The Whole Stupid Way We Are by N. Griffin
My rating: 4/5 cats
this review is going to be a mess, i am warning you, in a way, it is an impossible book for me to review, because i am really afraid that it is going to reveal things about me that will make you all hate me and never want to be my friend again.
but quickly, to forestall any of that—i liked this book. as a debut novel particularly, it is truly amazing. and reading both ceridwen’s and sparrow’s unbelievably good reviews—they just make me feel inadequate, as a person.
because i am not a good person. if i were a good person, i would be able to enjoy this book the way they do, with their heart-pieces. but—god—i really did not like the character of dinah. i just didn’t. i didn’t have a problem with the way she was written, this is not a criticism of the writing, i just felt so angry at her for so much of the book, and i was so frustrated by her immaturity and self-deception, and then i go and read those reviews and i feel scolded, almost, for my own shortcomings as someone who should feel things the way other people feel things.
this book is such a singular construction. we have fifteen-year-old dinah and skint as our two main characters; a girl and a boy who are best friends without one drop of sexual tension. (which—thank you so much for that). but it is like dinah was pulled from a feel-good YA novel from the past: very close family, cheerful to the point of treacly, foot-stomping at injustices; a cyclone of do-goodery offset by the fantasies and energies of a much younger girl. on the one hand, it is exciting to have a girl who is not interested in her appearance or in boyyys, but on the other hand, she does come across as very babyish. while skint seems more like he is drawn from a more contemporary YA problem-novel. he is angry, he is a phenomenal curser, he is also very invested in righting the world’s wrongs, but in a much more realistic way. no backward-aging for him. and his home life is not at all ideal—his father is suffering from dementia, and his mother has been trying to hide him from the world and handling it herself, but she is doing a terrible job and is overwhelmed and exhausted and skint is having to carry that, silently.
so it is like worlds colliding, and their friendship is the seam between these two completely different-feeling outlooks.
but i can’t stand dinah.
and again—if you have been reading my reader-responses, you know that i have difficulty with the emotional investment in books. it just rarely happens. and this is a book you need to be able to do that with, in order to not want to toss dinah out a window.
but wait—it gets better. because for all my frustration with her “i am going to hold my breath until the world becomes a better place,” mentality, the ending of this book was absolute perfection. it was glorious and true-feeling and gasping and i felt justified for my frustration, a little bit.
so even though i am not a good person and i don’t think i respond to things the way a human should, i loved this book.
the best scene is the two-page-off from beagie, dinah’s baby brother’s perspective, when he discovers that his foot can block out the sun and is therefore magic, and the howling inarticulate inability to communicate this discovery. sheer gorgeous kafka, that.
because that’s how i feel when i read your reviews, ladies. i want to connect, i just lack whatever synapses control that. and it is, indeed, the whole stupid way i am.
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