The Nature of Jade by Deb Caletti

I was trying to find a book to review for Valentine’s Day, but I thought I would go with an author instead. Deb Caletti is sort of like the West Coast Sarah Dessen. Both write so strongly and beautifully about teens, and also seem to have the ability to write honestly about teen relationships. But Caletti’s style and voice of her characters (I think all of her books are told in first person) have always made me search out her books – a new one usually comes out every year in the spring (I just checked and The Story of Us comes out in April!).

Although her second novel, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart was a National Book Award finalist, all of her books have received recognition and starred reviews, particularly her first, The Queen of Everything.

I wanted to write about The Nature of Jade (2007) in this review, but I have loved so much every book I’ve read by Deb Caletti.

The Nature of Jade is about Jade DeLuna, a Seattle teenager who keeps the live zoo webcam on in her room to watch the elephants. Jade has been diagnosed with Panic Disorder, and the realization of her condition is told in the first chapter, through a series of events. Jade explains what having a panic attack feels like:

“I’m gasping and I don’t even have enough air to cry out, same as the time in second grade when I landed hard on my back after falling off the jungle gym. I am aware, too aware, of my heartbeat, and then Oliver comes in. I’m panicking, shit, because I can’t breathe, and Oliver must see this in my eyes and he goes and runs and gets Aunt Beth. I hear him call her name, but it’s really far off, and I’m in this other world where there’s only this fear and this pain in my chest and no air and this feeling of Need Out!”

Visiting the zoo and watching the elephants on the webcam are ways that Jade stays calm and keeps the panic attacks at bay. But one day, while she’s sitting in her room watching the elephant enclosure from her computer, she notices a boy in a red jacket carrying a baby in a backpack. She starts to wonder who he is, comparing her curiosity to “The Airport Game,” where Jade says people sitting in an airport will ask themselves quiet questions about where the other people in the airport are going.

Jade gets to know the boy in the red jacket – Sebastian – as well as his son and his grandmother who all live together on a houseboat in the Seattle harbor. She is drawn into their complicated world, and finds herself understanding the feeling of being home when she’s with them.

Within the overarching story are so many small pockets of dialogue, every day events, and characters that make this novel so compelling. Oliver, Jade’s younger brother, always stands out for me in this story. Jade helps him fake sick before football practices (“Smush your bangs up with some hot water,” she tells him. “But get a move on. He’s coming. Call out for Mom. You’re so sick, remember? Bleh.”), which he hates (but he loves Narnia and C.S. Lewis).

The novel ends at the beginning of Jade’s own independence, and leaves off with this last paragraph:

“Below, my past life looks like Dad’s train set. Tiny houses, small winding roads, water you could fit into a cup and drink.

"We soar higher, climb. The miniature town below disappears as we lift above the clouds. Life and our love for others is a balancing act, I understand then; a dance between our instinct to be safe and hold fast, and our drive to flee, to run – from danger, toward new places to feed ourselves.”

If you haven’t read a book by Deb Caletti yet, I would really recommend picking one up. The characters, dialogue, and the easy, conversational narration by the Caletti’s protagonists make her novels so worth reading. 

Looking for Alaska by John Green

In John Green’s Looking for Alaska, Miles Halter decides to leave his family, friends, and school in Florida to attend Culver Creek boarding school in Alabama, in search of what the poet Francois Rabelais called “The Great Perhaps.” As soon as he arrives, he is thrown into a completely new world, boarding with The Colonel, eating bufriedos (deep-fried burritos), and hanging out with cool, funny, and crazy Alaska Young. Miles’ obsession with the last words of famous (and ordinary) people is turned in a new direction when Alaska introduces him to the last words of Simon Bolivar: “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?” This question follows Alaska and Miles through the rest of the novel, a philosophical meandering that winds through the chapters to conjoin the beginning with the end. Miles’ own last words in the novel underscore how Bolivar’s question (through Alaska) has shaped his own understanding of the world: “Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in a back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home.”

But in between is Miles’ (nicknamed “Pudge” at boarding school) first taste of freedom away from home and his parents, where he discovers friends can become family. Miles participates in a series of pranks between him and his friends and the Weekday Warriors, the rich kids who only board at the school during the week (which begins with Miles being duct taped like a mummy and dropped in the lake on his first night at Culver Creek).

Miles is also fascinated by Alaska, and notes pretty early on, “And now is as good a time as any to say that she was beautiful. In the dark beside me, she smelled of sweat and sunshine and vanilla, and on that thin-mooned night I could see little more than her silhouette except for when she smoked, when the burning cherry of the cigarette washed her face in pale red light.” Alaska helps with Calculus homework at McDonald’s at lunchtime, reads Kurt Vonnegut books with Miles, has a Life Library full of books that she has recused from garage sales to read throughout her life, and remains just slightly unattainable.

Looking for Alaska also creates a structure that I don’t think I’ve seen in a book before. In most books, a big event important to the book seems to take place before the story begins (to show how characters deal with the event) or near the end (as a leading up to point). But Green’s book places this at the very center of the book, so that the chapters on one side count down from “One hundred and thirty-six days before,” and then, like an accordion, to end on the chapter “One hundred and thirty-six days after.” Still, Green keeps the second half from feeling like an extended denouement, but instead creates a self-enclosed story that is still unable to exist without the first half of the novel. It’s a beautiful book about friendship and independence and love, and shows off Green’s ability to write a story that readers connect with. 

Anya's Ghost by Vera Brosgol

Anya’s Ghost, a debut graphic novel by Vera Brosgol, begins as a simple story about teenage Anya, whose morning routine with her mom and brother reads as real, routine, and funny. Her request for “low-fat pop-tarts or something” instead of the Russian food her mom serves up (and Anya remarks “Those things are so greasy!”) begins the novel, carefully detailing the day that Anya meets a ghost.

After fighting with her friend Siobhan at school (who suggests that Anya’s boyfriend is Dima, who is also Russian, although Anya calls him “fobby” – Fresh Off the Boat. Siobhan notes, “I figure you guys got pretty well-acquainted back in the breadlines”), a distracted Anya walks to the park, where she immediately falls down a well. A bad situation gets even worse once Anya lights a match and illuminates the skeleton of a dead body resting at the bottom of the well with her.

The bones are those of a young girl, about Anya’s age, and her ghost is attached to them. She has to stay in close proximity to her own bones (since she also fell down the well, just years and years before Anya) and when a small piece of her finger bone ends up in Anya’s bag when she’s rescued, the ghost, Emily, follows her home.

At first, Anya thinks it’s pretty great. Emily feeds her answers in class and helps her cheat by hovering over the tests of her classmates and bringing back the correct answers. She helps Anya dress up for a party and gives her advice about how to get with the guy she likes. But Anya slowly figures out that Emily is not so benign a ghost at she at first appears. Although Emily explains to Anya that she was murdered, and ended up at the bottom of the well, Anya comes to find out that the reality is a whole lot worse. What begins as a simple teenage story evolves into something a something more, and connecting Emily with Anya makes for a strange friendship that both girls seem to rely on.

This story seems made precisely for the graphic novel format. Anya’s expressions are priceless, and Brosgol’s illustrations make the young adult and teen aspects of this novel so effective. For example, there is a scene near the beginning of the novel where Anya thinks the cute guy she likes is waving at her, and the devolution of her expression from hopefulness to embarrassment with the understanding that he is actually waving at his girlfriend is perfectly executed. And then there’s the section of the novel dedicated to Anya having to take the “Bleep Test” in gym class, running a series of sprints back and forth across the gym that is just as great.

Anya’s Ghost is a haunting (and genuinely scary!) ghost story that is completely set in a teenage world. It’s funny, humorous, and frightening, and is definitely worth picking up. 

Lost & Found by Shaun Tan

The first time I heard about Shaun Tan was recently, when I was browsing through the graphic novels section at the bookstore. His new publication, The Arrival, was on display, and in the way that new books do, it lead me backwards to some of Tan’s previous publications. Lost and Found by Shaun Tan is an omnibus that contains The Red Tree, The Lost Thing, and The Rabbits. The book reads like a mix between a children’s book, a graphic novel, and a picture book.

The first story, The Red Tree, was my favorite, and it sort of hit me like a ton of bricks reading it for the first time. It’s a simple story, with only a handful of words on each page (the other two stories have much more narration), and the illustrations are done in a variety of styles of art, a few of which really reminded me of Dave McKean. The Red Tree describes an ordinary day, where a girl is waiting for a change to happen in her life. One illustration is of the girl drawing tallies on the back of giant snail shell, a snail that is in turn almost miniscule against the background, and it drips with the difficulty of waiting for time to pass to a place where a change can happen. Tan writes, “Sometimes you wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait but nothing ever happens. Then all your troubles come at once. Wonderful things are passing you by. Terrible fates are inevitable.” The short story carries a weight with it, realistic and familiar, that is resolved in a simple, subtle, and beautiful way.

The second story, The Lost Thing, follows a narrator who begins, “So you want to hear a story?” which seems to express the weight of his experience that drives him to pass on his story. The story starts on a nondescript day, when the narrator finds “The Lost Thing,” with “a sad, lost sort of look. Nobody else seemed to notice it was there. Too busy doing beach stuff, I guess.” Tan’s illustrations in this story are beautiful and detailed, and his imagination devises a creature that seems to incorporate elements of a robot, an octopus, and a boiler, and is bright red in color. Unable to find its owner, the narrator follows instructions from another creature to find the place where lost things go. He leaves the thing in a place that is filled with others like it, but the narrator seems unsure that his Lost Thing really belongs there. Still, he leaves it there and goes on with his life, collecting bottle caps in a futuristic world where people seem indifferent to those lost things, the things that do not belong in their world. The Lost Thing was adapted into an animated film, and won an Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2011.

Finally, The Rabbits is written by John Marsden (the prolific Australian writer) and illustrated by Tan. It is a postcolonial tale, and, as Tan explains, “The Rabbits is a story of universe colliding: one culture driven by powerful technology that transcends nature (much like our own), and another whose spirit is embedded in an ancient ecology.” The words are supported and taken to a new level with Tan’s illustrations, and it rounds out this collection of three strong, powerful stories.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

I think that sometimes it happens when you re-read a book or watch a movie that you’ve loved for so long, but you’ve maybe never exactly pin-pointed why, and realize that it has totally informed a lot of your political and social perspective. When I graduated with a Women’s Studies minor I was spending basically the first time relaxing after a lot of school, and was watching movies on cable TV. And I saw this one, All I Wanna Do (um, with Kristen Dunst, actually), that I had loved since I was in middle school, and after watching it I thought, “Oh. Women’s Studies minor. That makes sense.” Another one of those was Tamora Pierce’s Alanna series: “Women’s Studies. Feminism. Check, and check.” Although the movie and the book were both fiction, at their heart they passed on strong female characters and ideas.

It’s a really nice middle point whenever pop culture – literature, movies, music – actually does connect with feminism, because it’s sooooooo unfortunately rare. And it forms this sort of instant recognition and almost validation, through the real world that you get right out of its fictional one.

So. Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens. The only reason it took me as long as it did to pick this one up was because it’s still in hardcover. Luckily, I got it for Christmas this year (thanks, Mom!) and I seriously devoured it from last night until late last night.

The premise of Beauty Queens, from Bray’s acknowledgments, “A plane full of Beauty Queens crashes on a deserted island. And….GO!” The parallel to Lord of the Flies is immediately apparent, especially with the background that there is a war going on (Lord of the Flies was set against the background of WWII). But the idea of what happens when you do introduce female characters to a situation like Lord of the Flies, that traditionally male-centric story, is what makes this novel so engaging. As the characters put it themselves:

“I’ve been thinking about that book about the boys who crash on the island,” Mary Lou said to Adina one afternoon as they rested on their elbows taking bites from the same papaya.

“Lord of the Flies. What about it?”

“You know how you said it wasn’t a true measure of humanity because there were no girls and you wondered how it would be different if there had been girls?”

“Yeah?”

Mary Lou wiped fruit juice from her mouth with the back of her hand. “Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place where no one’s watching them so they can be who they really are.”

Still, the parallel to Lord of the Flies is hardly even a jumping-off point for this book. What Bray creates is entirely her own, something – like Going Bovine – that has the ability to break through generic boundaries. Bray returns to the same criticism of pop culture that made Going Bovine so great, but she takes it to the next level. Here, reality television shows have gone out of control, The Corporation is in control of everything, and a narrow beauty standard has been clearly defined, and Bray’s biting criticism of these topics (and more) is paired with humor. This novel includes the cast of Captains Bodacious IV: Badder and More Bodaciouser!, a teen pop sensation called Boyz Will B Boyz (whose single “Safe Tween Crush” includes the lyrics, “Wanna rock you girl, with a butterfly tunic. / No, I’m not gay, I’m just your emo eunuch. /), and “commercial breaks” from the story that include commercials for beauty products, television shows, and movies (such as WEDDING DAY 3: THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM:

CHARLIE

(tearful)

What if Mr. Wrong is the best I’m going to get?

GRANDMA

(patting her hand)

Love means making sacrifices. I know these things. I’m old.)

And under all of these layers – great story, parallel to a canonical novel, political, social, and pop culture critique, and relatable, real, incredible characters – is a focus on feminism and what it’s like to grow up as a teenage girl in contemporary culture. Sometimes these are in-depth, and other times they are off the cusp, such as when Petra explains,

“I sewed a banner to catch the attention of planes. You can’t see it now because they took it down.”

Adina turned to the camera with an amused-but-confused expression. “Why?”

“It had the word bitches in it, which is perfectly fine to use if you’re a rapper or a director making a movie about career women, but not if you’re a teen girl talking about her homies.”

This is already the longest review I’ve written, and I feel like I haven’t even begun to get at what this book is! Out of all of the reviews so far, this is the first that gets an all capslocks, “PLEASE READ BEAUTY QUEENS BY LIBBA BRAY. IT IS REALLY THE BEST THING EVER.”

I can just imagine how engaging it would be to read a book like this in high school, either instead of Lord of the Flies or alongside it. Canonical books like Lord of the Flies are still taught (my sixteen-year-old sister just did it this past semester in high school), but more contemporary novels like Beauty Queens still aren’t really across the board – they’re left out of curriculum to teach novels written sixty years ago. It’s important also that those novels are still circulated in schools, but Beauty Queens is that new kind of version of canonical novel, like so many other new young adult novels. It seems like a missed opportunity to stay with just Lord of the Flies (which, you know, doesn’t have a single female character), or other such canonical novels, when something like Beauty Queens has something for every student, female or male.

I absolutely loved this book. It’s really the first novel I’ve ever read that I’m anxious to actually start reading again, right from the beginning, and the ability for Bray to be able to tell a great story while also letting me do the whole, “wow, these are really the things I believe in,” is just incredible.