Revenge of the Boy Snatchers & Homecoming

I know several people have said that Gossip Girl book was garbage, but I'm just the kind of person who has to look at least take a quick glimpse at the garbage. I just happened to have a copy of the fourth 'Clique' novel on my shelf, entitled Revenge of the Boy Snatchers, and with a title like that how could I not give it a try. No doubt it's garbage, but what sort of garbage is it? From a feminist's point of the view the book begins poorly: a girl collapses on her bed because she's exhausted from putting away her Christmas gifts, which include a year supply of lip gloss from a company called Gloss-ip Girl (a new flavor is delivered every day) and a mannequin that she can dress up in her clothes in order to avoid the hassle of getting all hot and sweaty when picking out her outfit for the day. She quickly jumps up after realizing that she wrinkled her bed covers and she wants to keep them nice and smooth and perfect.

After reading a couple of chapters, I impatiently skipped to the final chapter of this shallow, ridiculous book, only to discover that one of the girls in her clique had stolen her boyfriend. I've read several positive responses from my students about the Clique series citing the realistic nature of how the girls treat each other, but the schizoid personalities of the girls themselves and the over-the-top luxurious setting that they occupy didn't seem very convincing to me. Despite the garbage, I couldn't help imagining a breakthrough novel in this sub-genre. Maybe in the near future we'll see a character in this type of book that struggles in the friendship trenches and actually makes good decisions regardless of consequences. Why couldn't a protagonist be written into one of these books who learns to act decently… this garbage could become the fertilizer for a higher quality Chick Lit.

Since I failed to stomach the entire Clique book, I read Cynthia Voigt's novel entitled Homecoming. The story opens with a thirteen-year-old girl named Dicey Hillerman and her three younger siblings being abandoned by their mother in the family car in a mall parking lot. The kids set off (on foot) and begin a 272-page odyssey to find a long-lost relative and a new home. Dicey is a mighty-tough, practical, complex, developing survivor who's quite believable as well. When she makes mistakes of poor planning, hurried miscalculations, or loses her cool regularly, the story rings true. The young family only stumbles on to a couple of lucky breaks, and when it happens, this also feels right because not every soul that you run in to out in the cold world is going to act hostile or indifferent towards you.

Staunch feminists might criticize the fact that two college-aged male characters have to save the family at one point in the novel; however, a whip-snapping circus dog-trainer, who happens to be a fiery female, saves them from a violent, dirty old man later on in the journey. Also interesting from a feminist point of view (I'm pretty sure I am a practicing feminist by the way), Dicey rejects the first relative they find (a long-lost cousin who aspires to become a nun and relies heavily on the advice of a male priests), but she accepts the second relative (the family's grandmother who is regarded as crazy because since her dominating and possibly abusive husband has died, she has said and done whatever she darn well felt like doing). Though I knew the triumphant conclusion was inevitable, I was willing to suspend disbelief at quite a few points in the book, finding myself asking, "Just how much more are they going to have to go through?" I also loved a passage where Dicey takes over steering a sailboat and feels the empowerment of being in control of her direction… cool metaphorical stuff. Cool enough to check out the sequel or even teach as a classroom text I'd say.