Friday, March 17, 2017

Book Review: 'Holding Up the Universe' by Jennifer Niven

I'll admit, this book had me fooled. I thought it wouldn't become a typical Jennifer Niven YA story that focuses more on angst than characters, their development and storylines. But then it did.

This is exactly Niven's problem: she creates intriguing YA novels that will appeal to readers who love a good story about loveable weirdos and their inevitably cheesy romance, and then takes it too far. The only other novel of hers I've read is All the Bright Places, which I would say I liked, but it failed to be unique in that it focused more on the fact that young people have problems and their lives suck but they can still find love. Jennifer Niven uses her characters and their storylines solely to create an angsty romance, rather than focus on the characters themselves.

Holding Up the Universe starts well. It follows Libby Strout, once dubbed America's Fattest Teen after she had become so overweight that she had to be rescued from her house, and Jack Masselin, a good-looking, popular guy who secretly suffers from prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize people's faces, even those closest to him, and how these two classmates become unlikely friends. A lot of people were immediately offended by the dust jacket's blurb calling Libby America's Fattest Teen and condemned the book and the author without even reading it, but I did not find Libby's story as a fat girl offensive. I think Niven actually dealt with it tastefully as well as shine a light on how mean kids can be just because people are different. Jack's secret struggle with face-blindness also started off strong and interesting. His relationship with his youngest brother was also adorable and had me swooning in the beginning.

But, unfortunately, Holding Up the Universe loses a lot of its appeal after about 200 pages, when it becomes obvious that, as already said, the author is just using her characters and their situations to create angst. It's as if Niven sat down and said, "How can I make this as angsty and sappy as possible? I'll make Libby fat and struggling with the fact that she's fat and how people treat fat girls, and then I'll have this good-looking, popular guy be secretly face-blind, but then I'll start to get uncreative with both situations because ultimately I'm just writing these characters this way so that it sets up the platform for an angsty and often problematic teen romance."

As a result, I didn't feel like I knew Libby and Jack very well, or any of the characters for that matter. I know their situations and how the world is unfair for both of them sometimes, but I don't understand their motivations, their thoughts or, most of the time, their actions. Holding Up the Universe's characters are ultimately very underdeveloped, but you only really find that out if you've already invested yourself in the first 200 pages of the book. You start reading it and you're compelled, because so few narratives shed light on what it's like to be a fat girl and be told that you're worthless because you're fat. Then you're intrigued by this popular guy's face-blind condition, because it's somewhat unique. But Niven only uses these character details as vehicles for creating her angsty teen romance, rather than develop her characters into real people other than horny teenagers who have to find love. It's books like these that give the YA genre a bad name because it has young people with problems that put the weight of the world on their shoulders, but oh look they find a friend that OH LOOK! turns into love. Major eye roll. Despite how negative this review sounds, Holding Up the Universe did have some good qualities. It was nice to see a YA book tackle fat girls in a way that is both tasteful but doesn't hold back. It would have just been nice if the motivation behind writing the character this way was more than just for the purpose of creating angst. 3/5 stars.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Book Reviews: 'The Couple Next Door' by Shari Lapena and 'Still Life with Tornado' by A.S. King


1.
The Couple Next Door, by Shari Lapena:
God, this was such a big dull dud. I'm so done with thriller novels whose premises seem to promise deep, psychological explorations into the characters and their lives only to actually open the book and find weak and unoriginal plots. The Couple Next Door follows your typical suburban couple as their baby daughter, left without a babysitter, goes missing one night while her parents are at a neighbor's house for a barbecue. This seems pretty standard and seen before, but the author could have had a fun time making the plot her own with different twists the reader might not have seen coming. Instead, The Couple Next Door reads like a 13-year-old's creative assignment for her English class. The prose is just so bland and lacks any kind of pizazz to draw me into these characters and their lives, not to mention the characters themselves and the ending/resolution are just SO unoriginal that the book is lucky I didn't throw it across the room (that, however, would ultimately be against my religion). If you're looking for an interesting, original, riveting psychological thriller that will draw you in and keep you guessing, keep on looking. 2/5 stars.



2. Still Life with Tornado, by A.S. King:
This one started off really strong for me. Like, 5-star book kind of strong. My problem started to come around as the story progressed. Still Life with Tornado is about Sarah, only it's not about Sarah. It's about ten-year-old Sarah, current sixteen-year-old Sarah, twenty-three-year-old Sarah and forty-year-old Sarah, all of whom haunt the current Sarah (I know this sounds weird, but know that there's some magical realism involved here, and I'm not doing it justice). It's also about her brother, her parents, their problematic marriage and a family trip to Mexico six years ago that left a mark on everybody. Still Life with Tornado manages to do what a lot of other contemporary YA books lack: portray in a painfully realistic way that people, including the people who are supposed to hold it all together, are not perfect. This book is so realistic that it could have afforded to throw it some unrealistic elements at times, just for fun. Current sixteen-year-old Sarah is damaged, and the reader starts to find out why over the course of the book, but at the same time, a lot that could have been more readily defined is left up to the imagination. She drops out of school because "nothing happens", a decision her mother seems to support, but her father firmly rejects. Sarah's parents are flawed, very much so, and I like how Still Life with Tornado portrays that sometimes parents make mistakes early on that they don't recognize, and they just continue making it until it's long since too late to make anything right.

My main problem with this book is that it leaves the reader in the dark about too many things that we have a right to know: sure, we get an idea of what's wrong with Sarah, but her home life can't be the only thing that defines her. Yes, her home life is less than perfect and quite dark at times, but I can think of a thousand situations that are truly much worse, despite the realistic elements in her family's storyline. Around the 150-page mark, I started to give up faith in Sarah's character because I could no longer understand why she chooses to mope around town, talking to her older and younger selves, instead of going to school. Okay, your home life sucks. Your school life sucks. Your "friends" suck. But guess what? Sometimes we gotta suck it up. There was also supposed to be a subplot involving Sarah's art teacher (Sarah is an artist), but it seemed to be a train on a track going nowhere because it had nothing to do with the ultimate outcome of Sarah's situation. Overall, Still Life with Tornado is an ambitious entry into the YA genre, and I can definitely commend it for its obvious and often painful realistic elements. It just leaves too much unanswered to be perfect for me. 3.5/5 stars.