Plague by Jean Ure
My rating: 3/5 cats
i don’t know if this just happened to have been written before the australian renaissance of really stellar YA lit, or if this is just a fluke, but this book contains one of the most annoying characters i have read in my life. and i have read The Adolescent. i had to skim whenever she was on the page, because it was altogether too frustrating.
(AND I HAVE JUST LEARNED THAT THE AUTHOR IS NOT, IN FACT, AUSTRALIAN, SO ALL BETS ARE OFF, BUT INSTEAD OF CHANGING THAT SENTENCE, I AM LETTING IT STAND SO YOU CAN ALL SEE WHAT A DUMMY I AM.)
the basic premise is similar to Tomorrow, When the War Began*: while a group of teens and counselors are deep in the woods, living without the comforts of the modern age, all hell breaks loose in civilization. in the marsden series, australia has been taken over by terrorists who put the citizens in prisons and six(?) teens have to figure out what to do with their freedom: hide, fight, or surrender. in this book, we follow one girl who emerges from the woods to find that london has been quarantined due to a mysterious illness and soldiers will shoot anyone who tries to leave. she sneaks through the barriers to get to her family, and finds everyone dead. except her best friend, who has descended into a sort of juvenile madness whose psychological break takes the form of victorian dress-wearing and regressing into baby-talk and petulance. oh dear god so much petulance. the one thing i thought i could rely upon in australian YA was the badassery of the characters. (REMEMBER WHEN I WAS DUMB???) and even though the action does not take place in australia, i thought we were in the clear. not so much. everything turns into whining and complaining and pouting and singsong rhymes and dancing and just generally acting like a five-year-old instead of a teenager. not that the other characters are much better. the two girls do meet up with one other person—a boy trying to make his way to his brother after their father finally succumbs to the disease, and i would have been okay with him throttling this girl unto death. she is an unnecessary, loud burden. the other girl is this passive, overly-reflective-considering-the-circumstances, peacemaker. sister, your friend is a lost cause. slap her into usefulness or leave her behind. stop with the coddling. and shahid is no better. no one will ever say that this book’s strength is in its likable characters.
apart from them, and some “oooh, government is baaaaad” speechifying (which, to me, falls under “characterization”) the rest of it is not at all bad. if i had read this in 1989, when it was originally published (LOOKING UP THE PUB DATE IS WHEN I FIRST LEARNED WHAT A MORON I AM TO HAVE TRANSPLANTED THIS POOR WOMAN TO A COUNTRY NOT HER OWN—TO AN ALTOGETHER DIFFERENT CONTINENT), or if i had read it as a younger reader, i think it would have stuck with me a lot better. there are certain elements that are gratifyingly rough and original in something intended for younger readers, especially in one written twenty years ago. in a way, this book did some really groundbreaking things. but also some really annoying things. the ending is satisfyingly ambiguous, but might frustrate younger readers. which is only fair, since older readers are going to be frustrated by a lot of other things. something for everyone to wince over! there are two other books in the series, taking place wellll after the events in this book, so i am hoping i will enjoy those more, and i am also hoping that certain aspects of her writing become more refined. and i am thirdly hoping that next time, i will get all my facts straight before i sit down to write my little book reports. but don’t count on that. i stupid.
*but i don’t want any of you people from sparrow’s battle royale thread to start cluttering up over here with your nonsense.
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