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I don't think I can give my usual summary of this novel. I tried, and it just sounds so trite and dull. (In fact, this review was really hard to write, I've been trying for over a week and it's a mess, I apologise.) I will offer what I can and go fro...moreI don't think I can give my usual summary of this novel. I tried, and it just sounds so trite and dull. (In fact, this review was really hard to write, I've been trying for over a week and it's a mess, I apologise.) I will offer what I can and go from there, for context if nothing else. This is basically the story of a teacher and a student who have an affair - if we were to break the book down to its base plot - but I didn't know anything else, going on, and I'm not always sure I should give more to others than I started with, but, if I don't, I won't be able to talk about it. So here's some more detail:
Will Silver left America - and his wife - for France after the tragic deaths of his parents; he's been teaching English at the International School of France in Paris for the last three years. His seminar class for older students (sorry, I find the whole "freshman" "senior" etc. thing really confusing so I'm not sure what grade it is exactly) is a small group, apparently not the standard classroom set-up for American schools (the school should probably be called "American School in Paris", as one of the characters considers it [quick note: I found out after writing this that that is exactly the name of the real school where Maksik taught! I'm good, aren't I? Or not...), where they discuss philosophy and the meaning of life, religion and choice through Sartre, Camus and other French-speaking and American writers.
Popular with his students, Will comes across, at the beginning, as a bit creepy, a bit too close and friendly. I'm unsure why we're given this impression to start with, though how much of it is my pre-conceived ideas about this teacher who will have an affair with a student, is hard to separate. And then there was my other knowledge, that Maksik himself was a teacher at a school just like this (and the gossip that he had an affair with a student and this story is based on that - but I don't want to get off track), which made me feel like Mr Silver is Maksik, and Mr Silver is, at first, just a bit too Wonderful, y'know? At the beginning of the novel, for example, he's greeted by his students for the last class of the year like this:
"So, listen Mr. S. I'm going to miss you this summer and I want you to know that I really loved your class and that I think you're a great teacher." She blushes. "So, thank you for everything. You kind of changed my life this year."
"Thank you, Julia. I've loved having you as a student."
She looks at the floor.
Steven Connor struts into the classroom, short and bluff and pushing his chest out.
"Mr S!" He [sic] says, extending his hand, a little businessman. "How you doing, Mr. S. You now I'm going to miss this class, dude. Why don't you teach juniors? You suck. What the hell am I going to do next year?" [p.9]
(Okay, quick disclaimer here: I am a teacher, an English teacher, though I'm not currently teaching. Just had to put that in as it did affect my reading, too.)
Throughout the novel, Mr Silver is the object of girls' crushes and boys' hero-worshipping. Now, perhaps it was coy, blushing Julia, or perhaps it was oozing smarmy Steven, or one of the several other students who come and say much the same thing to "Mr S", but I found this all rather cloying and wishful thinking. Because so many teachers, if not all, on some level want to be that teacher who changes the lives of their students. Granted, Will is conscious of this:
All that attention, it's hard to resist. And if you're honest you acknowledge that before you ever became a teacher you imagined your students' reverence, your ability to seduce, the stories you'd tell, the wisdom you'd impart. You know that teaching is the combination of theater and love, ego and belief. You know that the subject you teach isn't as important as how you use it. [p.76]
Combine that with the pre-knowledge that he's going to have a sexual relationship with a student, and I didn't get the best introduction to Will. My perception of him did actually improve as the novel went on, strangely enough, probably because of his classes and the conversations they have and that he sticks up for the students' right to be challenged at school. Which, considering what he's up to outside the school, presents something of a Humbert Humbert character, where you like someone even when you're disgusted, angry etc. over their actions (and what their actions mean about them as a person). It's confronting and challenging, which I like, though You Deserve Nothing lacks the oomph and power of Lolita.
Moving on from that verbose introduction to Will, we also have two students narrating: Gilad Fisher and Marie de Cléry. The novel is structured into chapters told from the three different perspectives, from when they were older. Will's chapters have a more natural prose while Gilad and Marie narrate as if they're telling a story for a documentary. It's a bit weird. I also found the tense use strange and muddled. It flits between present and past tense seemingly randomly, and I found it very distracting. For example, Will's first chapter - and this is all in the characters' pasts, just to reiterate - begins on the last day of the school year, the previous school year, before he has an affair, and it is told in present tense. Then somewhere, around page 75, he starts to reminisce and tells the rest of his side of the story in past tense, often with that same reflective, "are the cameras rolling?" tone. I'm not a big fan of this experimental use of tenses; it too often just seems amateurish and wanky, or at the very least clumsy.
Gilad and Marie. Gilad, one of Mr Silver's students, was my favourite character, and I felt I could really relate to him (as an aside, for the first few chapters I thought, or assumed, he was a girl! I had to completely change the way I read him when I at last encountered a pronoun). Marie - I'm not sure that we're meant to like her at all, she's too realistic in many ways and alienating and off-putting in others. Or put it this way, like her plastic friend Ariel, anyone who doesn't get Mr Silver's English class isn't someone I'd get along with in real life. Because I did love his classes, which are included in the narrative because of the questions they raise about life, love and religion, which are in their way, themes of the book; and because of the dynamics between the students, and the students and their teacher, Will. You can learn a lot about existentialism, for example, but more to the point, the conversations and topics begin to reflect Will's state of mind as he becomes, dare I say it, a bit unhinged. Gilad notices it too - Mr Silver is his hero - but he is the last kid in school to learn about what's going on between Will and Marie.
Where Maksik wrote well was the shifting narrative voices of his three main characters - I can't really call them protagonists, perhaps because of that real life, documentary feel to the story (there are lots of good reviews, like this one on Shelf Love, that discuss the morals and ethics of using a possibly true story for fiction and, thus, profit, but I'd prefer to stick to discussing the book on its own where possible). You will get the same scene repeated but from a different character's perspective, so you get a different view of what happened. This is particularly true of Marie, who comes across as a slutty sixteen year old in Will's chapters, an experienced slutty sixteen year old who seduces him. In Marie's chapters, we get to meet a shy, insecure, self-conscious girl whose mother is constantly disappointed with her appearance, who has no real friends, and whose previous experience is one boy, Collin, who physically forced her to give him a blowjob on a bus. At some point, we learn that she is vulnerable and lacking a strong, loving, nurturing adult in her life, and yearns for a caring, tender boyfriend. Will, as an experienced adult, has that tenderness as well as the skill. You can't really blame her, not considering the stupid things we do as kids, and her maturity over the course of the novel is subtle but true. She grows up, and learns to stand on her own feet, more so than before anyway. Gilad, too, grows stronger because of Will's indirect and direct influence, and stands up to his wife-beating father.
On the other hand, Will, who took advantage of a young girl's lust and insecurities, is somewhat reduced by the end of the story. The events change him too, but there's no deep, moral, introspective navel-gazing going on here - and for that I thank Maksik, I can't stand that kind of self-indulgent writing or character. And there are a lot of them around. Instead, we're left with a kind of limbo, left with Will's abrupt departure and absence and like Marie and Gilad, have to go on with our lives as independent adults. It's a coming-of-age story for Gilad and Marie, but what is it exactly for Will? Did he return to the States and possibly his wife, to face what he'd been running from? Or did he hide away in Paris a bit longer, or somewhere else, in denial of what he'd done? It's a more effective story for leaving us lots to ponder.
The long and the short of it is, I'm conflicted. There was much to love here, and in writing this slip-shod review, the love has come out. But while I started off feeling decidedly "meh" about it, and came to like it more and more as the story progressed, I was still left feeling strangely disappointed at the end. Not with the ending per se, but with the book as a whole. If anything, it says "good first novel, his second will probably be stronger." Maybe it was the setting, which was too often skimmed over, or crowded with Americans and other foreigners. Maybe it was the structure and the pretentious use of two tenses that didn't work for me. Maybe it's that I kept waiting, waiting, for something to happen, something to lift it up and into the realm of real excellence. And maybe it was that it was too realistic, and to grossly paraphrase Northrop Frye, we find realism in fiction to be unrealistic. Or alienating. Or uncomfortable. Or dull.
Which brings us full circle back to the issue of this book as fact disguised as fiction, and what that means, to us the readers, to the story, to the ethics of publishing it even. Personally, at this point, I'm not too bothered, but it does make you read the book with a different degree of alertness, and a different reaction to scenes and characters. It definitely colours the way you read.
The rambling nature of this review just shows you how unsure I am about this book. There's a lot more going on than I've discussed, and yet I've put the emphasis on Will's sexual relationship with Marie - while I was reading this, I kept having the feeling like that relationship wasn't the point of the novel, was a red herring even, but now I think I'm just reading too much into it. It is at times too obvious a book, and at others quite nicely subtle. The obvious overshadowed the subtle, for me, and lowered my appreciation of what is otherwise a good, solid debut.(less)
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" Maye wrote: "Even though I didn't feel the same as you, I still LOVE your reviews! I need to totally follow your reviews."
Thanks Maye. :)
I certainly ...moreMaye wrote: "Even though I didn't feel the same as you, I still LOVE your reviews! I need to totally follow your reviews."
Thanks Maye. :)
I certainly enjoy discussing books with people who had different reading experiences.(less)"
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After the tragic accident that killed her mother, Erin Blackwell has lived on her grandmother's multi-million dollar racehorse farm in Kentucky. While her grandmother has always insisted Erin do a business degree in order to take over the family busi...moreAfter the tragic accident that killed her mother, Erin Blackwell has lived on her grandmother's multi-million dollar racehorse farm in Kentucky. While her grandmother has always insisted Erin do a business degree in order to take over the family business, Erin decides instead to pursue her desire to write with an arts degree in New York City. In retaliation, her grandmother makes the stableboy, Hunter Allen, heir to the farm and bestows upon him the means to do the business degree. Meanwhile, Erin is living the life of a poor student, supplementing her scholarship with meagre wages from cafes.
Since Hunter is at the same university as Erin, she knew their paths would cross at some point, but she never expected to have him transfer into her creative writing class - on the very day the students are reading her short story, a historical romance where a socialite develops a clandestine relationship with the stable boy. Fearful that Hunter will reveal that he is Erin's stableboy, thus losing her a coveted internship at a publishing house, Erin must talk to him. But even with his promise not to tell, it's clear from his short story that he has a message for her. As their stories go back and forth, and Erin finds herself in his company more and more, it's clear that there's something going on with Hunter that has nothing to do with her grandmother's racehorse farm.
I enjoyed Echols' previous two drama novels, Going Too Far and Forget You immensely, so when this came out I instantly got a copy. That was last year. Since the novel opens with Erin's first short story, "Almost a Lady", it failed to pull me in and after a page I put it aside. I did that a few more times before finally committing myself to reading it. Unfortunately, that initial impression held true for the rest of the book.
I wanted to like this so much more than I did. It was about university-aged kids, for a start, and I've always felt that the university years get strangely ignored in fiction in general. It was about writing, which I could completely relate to - though I realised I know little about the American university system, because all Erin's references to being in the "honors program" made me think at first that she was a fourth year student. And I thought that the premise and structure of Love Story had immense promise and potential - combined with horses, and I thought it was going to be a book I'd love. Sadly, not the case at all.
Ultimately, the word that comes to mind in describing this book is "mess". Love Story was a more complicated plot than the other two, though it really didn't need to be - the plot was loose, unravelling, messy, confusing and quite frankly didn't seem to know what was going on. I felt the same way. Between trying to figure out what the big deal was with Erin's grandmother and the horse farm, and what kind of prior relationship she'd had with Hunter before university, if any, and what all the back and forth was all about. I honestly couldn't understand what was going on, now, because I didn't know what had happened - if anything - before. That didn't have to be a problem, but the way Erin narrates, the cryptic comments and weird impressions and all her subtext readings were like red herrings. I spent most of the novel waiting: waiting to understand, waiting for Erin to actually have a concrete thought, something.
If you look at it another way, though, Erin is a perfect example of the unreliable narrator, whose perspective is skewed by her own personality and her own interpretations of things. Added to this is her mostly negative impressions of Hunter which unsuccessfully hide the fact that she's practically obsessed with him.
In turn, Hunter is something of an enigma for most of the book, but the true Hunter comes through despite Erin's red herrings - though his comments about her playing at being a poor girl, while there's a reason for them, made him come across as a real arsehole. Actually, a lot of Hunter's scenes make him look like an arse, though by the end of the book I was more sympathetic towards him than I was Erin (which says a lot about how annoying Erin became), because the reader is able to see past Erin's misinterpretations and hang-ups to the real boy, and since we don't get his internal monologuing, he get to see what he's going through rather than just being told. In fact, we're not told a whole lot in regards to him - nothing much trustworthy, anyway.
And the whole horse farm thing, and Erin's yearning for a father who was a lazy bum who physically assaulted her mother on numerous occasions when they lived with him in California, most of that didn't make sense to me. Yes so she has daddy issues, but with her memories of him hitting her mum, and being the indirect cause of the accident that killed her, why does she still wish he would come for her? Don't answer that, I know, he's the only parent she's got, she's lonely, and who doesn't want to be loved by their parents? It makes sense when I think about it, but it doesn't make sense the way it's presented in the story. Likewise the horse farm thing - I couldn't tell, and still can't, whether she's actually upset that her grandmother disinherited her, pissed off that Hunter "stole" it (she refers to it that way many times, and yet it rings hollow), etc. She loves horses and riding and has a natural gift for the races (or, rather, a lot of experience), but her motivations and reasoning just didn't gel with other parts of her character to the extent that I couldn't understand what she actually wanted.
Some of the debates in Erin's creative writing class could have been really good; they certainly started out that way. Since Erin's first story was an out-and-out romance, and the first person to critique it was a boy who dismissed it as trash not worthy of the course, there was a real opening for some interesting debate. Likewise with the other stories that are included here. But their conversations were disappointing, or not included at all, and often disintegrated into immature jokes. I know, it's first year uni, and more realistic than what I was hoping for, but it was just one more thing to be disappointed by. I found that most of the issues brought up in this novel were skirted in the same kind of way, leaving me with little to grasp.
The ending was abrupt, especially considering how many misunderstandings between Erin and Hunter it follows, and nothing was really resolved. I found myself very surprised that Echols' editor didn't advise further revisions to make this a tighter, better fleshed out, more smoothly coherent story.(less)
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Juliette Ferrars is 17. She's been locked up in isolation in a mental asylum for 264 days. She hasn't spoken to anyone, let along seen anyone, for 264 days. She doesn't know what's going on outside, though she can see the strange colours of the sky f...moreJuliette Ferrars is 17. She's been locked up in isolation in a mental asylum for 264 days. She hasn't spoken to anyone, let along seen anyone, for 264 days. She doesn't know what's going on outside, though she can see the strange colours of the sky from her window, and sometimes some dead leaves, but never a bird. All she has for company are a hidden diary and the memory of what she did three years ago, the accident that finally made her parents hand her over to the authorities after a lifetime of being different, a freak, a monster.
Because Juliette's touch can kill. She doesn't know why or how, but after the accident she can't pretend it doesn't exist. And because of her selfless nature, she feels that it's best to be kept away from everyone else, for their sake. But she has never known touch, never had a mother's hug, never been kissed by a boy. She's lived a life of isolation - what's one more cell but a physical manifestation of everything she's used to?
So when she suddenly gets a cellmate, it's a big, unexplained change. Not only that, but it's a boy - a boy she recognises. She went to school with Adam Kent and has been secretly in love with him for years. He never spoke to her, but he also never tormented her. She's sure he doesn't recognise her, but his presence in her cell and his probing questions are uncomfortable. When the soldiers of the Reestablishment come for her several days later, the truth becomes clear, but that's the least of Juliette's problems. A young, attractive, ruthless and sickly ambitious leader, known only as Warner, has been studying Juliette for years and is determined to mould her into a weapon, one in his control. Since Juliette's touch can kill, Warner wants to harness this skill for his own uses - for the Reestablishment.
While I was looking up this book just now I came across many reviews that spoke of the hype, that this was one of the most-hyped books of 2011. Perhaps the reason why I enjoyed it so much was that I completely missed that hype. I may have seen a cover image here and there, but not so that it registered in my consciousness. Instead, I got this book recently after seeing it on some Top Ten Tuesday lists towards the end of the year, and instead of letting it sit around on my shelf for years, I read it straight away. So, without the hype, I didn't have any expectations and in fact, based on my experiences with YA books, my expectations were pretty low. I was fully prepared to find myself reading another Wither.
A few things made me wary, to start with. Namely, the use of present tense. I don't know if anyone else has noticed it, but present tense in YA books is a current fad, and a hugely over-done one to boot. If I could, I'd like to say to writers: please don't. Present tense is not a tense to be used lightly, and it's very, very hard to use it well. It's designed to bring a sense of immediacy and unpredictability to a story, so you'd think, in theory, that it'd be perfect for the kind of science fiction currently saturating the YA market. But the truth is, past tense usually works better at achieving this, especially because, if you don't change the way you write, present tense reads like a mistake. Too many authors, like Suzanne Collins to name a big one, write in present tense the same way they, you, anyone would write in past tense. And it doesn't work that way.
Therefore, I'm usually put on alert when I encounter present tense, these days. If it takes me a hundred pages to realise the author is using present tense, that's an author who knows how to write in it. If I notice it on the first page, then it's sticking out because it doesn't work.
Another problem, and one that ties into the present tense issue, is the idea, presented at the beginning of Shatter Me, that this is Juliette's diary. First of all, no one writes a diary in present tense. People think in present tense. Also, since she often refers to writing in the little book, or hiding it, and later loses touch with it quite often, it's clear that this isn't a diary at all. But it's not clear, at first, just what exactly this is. But in that case, it's her thoughts that she's self-censoring, and once I got that, I actually really liked it. Juliette's thoughts are oft-times repetitious, but they're also very telling. The way she crosses out lines - the true, honest thoughts that she quickly represses, thoughts that are crossed out but that reveal her insecurities - build a main character who is feeling vulnerable, insecure, bewildered, lost, longing, crying out for human touch but too afraid of herself to do it. More importantly, the way those crossed-out lines start to decrease, until they finally disappear as Juliette finds her inner strength, and the strength of conviction, as well as friendship and love to reaffirm her sense of identity and the understanding that there are people who like her, and love her - that was done very well.
If some of Mafi's poetic lines were a bit much, overall I liked them and found they worked with Juliette's character. Some weren't as effective as others, but I appreciated that Mafi tried to avoid cliched expressions to find a new voice for Juliette. Lines like (pulled at random), "So many thoughts are tangling in my head I can't untie the insanity knotting itself together" work so much better than "my head is bursting with so many thoughts I feel like I'm going insane", which is dull in the extreme. But Juliette's voice won't be for everyone, especially if you can't get past the opening chapters where it's so strong because there's no action.
Once the plot picks up, though, that's where I got really involved and engrossed in the story. This is the set-up: climate change is fully unleashed and the world has changed in just a handful of years. Birds have disappeared, the sky has changed colour, weather is all over the place. Across the world, a regime called the Reestablishment is attempting to take control, ostensibly to reestablish equilibrium with the planet to restore some of its order, but naturally it takes the shape of repression and control of the human population. It is very much modelled on the Soviet Union, especially with the wealth of the land in the hands of a few while everyone else starves, and since you could say that the Soviet Union was a real-life dystopian place, so too is the world of Shatter Me, with one main distinction: in this novel, we have the fascinating premise of a world in the process of becoming dystopian. The Reestablishment has taken control in most places but their control has not yet defeated the population, or been accepted.
And that's where we come to the superhero part. By the end, when Juliette and Adam find themselves in something of a safe place, Shatter Me becomes distinctly X-Men, and since I love the X-Men, it was all win for me. I do find, with these kinds of science fiction stories, that the advanced technology is all a bit too convenient, especially considering it's not that far in our future, but I approached this novel hoping for a good story and I got something much more fun and engaging than I expected. Not a whole lot really happened in terms of plot, but I actually liked that it focused on character development and world building, which in turn made the action and conflict scenes more tense.
But Juliette's insecurities could put a lot of readers off - for me, it's was nicely balanced by a tough interior that came through in her resilience and determination and a sense of quiet pride. When Adam talks about the things he admires in her, you can see how his words bolster her sense of self until she is able to believe in herself more. I liked Adam too, he had an honourable spirit and is protective without being micromanaging: he believes in Juliette's ability to look after herself, appreciates her strong qualities, and so in turn reinforces them in her.
I didn't find Warner to be an original character - I did, after all, recently talk about the angelic-looking, power-hungry Hugh from Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series (Warner is a younger, less clever version of Hugh) - but I did still find the character mesmerising, just like I do with Hugh. I guess I love characters who are obsessive, within the confines of a novel. ;)
Overall, I have to admire Mafi for really thinking about how she would write Shatter Me, and developing the main character through the prose. She took risks, and while I don't think present tense was the best way to go, and I don't think I could read the next book immediately after this one (too much of Juliette's voice all at once could do a Phèdre no Delaunay on me), I was deeply engrossed in the story, thoroughly enjoying the clichés as much as the original touches, and came very, very close to loving it. I also really liked that she ran with the climate change premise rather than some virus or nuclear war etc., because this is a very, very real near future for us, and fiction is the perfect avenue for exploring human nature in a given situation. This is just one version, but it was a gripping story with great potential for delving into some very real social issues and power constructs. I'm interested to see where this story goes in the next instalment.(less)
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