How I Live Now

Maybe it was something about being transient on a bus this summer while reading Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now, but man did I feel like this was The Boxcar Children experience for young adults growing up in the 21^st century! The protagonists deal with more serious issues in this novel than the Boxcar Children ever did, but at the same time, things still work out for them in the end pretty well. Not a perfect ending, like the Boxcar Children always seemed to have, but that made me like the book even more.

I found it almost mesmerizing how Rosoff’s stream-of-consciousness writing style puts the reader right in Daisy’s mindset. The chapters drift from one to another as quickly as an adolescent girl’s mind would switch topics. It took a little getting used to the lack of punctuation and the overuse of capitalization, but it certainly worked for this novel. I could see how young adult readers would have trouble, too, but would serve as a teachable moment in how it’s appropriate to deviate from traditional punctuation and capitalization rules if it serves a greater purpose in the text.

I also like how the book appeals to both genders. I’m sorry if I am over-generalizing here, but I can see how boys would be drawn to the survival/war themes of the novel, and the romance would enrapture the girls. (I’m sure there’d be some overlap as well.) It’s hard to find a book that everyone would enjoy, and I think this one would be a crowd-pleaser.

There was an aspect of the novel that I didn’t buy into, though, and I wonder if other readers felt the same skepticism. Really, who falls in love in such a short period of time, and with one’s cousin? The “love” affair between Edmond and Daisy seemed surreal and rushed, and I would dare say it was more a result of feeling desperate to feel connected to someone in a turbulent time in her life, and Edmond happened to be there. I know girls think they fall in love at first sight, but to actually have the emotion remain intact through the years of separation just was unrealistic to me. Or maybe I’m just too cynical.

My last point of interest is the shift from Daisy’s stay in England, to being forced to go back to the United States. On page 165, there is a filled-in black circle. I feel like it’s Rosoff’s paper equivalent of a cartoon character barreling through a time-warp tunnel. To make things stranger, the chapter on page 167 is numbered 1. How is this a “beginning” chapter when the events following seem to be an interim between her first trip to England and her second, more permanent stay? I’ve never seen anything like that in a book, and I still don’t understand it. What do others think?

The First Part Last

“Nothing’s changed and everything has” (79). This thought-provoking statement from Angela Johnson’s novel The First Part Last gives the reader a preview of the insight of Bobby, the protagonist. Bobby is a teenage father who is raising his daughter Feather practically on his own. The novel’s chapters alternate between “now” (life with a baby) and “then” (life before a baby), and throughout the story, Bobby is honest in his reflections on how his life has and has not changed.

As I was reading Bobby’s story, I found myself sympathizing and not sympathizing with him. While his girlfriend is pregnant and they’re at a party with their friends, he reflects, “I’m feeling like an alien” (84). He knows how different his life is going to be, and he can no longer just kick back and relax with his buddies. I found it very easy to connect with his emotions, as I’ve been to plenty of family gatherings where I just felt I didn’t belong. I also couldn’t imagine raising a child while still finishing high school, while at the same time dealing with the emotional agony of essentially losing the child’s mother. That part of his situation pulled at my heartstrings. I really felt his loneliness when he is spray-painting a wall for an entire day: “I’m the pale white ghost boy beside the brown girl who is always looking away. Sometimes in the picture, my brothers show up, make themselves known, and then leave the painting again. Like in real life” (60) Bobby is the only one he knows who is going through this situation, and it’s impossible for the reader not to feel for him.

However, there are some key details that Johnson leaves out about Bobby, and not knowing these details made it hard for me to sympathize with him completely. For example, how is he paying for what his daughter needs? I know it would be overwhelming for a teenager to simply take care of a child, but it seems very unrealistic to just have the money coming from nowhere. Are his parents providing for the granddaughter? Or the mother’s parents? From the descriptions in the book, they seemed well-off, but it is never clear that they could be the ones sending Bobby a check every month. For being a contemporary realistic fiction novel, leaving this key part out of parenting makes teenage parenting look less complicated (not that Johnson depicts it as effortless) than it really must be.

I really started taking issue with the novel when I got to the scene where Paul, Bobby’s older brother, is visiting, and their divorced parents are visiting in the kitchen and laughing, getting along “the way it used to be” (91). Really? I mean, I know plenty of separated couples who maintain civility for their kids’ sakes, but I don’t see any of them sitting around cooking meals together anymore. I tried thinking of why Johnson would present Mary and Fred in this way. Maybe she’s trying to be ideal because her main audience is young people, and if they ever are in a similar situation, they would have seen in a book how it’s possible to be nice toward one’s exes? Or maybe Johnson simply wanted Mary and Fred to be in the same scene since their son Paul didn’t visit too often. Maybe I’m overthinking Johnson’s authorial motives. The whole scenario is still quite unrealistic to me, though.

The “Nia” chapter (115-116) seemed out of place. It completely broke with the Now/Then pattern of the rest of the novel’s chapters. Why give her point of view at only this one point in the novel? Why not more often throughout? She was the pregnant teenager, after all. The chapter sounded forced and strange, at a moment of the story that the reader should only feel empathy for Nia; not confusion as to what the author is trying to do.

Finally, the last chapter was hackneyed and, again, unrealistic. What 16-year-old father can just pack up and move to a new city, get an apartment, and raise his daughter? The fact that he moves to Heaven, Ohio, was just too corny for me to handle. The novel that started out as an imperfect love story, which definitely fit the genre of contemporary realism, seemed to spiral into fantasy for the last 30 pages or so. Overall, I liked the message that even if one isn’t ready to be a parent, one needs to do the best job possible. I just felt that young adults reading this book for guidance might be blindsided if they ever are in a similar situation as Bobby’s; life just isn’t that simple.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

I read Sherman Alexie's novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, for the first time a little over a year ago. My colleague was raving about it, and was planning to use it in her new reading class for struggling 9th graders. Since I'd be teaching the same group of students in the adapted English class, I figured I'd read it, too. I distinctly remember borrowing it from the Barnes and Noble where I worked part-time (one of the perks of being an employee is being able to check out hardcover books!), going home to peruse the book, and ending up staying up far later than I should have because I was so quickly engrossed in the novel. I then reread the novel this summer, on the bus on my way to Chicago, because I knew it was the first book we would be discussing in this class. Again, I was sucked into the narrative, and the 8-hour bus ride flew by!

Junior's voice and tone immediately jump out and disorient the reader. The first sentence is, "I was born with water on the brain." First of all, what does that mean? Once it is understood that he was born with a serious medical problem, the reader wonders, what is Junior's attitude toward that statement? Is it supposed to be serious? Funny? Sarcastic? Are we the readers supposed to flinch, cry, laugh? Or all of the above? As I read on, it became clear that it was okay to laugh. Junior means to be funny because it is one way he copes with all of the conflicts he faces. I don't think Sherman Alexie is making light of the serious issues on the Spokane reservation, but rather uses humor to show how sorely comic relief is needed in Junior's life. The reader laughs with Junior, but neither Junior nor the reader really thinks the situations he goes through are humorous.

Another aspect that I love about this novel is how easy it is to connect with the diverse characters. I feel that every young person, and most adults, who read Junior's story are going to be able to relate to at least one character, or one situation, whether it's how Junior learns and appreciates how tolerant and understanding his grandma is, how to literally roll with the punches when his best friend Rowdy gets mad, or how the worst thing about poverty is not being able to save a beloved pet.

A last unique characteristic of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is the blending of text with images; Junior's verbal accounts combined with his cartoon sketches really drive home his poignant story. Just flipping through the novel now, I think a struggling, or reluctant reader, could simply look at the drawings and read the captions and still get the main points of the story. The cartoons are also interesting enough that those same students would probably be persuaded to read the entire book, and not just look at the pictures.