5 stars
Summer Skin by Kirsty Eagar lies somewhere between young adult and new adult romance. It's raw and unflinchingly honest, a feminist exploration of Australia in the social media age, where young, imperfect characters are both shaped by and fighting against the norms of their world.
The synopsis says:
Jess Gordon is out for revenge. Last year the jocks from Knights College tried to shame her best friend. This year she and a hand-picked college girl gang are going to get even.
The lesson: don't mess with Unity girls.
The target: Blondie, a typical Knights stud, arrogant, cold . . . and smart enough to keep up with Jess.
A neo-riot grrl with a penchant for fanning the flames meets a rugby-playing sexist pig - sworn enemies or two people who happen to find each other when they're at their most vulnerable?
It's all Girl meets Boy, Girl steals from Boy, seduces Boy, ties Boy to a chair and burns Boy's stuff. Just your typical love story.
Basically, last year, Knights College had a challenge to see who could be the first to sleep with a Unity girl, and Jess' best friend Farren ended up having her sexual encounter with a Knights boy streamed to other members of the college. This year, Jess isn't going to let sleeping dogs lie. Behind Farren's back, she and her friends set up an alternate challenge: the first Unity girl to get a Knights boy back to her room and give him a "make-over" wins a defaced Knights jersey that Jess has stolen from a Knights boy. Her meet-cute with the hero, Mitch, is when she is in the process of stealing that jersey from the Knights laundry. Jess writes him off as just your average Knights-attending dick, and in some ways she's right, but Mitch is also dealing with the aftermath of a personal tragedy that made him take a year off uni and reevaluate his life. Despite the fact that Jess and Mitch are two very different people with two very different experiences of the world - reflected in their very different college choices - they just keep crossing paths at inopportune moments. Or are they really opportune moments?
Summer Skin is set in Brisbane (implicitly at the Uni of Queensland), and, in some ways, it's quite Queensland-y, with lines like this:
"Sugar mill, hates the smell of rum...You're not from Bundaberg, by any chance?" (p. 57)
However, it could just have easily been set in Sydney - where the University of Sydney's all-male St Paul's College is well-known for sexual assault, it's pro-rape Facebook pages, making young women drink toxic mixtures that see them hospitalised and, most recently, for refusing to comply with a University review into college culture - or any other major Australian city with an old-school university.
I read Summer Skin in short increments, partly because it was one of the best books I have read this year and I wanted to savour it, but partly also because it was so close to home. I never went to college - one of the reasons I chose my uni is because it didn't have colleges -but this is the story of many of my friends and family members' college experiences. This is the story of my younger high school years, when I went to a private girls school, and our brother school had the exact same motto - and misogynistic mentality - as the Knights boys. Virgil Agitur; Do the manly thing. This is the story of my experience with some uni societies. I ended up massively conflicted by paragraphs like this:
At that moment, a stocky guy with curly hair...blocked Blondie's path, addressing him as 'Killer' and telling him it was the Paddington Tavern for afters, acting like he couldn't see Jess, tucked under Blondie's arm. He probably thought he was being subtle. And Blondie played right along: widening his stance as if experiencing a sudden and significant surge in ball size, speaking in the drawl used by guys who are fluent in Brah.
"Yeah, right, the Paddo. Not gonna make it, hey."
At that, the other knight finally focused on Jess, and she decided she didn't like his eyes. "Roger that." He smirked. "Killer." (p. 45)
You can't help but smile and even laugh because it's so spot on; "guys who are fluent in Brah" is pure genius, and I will be adding that to my vocabulary, thank you very much. But at the same time, it's also a bit painful. This representation can only appear on the page because it reflects widespread attitudes and behaviours and that, frankly, is depressing.
And it's not just the sexism that Jess is fighting - even, and especially, in Mitch - that resonates. In the same piercing way that Summer Skin deals with gender, Eagar also talks straight up about class in a country that supposedly has none. Mitch is a rugby-union player from a well-off background, and, as Jess describes her family to him:
"My family are probably your family's worst nightmare. Self-educated rednecks. Bogans with books. Other people worry about climate change; we worry Ford will stop making V8s. I'll know I've arrived when I buy a jet-ski." (p. 109)
All of these things are so specific to the Australian context, but stripped of its quintessentially Australian characterisation and writing, at Summer Skin's heart is a story about hook up culture and binge drinking, rape culture, objectification of women, male entitlement and feminist push back that could occur in any number of countries. A story about women developing a take-no-prisoners approach because the establishment is just so weighted against them. It's the same story that saw a Columbia student carry her mattress around with her in protest after the university dismissed three complaints against her rapist, the UK's National Union of Students call for a summit on 'lad culture' or protests at University of Sydney's Open Day against the university's handling of campus sexual assault.
If I've spent too much of this review talking about myself or society, it's only because Summer Skin is so unapologetic about being a book about - and for - a particular generation of Australians, from the music references to the public/private school divide to the use of Instagram to the game of Classic Catches. It tackles love, sexism, class, body image, men's right to women's bodies and a bazillion other relevant themes with wit, grace and strength. It's sex positive, subversive and thought-provoking, and it has wonderfully complicated characters - both male and female - who don't get written off for being morally grey (too often it's only the guys who get a free pass on this).
But potential readers should rest assured that the romance between Jess and Mitch is smart and funny and sexy and poignant. I was going to say 'equally engaging as the rest of the book' but that is misleading: the romance between Mitch and Jess does not exist outside all of these themes that Summer Skin deals with, but is inherently a part of them, and I love it for that. There can be no true exploration of sexism and objectification without a hero who, at times, displays sexist and objectifying behaviours, and more power to Eagar for somehow managing to make Mitch a attractive and sympathetic hero, even when he's being a bit of a dick. And if somebody could please give me the strength to stand up for myself and call these things out as strongly and coherently as Jess and her friends do, that'd be super.
I don't think I've ever called a book a must-read on this blog - people have a right to read what they like without being prescribed to - but I genuinely think that if there ever was a must-read piece of fiction for Australians of my generation, Summer Skin is it. It's like looking in a mirror, and while we may not always like what we see, it's ultimately a hopeful portrayal of what love and our microcosm of society can look like if we - both guys and girls - take no shit and accept that, as Jess says, "being human isn't two different experiences" (p. 214).
3 stars
Assigning a star rating to The Things They Didn't Bury has been hard. I have such drastically different feelings about different aspects of this book, it's hard to weigh them up and shape them into a coherent whole. The story was good, as was the recreation of war-torn and recovering Argentina, but the central relationship was mediocre and the writing and characterisation were mixed bags.
The Things They Didn't Bury follows Liliana, who returns to her homeland of Argentina with her father and sister in the early 1990s (by my guess - a date is never given), after fleeing to the US during the Dirty War. Liliana's mother, Isabella, was one of los desaparecidos - the disappeared - who were arrested by the military junta and never heard from again. For Liliana, returning to the property where Isabella grew up is a chance to learn more about her mother, and she enlists Diego, the son of the property's caretaker, to help her. Interspersed throughout the novel are Isabella's diary entries and narration of the events leading up to her arrest, so that it becomes the story of both mother and daughter, of the intensification and aftermath of the war.
It's meant to be all-consuming - and at times it is - but it could have been far more so if it had been proof-read more thoroughly. I understand indie authors work under different constraints, but the difference between their/there/they're and your/you're is fairly fundamental and it is extremely hard for the reader to ignore the wrong one being used. Every time I came across such a misuse - and there were many - it pulled me out of the narrative, and made me more aware of other errors (such as conscious instead of conscience) and the writing style as a whole.
Perhaps this explains why I found the writing to be very variable in quality. In some places, it was beautiful and lyrical, while in others it was an odd combination of too descriptive and not descriptive enough. In one instance, a tree is described at length, but I couldn't work out where the characters were, relative to the tree. There was also some confusing head hopping, which sometimes lessened the intended emotional impact.
Nonetheless, The Things They Didn't Bury was still plenty emotional. The depiction of the war was outstanding, and by far the strongest aspect of the novel. The details of the atrocities committed by the junta, and also its opponents, can be stomach-turning and heart-wrenching, but they are integral to the lives of the characters, so much so that the name of the novel is taken from one particularly inhumane practice. The junta would get rid of dissidents/activists/anyone who looked at them sideways by throwing their weighted (but still alive) bodies out of a plane into the sea. The psychological scars this caused to those left behind, and those who witnessed the planes drop their 'cargo' are touched on in the book, and in more detail in this 2013 article by the BBC.
While Liliana escaped witnessing most of the war, first because she was too young to remember and then because she was in the US, Diego saw it all, including the plane drops. He had so much potential as a character, and yet he's pretty much just a stoic cardboard cut-out who exists to drive Liliana places and provide a shoulder for her to cry on. While we hear of his experiences during the war, they are imbued with little emotion and often are relayed only so that Liliana understands the context of something. He always followed Liliana's lead, even when he knew she was dragging him into something dangerous. I held some resentment toward her for being so stupid and headstrong, but as I'm writing this, I realise that it was Diego who understood the potential ramifications of their actions, and who should have spoken up. I guess it's a sign of devotion to her that he didn't, but getting yourself and your potential girl into near-death scenarios isn't really very cool either, for all it moves the plot forward.
Diego's passiveness contributed to the overall lacklustre relationship between himself and Liliana. There was a curious lack of conflict between the two of them, partly because Diego just did whatever Liliana wanted to do, without comment. This, along with the absence of any romantic intimacy, meant the romance was less than satisfactory for me. Don't get me wrong, YA romances with little actual physical interaction between the characters can be very fulfilling, but The Things They Didn't Bury didn't have the deeper connection or sense of longing between the characters that is usually used as a substitute for physical intimacy in YA, and without this the declarations of love at the end felt forced and premature.
Although the romance reader in me found the central relationship and HFN were lacking, on an intellectual level I recognise that the absence of a concrete HEA reflects the uncertain times the characters have lived through, and ways in which they are unable to find closure. The book's lack of moral justice also made it uncomfortable for me, but this too reflects the reality. Few people have been held to account for their actions during the war, and, as a result, my impression is that Argentine society bears a wound that might have scabbed over, but certainly hasn't healed.
To top off that piece of postmodern nihilism, I'm going to say this is a case in which the rating at the top of the page means absolutely nothing. Overall, I would recommend The Things They Did Not Bury for people who would be interested in learning more about the Dirty War, but not for those who are simply looking for a romance with a different setting, because it is a exploration of war first and a romance second. Regardless of my ambivalent feelings towards story itself, it did provide a unique opportunity to learn more about something I knew very little about, and I'm grateful for that.
4 stars
Shannon Hale's Book of a Thousand Days takes its title from a saying of the main character's mother: that you have to spend a thousand days with someone before you can truly know who they are. And yet, the heroine of Book of a Thousand Days, Dashti, has such a strong character voice that I felt I knew her long before our time together was up.
In Book of a Thousand Days, Dashti commentates her transition from being a 'mucker' peasant to a lady's maid, followed by years of darkness as she is imprisoned in a tower with her mistress, who refused to marry the lord her father had chosen. As her lady slips further and further into depression, Dashti realises their food stores will run out long before the seven years of their prison term and must discover a way to escape before they both succumb to hunger.
The synopsis left me a bit doubtful about how the author would maintain the reader's interest when the characters and setting were so static and isolated. However, Dashti's reminiscences from her childhood and her sketches of their surroundings, as well as the occasional interaction with the world outside, stopped the reader from becoming bored. In fact, if I was to find fault with any part of the plot, it would not be that part of the book at all, but rather the ending. I felt like everything was stitched up too neatly and quickly at the end; Dashti's fate turned on a sixpence, somewhat devaluing the previous complications with her love interest.
From Dashti's descriptions and sketches, the setting of the Eight Realms is lyrically developed as a fictional version of medieval Mongolia, but it is only since I finished the book and did some googling have I come to realise that aspects of Dashti's world that I assumed to be fictional were in fact true parts of traditional Mongolian culture.
Thanks largely to the strength of Dashti as a character and Hale's Mongolian-inspired world, The Book of A Thousand Days managed to simultaneously be whimsical but authentic, simple but moving. It's meant for an early-teen audience, but it makes a breath of fresh air for anyone looking for something a little bit outside the box.
4.5 stars
She Wore Red Trainers: A Muslim Love Story is the story of Amirah and Ali, two eighteen-year olds trying to navigate their family, faith and future as they come of age in the gritty suburbs of South London, and I really enjoyed it.
As a YA romance between two observant Muslim teens, there was relatively little interaction between Ali and Amirah, which I had seen other readers complaining about on Goodreads. For me, this was precisely what made it interesting and unique: they embodied a different set of norms, values and beliefs when it comes to interactions between genders. And it's not as though their lack of direct contact came at the expense of a relationship all together. Just like most prospective couples in conservative cultures, they communicated through their friends and family members, and in small but meaningful gestures.
Amirah and Ali and their family members were wonderfully written, and the dynamics of their respective families formed a large part of the story. The imperfections of Ali's father and Amirah's mother as people and parents were expertly reflected in their children's wants, fears and motivations. For Amirah, her mother's four Islamic marriages and wholehearted reliance her husbands has made her gun-shy about relationships, and she vows never to marry. With overwhelming family responsibilities, she takes solace in art, even though she is resolved to do a more 'sensible' course at university. Meanwhile, Ali's father has lost his business and the family's house in Hertfordshire in the wake of his wife's death, and Ali and his brothers are struggling to come to terms with their new, much reduced, circumstances.
The dialogue throughout really reinforced the dual world the characters inhabit. The Muslim 'brothers' Ali hangs out with - including Amirah's brother Zayd - speak as though they just stepped out of an episode of Skins, but with Arabic phrases peppered throughout. Amirah and her friends are the same, speaking like any other gaggle of British girls, except with the addition of a 'Mottie' (Muslim Hottie) scale that they use to rate boys. Other reviewers disliked the author's use of jargon - both British and Islamic - but once I got used to it, I quite enjoyed it. To me, it reinforced the point that these characters were British teenagers with similar problems to any other British teenagers, only with the added dimension of their Islamic faith. In some instances, they had no problems reconciling the two, but in others, they struggled to establish what was halal and haraam in a world so different to that of the Quran and Hadith. There was a glossary of Islamic/Arabic terms provided at the back, which I didn't find until I'd finished, but most things were decipherable by context anyway, and I realised I had learnt a lot a few days later, when I read an witty article about Islamic pick-up lines and understood some of the nuances.
In a lot of ways, She Wore Red Trainers contained the best of both YA and adult romance. Ali and Amirah's interactions were cute yet profound, leaving the reader wanting more, just as the characters themselves did. One of the reasons I stopped reading YA is that I often had trouble believing that the relationships would last for long after the final page. However, in this novel, Ali and Amirah are entering into a relationship having already made a lifetime commitment, and this gave me the Happily Ever After that I'd normally find in adult romances.
