girl machine

The Book Thief | Markus Zusak

This book floated across my tumblr dashboard for years before I finally checked it out of the library, but I’m so glad I did. It certainly wasn’t the lightest read—telling the story of a young girl, Liesel, living in an impoverished neighborhood in Nazi Germany, whose love of words leads her to stealing the occasional book to sustain her need—but it was still somehow enjoyable. 

Things that made this a success, in my eyes:

1) the language. For a young adult novel, Zusak spares nothing when it comes to well-crafted prose. He also spares no gruesome details. I found myself stopping on occasion to simply process one of the narrator (Death)’s statements. 

2) the concept. I didn’t realize how fascinated I was by World War II, particularly the German side of it. My whole life, I’ve heard the patriotic stories of America’s entrance into the war, but I hadn’t really considered the perspective of the Germans. It’s not that I was raised to hate Germans, but certainly Hitler. Zusak doesn’t make Hitler innocent, that’s for sure, but the image of the German people, the ones who had to cower and hide in order to remain out of the blow of the Nazis… that’s what stuck with me about the image of tyranny.

3) Liesel. Such a wonderfully crafted young character, and yet, despite her nationality and her impoverished circumstances, I found myself relating to her, sympathizing with her thirst for stories. I was lucky enough to grow up with a library card, but Liesel has to steal books to keep her soul alive. Zusak shows her growth in spirit, as well, over almost five years, and by the time the book ended, I wasn’t ready to let her go.

4) the lack of romance. I have read many young adult books in my day, and most of them, particularly the ones about girls, are mostly about romantic love in varying circumstances.  To my relief, there is none of that in The Book Thief. Although Liesel grows to love her best friend, Rudy, she never acts on it, and only truly realizes it near the end of the book. Instead of focusing on the budding sexuality and romantic feelings between the two young characters, Zusak focuses on the depth and uniqueness of their friendship.

I don’t have much more to say, but I will leave you with this:

So many people chased after me in that time, calling my name, asking me to take them with me. Then there was the small percentage who called me casually over and whispered with their tightened voices.

‘Have me,’ they said, and there was no stopping them. They were frightened, no question, but they were not afraid of me. It was a fear of messing up and having to face themselves again, and facing the world, the likes of you.

There was nothing I could do.

They had too many ways, they were too resourceful—and when they did it too well, whatever their chosen method, I was in no position to refuse (503).

My ex-boyfriend cut off all his hair. In the four years I’ve known him, he’s always had a thick red beard to hide behind, and I suppose you could say that’s what drew him to me. At almost eighteen, fresh out of high school, I thought he was cute, thought his sad story was endearing. Here he was, working a retail job he hated, with a yet-to-be-finished degree in creative writing and dreams of highly pretentious poetry about the beauty of nature and Orthodox Christianity. As I got older, experienced bits of the real world—or at least the horrors of a full course schedule and a simultaneous part-time job—I realized that the beard was a shield he hid behind, a symbol of strength he hadn’t found yet. I tired of his endless supply of overused metaphors, because, in truth, they were meaningless. When stripped of his excuses and cliched, meticulously manipulated line breaks, he’s nothing but another lost guy, twenty-nine and still living with his parents, no direction, no purpose, no hope for himself. He moans about his failures, but he doesn’t do anything to change his reality.

I know him well enough to read the smugness of his shorn face: he’s trying, for once. He’s working out, running, and it shows. He’s got goals, and he’s not giving up so easily, not this time. As attached as I was to the thickness of his beard and his unruly hair, he looks good without it.

“You won’t look at me,” he said, as we smoked a cigarette on a familiar public patio.

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I think it’s because I still don’t even recognize you. It’s like you’re a totally different person.”

“I am,” he replied.

“Is it a better person?” I asked.

He blew smoke and pondered; before, he would’ve stroked his beard in thought, but now he lacked an equivalent motion. “That remains to be seen, I guess.”

I’m happy for him, truly. I released a lot of anger toward him, a lot of leftover longing, so I can smile when I think of the self-love he’s gained. Perhaps this dramatic disrobing will turn out to be more than just another empty metaphor.

Somedays are harder than others. Somedays I don’t feel so controlled, more at the mercy of memory which informs me of endless repeated mistakes. I stare at blank pages absolutely paralyzed. Somedays writer’s block is real, and I have no idea how to break down the wall between the story I need to tell and the page which needs to hear it first. Somedays I feel like a pathetic joke, just another foolish child who thinks she knows what she’s doing. In my mind is a vision of a future me, hunched in a shithole apartment, complaining and complaining about circumstances I refuse to change, just like the people I can’t stand. Somedays I’m not strong, and nothing I’ve accomplished thus far is enough. Somedays I don’t want to get out of bed, knowing all I will see is another dead-end chance. I know what I must do, but I can’t find the strength of will to stick to a decision which I must somedays regret. Somedays aren’t mine at all. 

jamiedrew:

Over the first and second weekends of the Olympics there was a sudden epidemic of street food between Green Park and Chancery Lane, like a portal had opened to another dimension of falafel-based life-forms: mostly human, but about one-quarter tahini. Within the micro-festival, if you were inclined to look for them, you could map out the micropolitical boundaries between, say, the Greek and Mexican quarters, just across the Long Acre from the cheeseburger vans encroaching on Peruvian territory by the day. No blood in the air, yet, but a lot of foreign swear words.

Somewhere in the shanty sprawl, a forkful of makeshift restaurants had parked themselves in Red Lion Square and refused to move until the council actually came down there to drag them off with their own hands. One of them was a great white broken thing without even its wheels to hold up the haphazard collection of chipped-paint boards. Sagging slightly at one end, it looked like a beach hut had come through the portal and got turned around on the set of a Californian sitcom, getting confused and plonking itself down just outside Soho.

A legend built itself around this funny little beach hut and the ageing hippie inside it, and the people picked their way towards the square to have a look at these things. All of them asked the same question. The so-called hippie was sick of answering it.

“Yes,” the hippie said. “I’m a wizard.”

Read More

Persuasion | Jane Austen

I finally finished the last of Austen’s books I hadn’t read up to this point, which is a very strange feeling. Published posthumously in 1818 and named by Austen’s brother, Persuasion seems more about emotional estrangement than anything else. Anne Elliot engaged herself to Frederick Wentworth at age 19, but was persuaded out of her decision by snobby family friend and mother figure Lady Russell. To Lady Russell, Wentworth was a nobody, a mere naval officer, and certainly not someone to marry the second daughter of a baronet. Eight years later, Anne continues to regret being convinced to give him up and hurting him in the process, particularly since her family has become financially unstable, while Wentworth has gained the title of captain as well as riches. Although Anne seems constantly in group settings with her former love, “now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement” (41). 

I feel like Persuasion was more difficult to read than some of Austen’s others, perhaps because so much rests on Anne’s internal monologue instead of Austen’s witty dialogue. She’s certainly examining the human psyche, and making a great case for women’s rationality. In fact, most of what we see comes filtered through Anne’s understandings and reactions to situations. And for all those people who call Austen classist…she clearly supports Wentworth marrying into the nobility, and looks down on Anne’s father and older sister for being snobby toward ‘new money.’ 

One of the most interesting parts of the novel, for me at least, was the discussion of both persuasion and the issue of a lover’s constancy. Wentworth remains bitter toward Anne after all these years because she allowed herself to be persuaded by Lady Russell against marrying him. He declares, “it is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on. You are never sure of a good impression being durable; everybody may sway it. Let those who would be happy be firm” (56). Of course, what Anne realizes, and imparts to the close reader, is that life is not so uncomplicated as to require the same behavior in every situation, and that sometimes a persuadable temper is necessary for survival in the social world, as it was in her case. 

Because she cannot approach Wentworth privately and express her feelings as they stand, Anne must rely on looks and hints, and, in some cases, overheard conversations. At one point, she argues with Captain Harville about the issue of constancy. While he maintains that men are more likely to remain constant in their affections for women, saying, “I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman’s inconstancy,” Anne disagrees (154). After all, at this point, most books and poetry were written by men, so of course they would be biased to claim women’s inconstancy to cover up their own. As Anne points out, “men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands” (154). Of course, Captain Wentworth is listening to this entire conversation, so in a way Anne is trying to prove her constancy to him, in that “all the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone” (155).

All this being said, Persuasion is not my favorite of Austen’s novels. First it was Pride and Prejudice, then Emma overtook it, as much as I detest Emma the character most of the time; recently I’ve come to really appreciate Mansfield Park, which I hadn’t encountered until this past semester. I love Fanny Price because she seems to truly suffer on multiple levels in a way that Emma Woodhouse and Anne Elliot don’t—she’s financially inferior, and is thus seen as of a lower class, despite her perfect manners and her self-sacrifice for everyone, as well as her rationality and position as moral compass of the novel. Then again, maybe Persuasion is a book I’ll enjoy more as I age, and I would recommend it, if only because it’s one of Austen’s mature novels but is much shorter by comparison. 

 Keeping You A Secret | Julie Anne Peters

I feel like I’m supposed to like this book, since it’s one of the first young adult lesbian books, and since I’m working up an outline for a similar novel. A full nine years after its initial publication, Keeping You A Secret is still a bit of a classic as far as young adult GLBTQ books go, and while that isn’t saying much, it was the most common pop-up on google searches in the genre. 

Maybe it’s because I felt obligated to read it, or maybe because I’m burnt out at the moment, but I didn’t really enjoy it as much as I’d hoped. I commend Peters for unabashedly examining not only the process of self-discovery but what happens when you’re outed before you had a chance to come out on your own. The protagonist, Holland, is actually a lot like my main character, although I read this book after creating my character: Holland has everything going for her, is popular, pretty, has a great boyfriend, president of student council, etc. but it’s all built on lies she tells everyone around her based on perceived expectations of her. When you look at it that way, it’s no wonder everyone in her life abandons her when they discover she’s a lesbian: all of those lies collapse in on themselves, and you can’t blame Holland’s mom for feeling like she doesn’t even know her anymore.

I was really struck by the mother-daughter relationship, and by the realistic, if heart-breaking, portrayal of Holland’s descent into a street youth. We like to think that these kinds of parents don’t really exist, that they’re an overdramatic extreme that rarely occurs in reality, but from what I understand, it’s not actually uncommon for parents to kick their gay or lesbian teenagers out of the house. Even though there were aspects of this book that felt dated to me, particularly in the openness of the homophobia in what appears to be a non-religious community, it certainly got me thinking about how much hasn’t changed in the past decade. 

That being said, I struggled with the over-emphasis on romance in this text. I understand that it’s often one individual who enables a gay teen to open up to the possibility of a gay identity, and I fully understand the importance of romance to the teen genre. I only wish that there had been a little less focus on the intense romantic bond between Holland and Cece, and more on Holland’s individual self-discovery. 

Nevertheless, I think this is a really important and somewhat ground-breaking book, and I’m glad I read it. 

 Will Grayson, Will Grayson | John Green & David Levithan

This collaborative effort between John Green and David Levithan popped up a quick search of GLBTQ Young Adult literature, so I read it for ‘research’ for my novel. I have a growing love affair with John Green’s work as it is, so it wasn’t difficult to get me to read Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and it certainly gave me an interesting perspective. 

From reading Looking For Alaska and now this book, I really enjoy the way he combines an examination of the lives of fringe teenagers, those who don’t quite fit in, with the element of what I like to call young adult fantasy—not in the sense of mystical creatures, but in the portrayal of the kind of fun I feel like most readers wish they had. The obtaining of fake IDs is taken for granted, as is underage drinking, both of which are a bit foreign to my experiences of high school, but it gives us an image of way more fun than I ever had at that age.

As far as the portrayal of teenage sexual questionings, my reactions get a little more complicated. Tiny Cooper is the classic fabulous gay guy, out and proud and in your face, so of course I love him, since he reminds me of a high school version of so many guys I know. He’s absolutely hilarious, “not the world’s gayest person, and…not the world’s largest person who is really, really gay, but I believe he may be the world’s largest person who is really, really gay” (3). He’s a serial dater, which is incredibly believable for someone that age and someone who’s openly gay, and I’ll admit that. I love that Will is best friends with Tiny, and Tiny’s sexuality never poses a problem; so often, a gay guy character is only friends with a straight guy because he wants to get in the guy’s pants or ‘make him gay,’ which is just stupid. About halfway through the book, I got mad at Tiny, both for being self-absorbed and for being a flat stereotype. I am obviously passionate about the necessity of portraying realistic gay characters in the stories we provide young adults, but I feel like Tiny leaves a lot to be desired. I recognize his resonance with our culture, but I just wish he would’ve challenged more, been a little more ambiguous.

That being said, there were so many things I loved about this. I loved Jane, the way you expect her to be plain but she turns out to be so complicated and intelligent and powerful as a character. I loved both Wills, because I could relate to both of them. I was that depressed kid, although I didn’t recognize it at the time, and I felt incredibly misunderstood by everyone around me. I was also the silent kid, the invisible one, the one who felt unimportant compared to peers. And, despite Tiny’s serial dating, the treatment of teenage romance surprised me and even showed me perspectives I hadn’t seen before. Perhaps the top reason I admire John Green so much, though, is the way he manages to insert little bits of wisdom without being obvious or distracting from the plot. I highlighted all over the place. Apparently even at 22, a young adult novel can still teach me things—and that’s the way I feel it should be. 

“Maybe tonight you’re scared of falling, and maybe there’s somebody here or somewhere else you’re thinking about, worrying over, fretting over, trying to figure out if you want to fall, or how and when you’re gonna land, and I gotta tell you friends to stop thinking about the landing, because it’s all about falling. …Maybe there is something you’re afraid to say, or someone you’re afraid to love, or somewhere you’re afraid to go. It’s gonna hurt. It’s gonna hurt because it matters” (305).

jayarrarr:

You are an open text box when I don’t know what to say, which is, it seems, somewhat appropriate. You are indefinite and unreliable despite the fact that you are certain and sure. You are here when I need you, yet you wait for me. Without me, you’re nothing, it seems. With me, with my words, you are something more than you — and I am something more than me, and we are something more than us. There’s something there that no one can quite yet grasp and control, least of all us. But I’ll keep pushing and pulling and reaching to find it, as long as you do so as well, or at least do me the favor of keeping yourself open in the hopes that I might find you, and we might find us, somewhere, someday. Just to know that you’re there, waiting for my words; that I’m here, waiting to fill some void, and knowing that I can, and I will, and I could, and I do, and I am. These moments we may fill with mindless mirth are worth more than millions of syllables streaming over miles of meandering verse. I only want to get your attention and I have nothing left to say but hi.