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Jun. 23rd, 2011 11:22 amI've been having Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me recommended to me from multiple directions for at least a year and probably two. Having finally read it, it deserves the recommendation.
There are a lot of things worth saying about the book and a lot of things worth not saying (not that spoilers are particularly hard to figure out, but they are nonetheless fun to figure out!) but what struck me personally is that it's a fun, enjoyable puzzle-box of a book that remembers very well that middle-school-aged kids are short-sighted and self-absorbed and often terrible in small selfish ways, but also that they eventually get better. (I remember very well being terrible in the ways that protagonist Miranda was terrible. OH, MIDDLE SCHOOL.) I also really admire how the book manages to largely sidestep the usual stereotypes of how kids interact with each other. There are a lot of stories in fiction about lonely, nerdy girls dealing with sudden and surprising distance from their best friends as they start hitting their teenaged years, and though Miranda is in fact a lonely, nerdy girl whose best friend has suddenly put sudden and surprising distance between them, this is not any of those other stories. It's not a book about unpopular and popular kids, or nerds and jocks, or even girls and boys; it is a book about race and class and expectations and different kinds of privilege, among many other things.
. . . it's also funny! And engaging in fun ways with A Wrinkle in Time, although actually the writing reminds me more of E.L. Konigsberg than anything else. (As a New Yorker, I also love how much it is a New York book.)
( Spoilers! )
There are a lot of things worth saying about the book and a lot of things worth not saying (not that spoilers are particularly hard to figure out, but they are nonetheless fun to figure out!) but what struck me personally is that it's a fun, enjoyable puzzle-box of a book that remembers very well that middle-school-aged kids are short-sighted and self-absorbed and often terrible in small selfish ways, but also that they eventually get better. (I remember very well being terrible in the ways that protagonist Miranda was terrible. OH, MIDDLE SCHOOL.) I also really admire how the book manages to largely sidestep the usual stereotypes of how kids interact with each other. There are a lot of stories in fiction about lonely, nerdy girls dealing with sudden and surprising distance from their best friends as they start hitting their teenaged years, and though Miranda is in fact a lonely, nerdy girl whose best friend has suddenly put sudden and surprising distance between them, this is not any of those other stories. It's not a book about unpopular and popular kids, or nerds and jocks, or even girls and boys; it is a book about race and class and expectations and different kinds of privilege, among many other things.
. . . it's also funny! And engaging in fun ways with A Wrinkle in Time, although actually the writing reminds me more of E.L. Konigsberg than anything else. (As a New Yorker, I also love how much it is a New York book.)
( Spoilers! )
