’s what makes this book so appealing. Lyga doesn’t sell-out by trying to convince the reader that everything works out in the end, instead there is much that remains unknown.

In many ways these two books fit with the reading “Raunch Culture”, not because they contain explicit content, but rather because each contains themes that pertain to today’s youth culture. I would be interested to read the rest of Levy’s book Female Chauvinist Pigs as the chapter we read made me stop, think, and in fact, I’m still thinking about it. I have always been puzzled by the whole concept of the Girls Gone Wild videos, although on a surface level I wonder if it all relates back to the voyeuristic reality TV phenomenon (no, I’m not a TV snob…I’ve been known to watch the Real World, The Flava of Love [sp?] and Top Chef!). Is self-promotion something no longer restricted to celebrities? I sometimes wonder if websites like Myspace and Facebook encourage an unrealistic sense of “celebrity” or Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame? I’ve seen material on both these sites for students at Purdue University and wonder if the students who post pictures of themselves “partying” realize the professional and personal implications of self-exposure to this degree? I certainly do not consider myself a “prude” (despite my Catholic upbringing and my parents’ dogmatic insistence on “respectability” growing up!), and I don’t want to sound as though I’m jumping on feminist bandwagon, but do the girls who participate willingly in Girls Gone Wild videos seriously believe that they are in control or that it is an empowering experience? They may have convinced themselves of this, but I can’t help but feel that this erroneous belief is simply the result of more insidious manipulation on the part of those individuals whose only interest is in making cash. If the girls who strip down for leering, drunk guys really want to feel empowered, why not get the best education possible, get hired by a top company in whatever field and be on the cover of Forbes by the time they’re 30? Or better yet, make use of that business/marketing degree, buy out GGW and turn it into a non-profit organization funding scholarships for women and business start-up for young entrepreneurs? Just a thought.