corrigan's Reviews (451)

REQUIRED READING. Seriously. This should be the exit exam for all graduating high school seniors in America. Stunning, moving, heartbreaking, infuriating portrait of acquaintance rape and its repercussions for victims, perpetrators, and society.

I can relate to Sarah Vowell's weird historical obsessions, which made this particularly charming. I think I'd like it better if it weren't for the fact that, given my obsessions, very little of the information she gave was new to me. Still, her quirky take on experiencing these bits of history is worthwhile.

If I had realized this was supposed to be some sort of modern Jane Austen tale, I probably would have eschewed it from the get-go. My mistake. There are a lot of things I disliked about this book, not the least of which is the fact that nobody's personal tragedy is really of any consequence here. Even a death that occurs in the middle does little more than advance the romantic plotline. Devon, the protagonist, is a self-centered character and everyone else's problems seem to happen AT her. We only care about others insofar as their story affects her. The thing that bothered me the most, though, was her lack of female friendships -- or any female characters that played an important role in the story. She is mistrustful of every girl she comes across, whether it's because they're too slutty or because they're too perfect or because they're too driven. Certainly, high school is a time at which girls are often placed in competition with one another, but this book doesn't make any real commentary on that. It's more of an afterthought. She is briefly called out for judging other women in a lunch line near the end, but that's about the extent of it. It's a book written from the perspective of a girl, but it's all about boys. The only characters we develop any sort of attachment to are boys.
The moral of the story seems to be, "Gee, I have first world problems. I should be less emotional about them." I could've told her that a chapter in. There are ways to write the mundane tragedies of teenage existence without making the character seem shallow and ungrateful. This did not do that.