REWIND: 'Pretty Things' by Sara Manning

I am always surprised when I realise how old books I read as a teenager are now by the technicality of years. ‘Pretty Things’ by Sara Manning was a book that really changed my perspective at the age of 15, and now I am suddenly realising it was first published in 2005, nearly 10 years ago. This, whilst frightening the hell out of me, also placed the book in a time frame of developing attitudes, and was something that I really hadn’t taken into account when I read it the first time round.
                ‘Pretty Things’ is a really interesting depiction of teenage sexuality, and is still one of the only books (hold on to your hats, this is the book’s crowning glory) that portrays sexuality as a fluid thing, particularly in teenagers, and really highlights how damaging the block labels of gay, straight, and bisexual can be. Centred around Brie, Charlie, Walker and Daisy’s drama group’s production of ‘The Taming of The Shrew’ (described by the hard-core Daisy as “the biggest pile of misogynistic wank”, and as an English student, I support her in this), we see these characters explore their own and each other’s attraction towards each other, in a far more realistic way than I think my older self would like to believe. Looking back at what I knew of teenage life and the importance of who you were attracted to and who you kissed, taking into account the time the book is written, I had to face the fact that the way the characters act is likely more realistic than this cringing reviewer would like to believe. It was when sexuality had only just become an acceptable thing to mention in schools, and though a still pretty homophobic environment, there was a huge amount of dubbing yourself as “gay” being like a celebrity scandal: you were the talk of everyone for a few weeks, you felt like Katy Perry, and then you wrote it off as a mistake and pretended it didn’t happen. It was horrifically disheartening and cruel to those actually suffering crises of their sexuality. Whilst re-reading this book, and, as far as I recall, reading it the first time, I nearly put it down within the first few chapters, as the initial depictions of the characters as gay boy, straight girl, straight boy and lesbian were such incredible stereotypes. But realising that Manning was setting them up to knock them down is only a journey I can appreciate more in a re-read.
                This may the book’s greatest strength and, at the same time, its greatest flaw. I’m lucky and happy to say I made it past the opening character profiles, but this was mainly owing to the humour in the book (their darling drama teacher was edging for my favourite character spot in the first few chapters), and whilst I’m glad I held on, I can’t help but think about those that didn’t. This book really does show the breaking of those stereotypes, and how those stereotypes of sexuality are built into young people, and how they believe that sexuality is a rigid idea, no grey area, just simple categories. The problem was that it doesn’t show this to you until the romantic entanglements start getting a little complicated. This delay really could have put me off the book quite easily, particularly as Brie’s character was very wearing at first, and I wasn’t too pleased about Daisy either. I’ll be honest, portrayal of women is not the strong point of ‘Pretty Things’, but I can at least see where Manning was aiming for with it, even if she didn’t succeed. There are exceptions to this, for example, in a scene where Brie is nearly sexually assaulted towards the end of novel, and the gang come up to save her, Brie is already beginning to fight off her attacker, although this moment is slightly blotted by the need for the boys, Walker and Charlie, to beat the guy up in penance for his actions. “Bizarre macho display” indeed Charlie.
                Overall, I am really glad to have been able to read this book again. It brightened me a little to think of how far teenage (and adult for that matter) thinking on portraying and understand of sexuality in novels, especially YA novels, had come even back in 2005. I do worry a little at the amount of tokenised characters one tends to see in media and literature aimed at children and young people, so it always raises my optimism bar to remind myself it may not all be like that.

REWIND: The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

Rewind is a new thing I wanted to start here, in which I review books which I have re-read rather than read for the first time. Re-reading a novel is a weird experience that I know a lot of people can't always enjoy. Despite my endless enthusiasm for reading a book again and again and again, I know it is not everyone's cup of loose leaf peach and raspberry (I've always been a tea snob). I have thought about re-reading 'The Fault In Our Stars' since I read it about a year ago, and I have to be honest, it is undoubtedly still loved, but put into a little perspective after its initial assault on the feels has already been had, which drew out, for me, even more questions (and answers) about within the novel

Firstly, I began to question Hazel and Augustus' relationship a lot more (though to be fair to John Green's character construction, this was more to do with a lot of other people's quibbles with it, and I was worried I may have not noticed its lesser points initially). Oddly enough, when taking a close examination of Gus and Hazel's love, I actually enjoyed it even more. It felt comfortable but not predictable as a re-read, which I always believe to be a good sign, and I felt myself noticing the finer details of it even more. Hazel's realism of the relationship, of herself as a time bomb, did feel overdramatic at points, although, to be honest, if I was a teenager suffering from cancer, I can't exactly say that I'd be any less emotional and generally human.

This really brings me to my next point about TFIOS, and it is something I've raised before on A Midsummer Review, and that is that is portrays teenagers as teenagers. They act cliché and overly romantic, of course they do, they're teenagers, and they attempt to form themselves into individuals in a world, which is hard enough normally, but particularly in a world that tries to form them all to the "sick kid" stereotype. A lot of people have said Gus' cigarette idea is stupid and ridiculous, but what it sounded like to me? What it sounded like to me was the work of an actual teenager, trying to take a grown up and artistic take on a situation that is truly awful. 

The artisan nature of the novel is pretty clear from an initial reading, but a second attempt really drives it home. Many a friend of mine will tell you, I am not a fan of some of Oscar Wilde's work, simply because some of it feels as though it is written in the hope of being quoted, which I always find quite unsettling, as it feels an author attempts to hold the book to the quotes standard, rather than vica versa. TFIOS, as much as I loved it, did reach into this territory at points, and I felt this is likely the product of writing teenagers. It's hard to make omelette without throwing in a few wistful and too-deep-for-you phrases as it were- actually wait, I think my metaphors got mixed. 

All in all, a re-read of this proves to me that TFIOS holds it's ground even when a more critical eye is searching over it. I think this book is just as enjoyable on second reading, if not even more, as John Green's shining style for writing YA beams through.