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books, let's get literate! 2009

I do not want to come right out and say, "This book skeeved me out!", except if I didn't you might enter this review going, "Man! Another book Renay liked! DOES SHE HATE ANYTHING ANYMORE?" The answer to this is a triumphant YES, but I am getting better at ditching the books that would incite that deep, red frothing rage inside my soul and put them down before I can get to the middle. I am getting better at being bitchy about my reading materials and if it pisses me off I do the mature thing and send it back to the library immediately! Or put it on Bookmooch where some other poor, unsuspecting soul can acquire it and possibly waste one of their days off reading it, capping the event off with them sobbing under their covers—they could have read something good and man, they're never mooching a book from that girl again, that girl that didn't warn them of the terribleness she was sending! A pox on their mailbox!

I, unsurprisingly, have wandered far from the subject.

Guys, I wanted to love this book; I absolutely did. The cover blew me away, and it's got one of those titles. I am the girl who names her stories things like The True Story of the Butterfly and the Bumblebee and No Laments for the City of the Dead and congratulates herself on her cleverness (note: please do not point out that I am not very clever! I KNOW IT, I just lie to make myself feel better). The Vast Fields of Ordinary, right? This book couldn't have made it into my hands faster with actual boys making out on the cover.

SIDENOTE: exactly when is this going to occur, PUBLISHERS? That's right! I'm looking at all of you! You know, when Bella and Jacob can steam up the New Moon movie tie-in cover with their hot heterosexuality, I feel a little left out. I would dig it if publishers putting out GLBTQ books would see that two dudes sexing each other up with their eyes on the cover (shirts optional!) would not be a bad thing. Just saying.

Back to The Vast Fields of Ordinary and how I wanted to love it. It may be apparent now that I did not love it. It was so-so! Have you ever really wanted a piece of cake, pined for it for a few days (or in this case, five months), and when you finally acquired the cake and stuffed your face you found that, um, maybe all that build-up was for nothing? Because you're feeling a little bloated and maybe that cake mix wasn't so great in the first place. That is how I feel! Adrift! Uncertain. Vaguely ill.

Dade Hamilton lives in the suburbs. He is a white boy with problems. He lives with his parents, constantly bickering with no love left between them, while stuck in a town and job that are ordinary (har har), the only thing of interest being the disappearance of a young girl. This was a nice analogy for Dade's search for himself, that never really came together for me. His last summer before he starts university is stretching before him, full of avoiding his parents, tiptoeing through a social hierarchy that makes him ultimately unhappy, while he loves a boy, a boy that is hot and also, just to be upfront, a complete douchebag! Pablo has a girlfriend and then has a lot of sex with Dade on the sly, while treating Dade like crap. Let me say now that I did not like him! The levels of UTTER REVULSION were running quite high. He was terrible and only grew worse. The story opens with Dade drawing their initials together on a bathroom wall for a few red markers and hours, then going out to the dance to get pointedly ignored. It was not happy! I would not go into this story expecting happy ending and super gay flowers of joy and light. Perhaps that's why I feel so unsettled. Later in the story, while Pablo is somewhere, drinking beer and being a wankstain, Dade meets Alex, and I liked Alex, easygoing and smart and not at all abusive! If I had to pick my favorite part of this novel, it would be the romance between Dade and Alex Kindcaid, he of the Soap Opera Surname. He might as well have been named Alex I-Am-Fucking-Sexy-Would-You-Like-To-Make-Out-Under-The-Stars, to which my answer would be Why Yes I am a Teenage Boy, Let's Go For It! Why is it some names invoke that response? I did watch a lot of Passions as a kid. It probably messed me up.

"I wanted to be an astronaut when I was little," he said. "Can you imagine that? Me up in space? I bet being up there's a lot like being dead and alive at the same time. You are really and truly not in this world anymore. The only other time you can say that is when you're dead, and you can't even say it then because...well, because you're dead."
He glanced over his shoulder and let out a laugh. I suddenly felt so sad for him. I wasn't sure about his part, who he was, but right there is when I first sensed the sadness of Alex Kincaid. I felt the vacuum in him. It was the same as the one in me. It wanted, but it didn't know what it wanted, so it pulled at everything.

Romance: check! Awesome side characters: check! Boggling side story about a missing girl that never seemed to coalesce anything much of anything: check! Clearly it is time for me to start complaining! START YOUR ENGINES.

This review could be called: The Picking of Nits: Renay Must Find The Smallest Thing to Annoy Her and Talk About It For Two Paragraphs. I spent the entire book enraged over this detail, and now I get to air my grievances! Dade, for all his loneliness, for the all abuse he suffered (more later on that exciting development!), is an asshole. Call me mean! Tell me I'm interpreting the text from the wrong perspective if you must. I will cling to this realization: Dade was a lot of things, but one of those things involved him being an ass. See, Dade doesn't like people to call him "Dave". It bothers him! He will correct you if you try it. There is anther character, Francesca, whose sister is Jessica. Jessica is beautiful and popular. Francesca isn't; she's chubby and possibly slow and therefore mockable, so she became Fessica. She doesn't like this name! She dreams of going somewhere and being reinvented, becoming Francesca again. The entire book, Dade refers to her as Fessica, just like all the douchebags that treat him like scum. Other characters did it, too! I fumed for a huge swatches of the story! (Alex Kincaid, you lost awesome points for this.)

I am supposed to sympathize with his kid, who complains about being disrespected, but disrespects another character who sits on generally the same social standing as he does in the same way he dislikes? Every time Francesca made an appearance, I just stopped to breathe because it was so ridiculous. Yes, poor little white boy with all your privilege, you're so ostracized, woe is you! Funny, I don't feel so bad for you because you dish it out yourself, don't you? I shouldn't be so angry about this, but I am: it's a place Dade could have been a kinder person, less like the people who reviled him for who he was, but he chose to side with them—and I can't say why. Habit? A desire to fit in, even if that desire belittled people? So he didn't have to feel as low as Francesca did? He wasn't that much of a loser, see! He could unname her like everyone else.

;alsfjlsfklsdhfasdl and that's all I have to say about that. Let's move on to the more disturbing aspects of this book!

Pablo and Dade had a relationship that Pablo wouldn't publicize because he couldn't handle being gay, of course, but...the abuse! So many reviews of this book talk about how this book EMRBACES MALE HOMOSEXUALITY. It's not just another coming out novel, they say (even though that is one of the most climatic scenes in the book). I find myself, unsurprisingly, disagreeing! Dade embraces himself, embraces Alex, lets himself fall into fear and into love, but there is a catch and that catch is called "oh hey there's some cock in this book and it's not sexy times!" That's right: ABUSE.

Let me talk about the abuse! Pablo abuses Dade, in clear and obvious ways but mostly emotionally. At once point it goes even farther to become sexual abuse. If I had sat down to make a list of things I would not have expected from this book speaking of all the ordinary things in a boring summer of discovering self, a scene with some sexual abuse would not even have made my top ten! The scene left me shaken, and concerned, but...it's only brought up later in the slimmest of references, victim-blaming in full swing, and all the signs that Pablo is disturbed as hell, a predator, are just never dealt with in any way. This is alarming—what amounts to sexual abuse and harassment is lost in the all-too-predictable end, coded for you nicely in the dialogue.

Wait! There is embracing of the sexuality here. Don't get me wrong! There is also the rejection; this book has two parts, and it's a shame to pretend one part doesn't exist because the other part is happy-pretty-fun-times, because it's only pretty-happy-fun times because Dade learned. Gay experiences in this book are positive and negative, the highest praise I have for the story overall—for not shying away from the fact there are facets. They are what you choose for them to be. They can build you up and make your life richer, or you can let them tear you down, make you into a monster who abuses people—the people you want and the people you use for cover. The story doesn't do much with the idea of same-sex abusers, when the two people involved are the same age but on different social standings and I just wonder if it's because it's not considered sexual abuse for boys and men like it is for women so it's an non-issue. I can't judge it harshly for not making the story about SEXUAL ABUSE LOOK HERE OH MY GOSH LOOK RIGHT NOW—it's about Dade's life, how he finds his voice and himself through losing other constants, although wrapped up with my least favorite of ending ribbons, the flash-forward-here-how-everyone-is-now sort of deal.

Am I the only freak reader who consider this kind of ending a blatant cheat? It's like you're reading a book and then suddenly, oh look, a SUMMARY, because those are exciting and by exciting I mean zzzzZzzZZz. I wanted to love this story so much, internets, but I feel like instead of reading a book I was on the mental version of Nickelodeon's GUTS and the Aggro Crag just kicked my ass.

The cover is still awesome, though.