I picked up one book the other day, Fly on the Wall. It's Sweet Valley High meets the Metamorphosis. It's about Gretchen Yee, a sixteen year old at an Arts High School in Manhattan. Whereas in other high schools students struggle to fit in, in her high school, students struggle to stand out. Mohawks, bohemian garb, thrift store finds, no one is normal except Gretchen. Well, at least this is what E. Lockhart, the author, keeps telling us. Gretchen is half Chinese, half White, she has dyed her hair fire engine red, and she enjoys drawing comic book characters. Nothing about her sounds ordinary or boring. Or am I missing something here? In Gretchen's "different is the new black" high school, I have a hard time believing that she wouldn't be massively popular. But Gretchen likes a boy, has a troubled home life, and turns into a fly on the wall in the boys' locker room. No biggie.
While in the boys locker room, she becomes a voyeur, a truly perverted peeping tom. She sees all the high school boys and their junk. I'm serious. It's pretty graphic and awesome. But mainly, she listens to them talk to each other, bully each other, and open up to each other. One boy comes out to his friend, her crush tells his friends that his dad is gay...You get the picture. It's a learning experience for her. I mainly wondered why she didn't ever try to fly somewhere else and how she wasn't starving. She stayed in the locker room for 3 or 4 days.
Actually, you know, the parallels between Gretchen and the Metamorphosis' Gregor stop there. They both turned into bugs but Gregor also felt his being shift - his inside become roach-like as well. And the thrust of the story was about how others reacted to him, in horror, in confusion. Also, he was a huge, gross cockroach. But Gretchen is a tiny fly on the wall and she never, ever loses her human consciousness. Also, no one knows that she's transformed, as her mom and dad are conveniently on some sort of trip. I don't know, I feel like if you're going to be using the "I'm turning into a bug" trope you better damn well USE it. Make the character reckon with herself as vermin. That's what I wanted. So much of teenage life is about feeling weird, gross and uncomfortable in your own skin. Puberty, acne, weird hair cuts -- that's just perfect fodder for becoming a fly. But Lockhart never went there.
Oh and Gretchen gets the boy.
All young adult roads lead to Katherine Paterson, the Queen of Young Adult. Please, please don't bring up Twilight around me. Jacob Have I Loved is one of my favorite books of all time. Because Paterson understands that someone's normal looking outside can mask a really weird and convoluted inside. Because Paterson always respects her reader and allows the story to flow into strange territory. Because the main character wanted to be a doctor but ends up being a midwife. God why do I even bother reading anything new? Fly on the Wall can't compete with Jacob (nothing can, really) but it's a mostly light-hearted read with some pretty strong currents of emotion.
It was good, not great.
