Julie Anne Peters’s crutch words

Just finished Julie Anne Peters’s LUNA — which I liked, and about which I will have more to say this week — and was struck by two crutch words she uses, as physical descriptions, over and over: someone’s eyes widening — generally to express sarcastic intent or signal someone to stop something — and someone’s “spine fusing.”

The second stood out to me because the first time, it struck me as a nice description of someone stiffening; by the third or fourth time, though, I was over it. And the first was noticeable because I have different associations with eyes widening, so all the many usages of this felt odd.

Do you notice crutch words when you read? There was one that drove me mad in TWILIGHT (especially, as I recall, in NEW MOON), but now I’m blanking on what it was. Googling turned up a different one of Meyer’s crutches I can attest to — Bella “glaring” at Edward.

And writing this post, I can see what one of my own crutch phrases is — something “striking me.” (I edited a few out.)

And the award for “Most patriarchal teen vampire romance I’ve read since Twilight” goes to…

It looks kind of gothic and cool.
It is not.

EVERNIGHT, by Claudia Gray (the pen name, evidently, of someone named Amy Vincent), was highly disappointing.

For starters, it opened with exactly the kind of prologue I find most off-putting, namely, one that seems to exist only because otherwise the first several chapters will be too boring, so the author wants to assure us that something suspenseful is going to happen later on. The problem? I don’t usually feel any suspense during action sequences unless I’m already invested in the characters, which, almost by definition, I’m not by the time of a prologue. I gathered from EVERNIGHT’s prologue that someone would wind up in some danger and feeling some guilty anguish, but nothing made me really care.

But I’d heard good things, so on I went to the actual book. Throughout the early chapters, I kept trying to like it, and almost managing. I thought the premise — a school for vampires suddenly opens itself to human students — had definite potential. Character-wise, Gray did something I really liked:

It’s funny — when people call you “shy,” they usually smile. Like it’s cute, some funny little habit you’ll grow out of when you’re older, like the gaps in your grin when your baby teeth fall out. If they knew how it felt — really being shy, not just unsure at first — they wouldn’t smile. Not if they knew how the feeling knots up your stomach or makes your palms sweat or robs you of the ability to say anything that makes sense. It’s not cute at all.

– but then undermined it by never having her character actually think or act like a shy person, just telling us a lot of times that she was. I felt like I would’ve wanted to read the book Gray told us she was writing.

On a sentence level, EVERNIGHT vacillated between incredibly pedestrian, generic prose and the sort of quintessentially young adult cadence I really like, where really long and really short clauses mix together; you can see all of this in this short paragraph from early on:

Until that moment, I hadn’t known what fear was. Shock jolted through me, cold as ice water, and I found out just how fast I could really run. I didn’t scream — there was no point, none, because I’d gone off into the woods so nobody could find me, which was the dumbest thing I’d ever done and looked like it would be the last. [...] I had to run like hell.

There was also a lot of sloppiness on little details (like, no one in high school is old enough to drink legally!), which was distracting, but I dutifully moved along in the book, waiting for the plot to develop. And then it did, and I was sorry.

(Vague but important spoilers below.)

The entire first half of the book is playing an absurd trick on the reader, which is then revealed. It’s a trick in the tradition of Agatha Christie’s THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD, which I thought was very clever when I read it as an eleven-year-old; it here has the effect of just undoing any investment I had in the character I thought I was reading about. Seriously, there was absolutely no reason to have kept the crucial information from readers except for the author to revel in how “clever” the trick was, except it… really wasn’t. EVERNIGHT is trying to be “Enemies” from Season 3 of BUFFY, and ending up more in the territory of “And it was all a dream!”

And speaking of gratuitous choices, here’s my fan letter to the author:

Dear Claudia Gray,

Please don’t spoil Hitchcock movies I haven’t seen since I was a small child and don’t remember the big plot twists in, just so you can have the characters discuss them to establish that they both like old movies. Thank you,

Love,
Elizabeth

As blog readers will know, though, I can overlook a lot when I really get into a teen romance. Which is why the final straw for me was that the protagonist and her love interest are the most codependent creeps since Meyer set the trend in this genre. Seriously, our heroine Bianca goes on, and on, and on about how much the sniveling hero Lucas just wants to protect her. If I could’ve believed in these characters and their allegedly undying love for one another, I would’ve been really frightened for them.

My last complaint, I swear: EVERNIGHT flagrantly violates the Chekov Rule (“If there’s a gun in the first act…”) with the most blatantly dropped plot point this side of BUFFY’s seventh season. (And by that, I do mean every damn week of season 7, but that’s no excuse; if it was real bad when Joss did it, it’s certainly no good when this lady follows suit.) It’s possible this is just setup for some sequel, but I’m sure as hell not reading any more to find out.

TWILIGHT, VAMPIRE ACADEMY, now this… Why can’t I find a damn vampire romance that’s any good? In book form, that is.

If you’re looking for a teen vampire romance…

…that is 800 million times more original, creepy, and moving than TWILIGHT, rent LET THE RIGHT ONE IN.

But oh my god, it scared the crap out of me.

Best scene, according to me: a discussion about what “going steady” means, held between two twelve-year-olds. One of them is a vampire who is rather covered with blood during this conversation, but the conversation is played straight teen angst and joy. Best part: the characters are totally believable, but there’s such a mismatch between the content of their words (going steady doesn’t mean anything) and the emotions that come along (one of them, in particular, in disbelieving ecstasy at the decision to do it). It’s an in-character incongruity, and it’s awesome.

Best scene, according to my boyfriend: Let’s just say it involved body parts. And not in a “now they’re trying to make you think about sex” way, in a “oh my god, all these people are going to die” way. He called it HEATHERS-esque.

Also: watching this movie really makes me realize how BUFFY/ANGEL’s occasional little glamorous tricklets of blood do not do justice to what would be gushing around and messing up everyone’s clothes and faces if there were real vampiric consumption taking place.

Also also: I liked the way the movie gives its own take on some of the vampire canon while making it a genuinely cool scene, instead of a belabored “Now we’re going to explain why vampires can’t do X.” Well done. (You know, I hope this post makes any sense since I am trying so hard not to ruin anything. Spoiler-free is the way to be!)

Great Debates: Twilight (what else?)

A debate via links:

• Bitch Magazine describes TWILIGHT as inaugurating a new genre: “abstinence porn.” (Courtesy of the Dairi Burger.)
• The Atlantic Monthly writes a fabulous article, highly complimentary to TWILIGHT, on what it’s like to be a teenage girl and why our novels meant so much to us. (Courtesy of one of my professors; I suppose there’s, improbably, an upside to allowing your love of teenage romance novels to become so widely known.)

obMSCL*: Extra credit to the second article, because it ends with an anecdote that is ripped from the single most iconic scene of MY SO-CALLED LIFE, except that it’s reporting the author’s actual experience.

* obMSCL = Obligatory MY SO-CALLED LIFE reference. The label comes from a listserv I’ve long been a member of (like, over a dozen years now), which started as a MSCL fan list and gradually morphed into random discussions of a group of friends. Who would occasionally still feel the need to talk about the show. I’ve transported it into other contexts, because, really, when is a MSCL reference not obligatory?

A fairy tale romance of a different kind

Did anyone else read all those fairy tale books edited by Andrew Lang? You know, THE GREEN FAIRY BOOK, THE MAGENTA FAIRY BOOK… I owned a lot of these, and read them a lot of times, even though once you’ve read about ten stories you’ve pretty much covered the plot and thematic elements that will be endlessly permuted throughout the rest.

My sophomore year of college, a German teacher assigned us to write a fairy tale (auf Deutsch, natuerlich). I’m pretty sure this was just a throw-away assignment for him, but I took it very, very seriously, incorporating as many genre tropes as I could — the series of three trials, the less virtuous and worthy trial-undergoers whose quests must be disappointed before our seemingly humble hero can advance… Keep in mind, I studied German for seven years and can barely introduce myself, so spending a lot of time on my German assignments clearly wasn’t my usual practice.

Real German fairy tales are a lot creepier than mine was. Image from http://www.cultcase.com

Point being, I know my fairy tale conventions. And since I’ve been reading what the book pros call “paranormal romance” these past few years*, I know those conventions too.

And that is why I love WICKED LOVELY by Melissa Marr. Because it also knows these conventions, and breaks them very smartly.

You know how in fairy tales and paranormal romance, you often have a couple that is destined to be together by some centuries-old unyielding mystical fate? Especially if there’s some sort of royalty involved and a kingdom to be ruled before it is destroyed, or used to destroy the world? WICKED LOVELY starts there, and goes somewhere awesome that I won’t spoil (except a little bit in the third footnote). Someplace a thousand times cooler than TWILIGHT’s “I was destined to love yooooouuuu.”**

In general I love anything that subverts a genre very well.*** (footnote includes more WICKED LOVELY plot detail)

Angel: Mythic superhero, or just another puppet?

There are a lot of valid complaints about the pilot episode of ANGEL, but I will always love it for the way it totally gets the superhero genre, and messes with it. The best scene: the obligatory car chase as the female victim is being kidnapped; Angel leaps into his black convertible in slow-mo, black leather duster billowing… and we pull up short into real time: the key won’t turn in the ignition. Swivel camera two cars over, and there’s Angel’s car… the other black convertible in the lot. Awesome.

Someday, when I am a sociology professor, I hope I will teach a class called “Writing for Sociologists,” and we will discuss what unfathomable rules comprise the genre of “sociological writing,” and we will look at ways that clever sociologists try to muck around with them. And if my students are lucky, they will get to watch that scene from ANGEL. I probably can’t make them read WICKED LOVELY, though.

* because I’ve been reading young adult and that’s been about half of young adult, and can I just say that I’d tried to explain the preponderance of vampires to my boyfriend, but he didn’t really get it, so I made him stroll through Barnes and Noble’s teen section with me, and now he totally does get it and is mildly disturbed?

** While we’re on the subject of genuinely romantic fairy tales, as WICKED LOVELY is in its own non-traditional way, I would be remiss if I did not mention the best fairy tale song I know, “Fake Empire” by the National. I don’t even really understand what the hell it’s about, but it’s full of all this fairy tale imagery, from Disney mostly, which is very incongruous coming from the singer’s extremely deep voice, and I love it.

***Those “politically correct bedtime stories,” which I thought were fun for about ten minutes back in 1994, don’t count; partly because they’re kind of right-wing, but mostly because they’re not really that well done. …As opposed to the NANCY CLUE books (a gay Nancy Drew parody), which were utterly spot-on. It was the attention to the clothes, pitch-perfect to the original series, that really did it.

That’s the thing, though; WICKED LOVELY isn’t a parody… it’s a genuine fairy tale, except it asks what a smart, clever girl with a sense of her own worth would do when suddenly thrust into this fairy tale world, and the answer has her busting through the conventions of the genre. Like, maybe she wouldn’t fall in love with the prince, just because he told her she was destined to; and maybe her initial resistance wouldn’t just be for show. So then how would she make that work?

I don’t know if Marr started from there or from the book’s basic premise (which is that Aislynn, our hero, has gone through life seeing a world filled with troublemaking fairies invisible to everyone else), but that’s what makes the book really work for me.

I have no words.

You know, I have this post half-written where I try to work through exactly why certain developments in BREAKING DAWN, the last TWILIGHT book, creep me out so much and seem so pointedly anti-abortion… but then I saw this and I sort of feel like all my analysis is irrelevant. As is my gag reflex control.

Just over a week ago I expressed my generation’s ’80s nostalgia in the best way possible by participating in/co-organizing my first abortion clinic defense (we won!). The excitement and inspiration of that event is something I will cling to as I desperately try to wash from my brain the full horror of the social forces unleashed by this book in the context of 30 years of backlash, all of it expressed in nicely concentrated form in this horrific crafts project.

Just… Ick.

p.s. When I said I hoped to find further application of the “Unorthodox uses of children’s books” category… I’m so sorry; I didn’t know.

UPDATE: link fixed.

Friday “Why?”: Why vampires?

I happened to be staying with a friend while furiously (pun?) reading BREAKING DAWN, the fourth and final book in the Twilight series, which meant I didn’t really see much of my friend. In one of my brief pauses in reading, though, at about 4 AM, he asked me why I thought vampires are all the rage.

Photo from the West Warwick Public Library

I gave him a very supply-side answer: Parts of the publishing industry are in crisis, I said. October was the biggest month ever for bookstores returning stock to publishers.* Some small presses are folding altogether. Borders is bankrupt but still operational, and massively cutting down on the number (and hence, variety) of books it carries so it can face more covers outward on the shelf.

“Midlist” authors (i.e., everyone who’s not the big bestsellers — nobody ever talks about “bottom-list”) are getting fewer promotional resources; if you don’t happen to have the backing of an enthusiastic small press that pumps their efforts into it, good luck getting a book tour as a smaller-name author.**

In this context, I said, we should expect a lot more copycatting. Publishers are desperate to find the next big bestseller. So once TWILIGHT was such a hit, the incredible vampire glut we’re in now was inevitable.***

Fine, he said, but why was TWILIGHT such a hit? Why vampires? Is there something about the craziness of right now, with its wars and economic insecurity, that gives young people a death lust, or what?

For that, I did not have a good answer. Hence, the Friday “Why?”. What do y’all think?

* Here’s an explanation of the completely insane system of bookstore returns the entire publishing industry operates under. [Caveat: I hesitated to link to this blog because the blogger has written some posts I found really offensive; specifically, at least two where she labels any criticism of the Israeli state, or support for Palestinian self-determination, as anti-Semitic. But it is a good explanation of what happened to the publishing industry in October 2008, which was the first big wake-up call of how this current economic depression may affect publishing. (Not the last word, though; Amazon's sales are up 18% this month... cheap entertainment and all?) So I'm linking it with this caveat so readers can decide for themselves whether they want to click.]

** Incidentally, everything I said above is all the more reason to support independent publishers you like, if you value diversity of ideas. Myself, I work with Haymarket Books (which, by the way, is one of the enthusiastic small presses that does tour its authors). Among other things, on a project you’ll be hearing much more about on this blog soon.

*** Even if that means publishing endless terrible, terrible books. VAMPIRE ACADEMY, I’m still looking at you!

Friday “Why?”/Why I Love It: Why do we love the books we love?

Today’s post about inexplicable book love inaugurates two series: the regularly scheduled Friday “Why?” and the whenever-the-heck-we-feel-like-it Why I Love It.

Sometimes the depth of my love for a book is inexplicable, even to me.

I felt this way about TWILIGHT (the first book more than the subsequent ones, which I liked a lot less). The characters annoyed me; I felt like we were constantly told that Bella was tough, but only saw her being sniveling and moonish. Edward struck me as a condescending prick. I agree with every feminist critique.

Yet I was completely captivated by the story as they fell for each other and Bella pursued the mystery of the Cullens. The week after I read the book, I reread the first 300 pages — up until when they were definitively together. Ironically, once the actual suspense plot emerged in the form of threat from other vampires, the story was over for me; the story I’d fallen for was Bella and Edward falling for each other, and from this point on I thought the book consisted entirely too much of them talking about their great love for one another. Ugh. But despite the contempt I sometimes felt for the book while I was reading it, I clearly got something out of it. I’m a slow reader, and rereading 300 pages is not something I do lightly.

This, in a way, is how I feel about my favorite Sarah Dessen novel, THE TRUTH ABOUT FOREVER.

The Truth About Forever

TTAF is a flawed book, much more so, in my opinion, than THIS LULLABY or JUST LISTEN (which I think is objectively her best book*).

The main problem with it is that several of the characters are completely caricatured. When I read it, I adjust it in my head so that one character (Jason) suffers from serious Asperger’s syndrome, while another (Monica) is mildly retarded; it’s the only way I can make sense of their behavior. (And that’s not even getting into Macy’s coworkers at the library.)

Sometimes the inexplicable characterizaton is Dessen stretching her love of metaphor too far. That’s my take on one character (Delia)’s refusal to fix a big freakin’ hole in her driveway, because “some things are better left unfixed,” or some such nonsense. No… that would be false. The crater in your driveway is better off fixed, and Dessen’s better off when she’s not sacrificing believable characters to make her point.

Worse yet, for me, I feel like Dessen stacks the deck at the book’s climax. Without giving away specifics of the denouement, let’s just say that when a character needs to finally make a choice that the entire book has been building toward, Dessen makes the path she’s already won the readership to even more blindingly obvious by having someone act like a complete ass. Not necessary.

So why do I call this my favorite Dessen novel? Because I feel compelled to re-read it every nine months or so, and I love it every time. The appeal of this kind of book, for me, is the fantasy of the guy falling for me; with Wes, it’s an attractive fantasy. And what Dessen, like Meyer in TWILIGHT, utterly masters in TTAF is the slow build from crush to relationship — with plenty of small advances along the way. It’s these small moments — the unexpected escalation of the flirtation — that are what I read and re-read for.

One of the TTAF reviewers on Amazon complains that Wes is utterly bland; one of my favorite book bloggers even calls his ability to solve Macy’s problems, all while lacking a personality of his own, “Sarah Dessen Syndrome.”**

They’re not wrong, but maybe for me that’s the point; he’s the perfect foil for a book that’s really about Macy. What’s appealing about Wes is that he falls for Macy. But Dessen makes it fun by not dwelling on telling us about Macy’s feelings of unlovability; instead, she lets us feel Macy’s roller coaster of continuous humiliation punctuated by amazement at the growing realization that this guy actually likes her. It works for me.

I think that’s also why THIS LULLABY didn’t do quite as much for me, especially the first time I read it. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed it just fine, and expect to for years to come. But the point of this book is in large part imagining quirky Dexter falling for you, and the thing is — I’ve had that kind of quirky boyfriend. And frankly, mine was better.

* excluding from consideration Lock and Key, which I’m not reading until the paperback comes out in April; Dessen is one of the authors that provokes my pronounced book-buying fetish.

** This same blogger’s “Sarah Dessen Syndrome 2″ (from the same post), namely the guy bugging the girl until she realizes he was right all along, her emphatic “Not interested!” did mean nothing, and he’s perfect for her!, is something I find a lot harder to tolerate. This is my biggest issue with THIS LULLABY.