Raw Blue by Kirsty Eagar
My rating: 4/5 cats
thank goodness for goodreads.
without it, i would never have discovered this book, and i would never have been able to get my little hands on it.
because, yeah, i have become quite a fan of the contemporary YA novel, but my tastes generally run to the dystopia/survival sector, not the realistic stuff. and seriously, in what universe do you see me reading and liking a teen novel about surfing? SURFING!
karen does not surf. karen has no interest in surfing, nor even of getting within three miles of the ocean, which is gross, if you ask me. it is full of…animals, most of whom have defense mechanisms like stingies and slimies and teethies. and they all poop! and there are pointy rocks and glass and shells and kids on spring break full of hpv and coconut oils…evolution means i never have to go back into the ocean again, and i am glad of it.
so for me to want to read a book about a girl who spends most of her time in the ocean, you know there has got to be a good reason for it.
and that reason is: australian YA. aussie YA is incredibly hard to get over here, for some reason. and you people keep reviewing it and making it sound so good! and it is maddening! why can i get three different flavors of squeezable marshmallow paste, but i can’t get a book??? the world is unfair.
long story short View Spoiler », bill thompson is amazing. everyone should have a bill thompson to get those hard-to-reach books from authors that everyone is praising.
now, the book.
kirsty eagar is a fantastic writer, like so damn many of these australian YA-ers. her characters are so complete. despite the leaps and bounds YA lit has made since i was its intended target, so much of it is still written with one-dimensional characters. this is especially common in the dystopian genre, where characters are frequently simply “that which is acted upon.”
there is so much more nuance here.
i like to read characters i am not necessarily rooting for. i don’t need to fall in love with them. it’s better when i want to smack them a little and say “don’t do that, dummy!!” why should my literary characters be treated any differently than people i know and can see?
i think the biggest difference between olde YA lit and the contemporary batch is that the characters no longer have to be role models. now they can just be characters. this is not a character one wishes to emulate. it is just one girl’s story.
carly is incredibly (and understandably) emotionally damaged after a sexual assault, and spends her time throwing herself into things that are bigger than herself. the ocean, for example, or her job, where she works at an understaffed and busy restaurant, and takes great pride in riding the waves of orders and the exhausted exhilaration that comes from surviving a rough night of prepping and cooking.
people…people she mostly tries to avoid.
but for whatever reason, she is sought out. by a dutch expat housemate separated from her husband and living the high life of salsa dancing and new men. by an angelic synesthete who sees the world in shades of joy. by a sex-and-drugs-loving co-worker who is as broken as carly. by a rugged ex-con surf hunk who overlooks all of carly’s distancing tactics and skittishness and sees something in her that even the reader is hard-pressed to see.
all of the characters have their own damaged baggage, and are trying to reach out for some connection to ground them.
and carly is just looking for the next wave.
(although how someone with as many germ hangups as she has could ever go into the ocean, which—again—is nature’s toilet, is beyond me.)
carly’s emotional journey is perfectly done. although i didn’t always agree with her decisions, she always struck me as completely believable.
the supporting cast is also handled well, and even characters without much time leave their mark on the reader.
so despite a lot (really, a lot) of description about the mechanics of surfing, the story is touching and powerful and written with a skill i can only call “australian.”
now, if we could just work on making them more available…
read my book reviews on goodreads
