Prom, by Laurie Halse Anderson
Jul. 13th, 2010 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coraaProm
, by Laurie Halse Anderson
Ashley's got more important things to worry about than the prom: graduating despite all her detentions, her troublesome boyfriend, her job as a costumed rat at EZ-CHEEZ-E, figuring out what on earth she's going to do with herself once she does graduate. But when the math teacher absconds with the prom funds, her best friend Nat (head of the prom committee) is heartbroken, and while Ashley doesn't care much about the prom, she does care a great deal about Nat. So she signs up to help Nat figure out how to hold the prom after all... a process that quickly snowballs into a comedy of errors.
Despite dealing with what might look like heavy issues (living without a lot of money, the difficulty of doing well in school when you also have to work and watch your siblings, a, um, problematic boyfriend, feeling like you don't have a lot of options for your future), Prom is a funny book—and more importantly, it's funny not because we're laughing at Ashley's problems but because we're laughing, wryly, with her as she observes the sheer ridiculousness of it all. (And also, the serious issues are thoroughly interwoven with sillier ones: Nat's crazy grandmother, Ashley's eccentric father and her believably goofy younger brothers, the mania of the prom committee, her mother's obsession with the prom, and so on.) Ashley is in over her head, but she attacks everything with cleverness and a sense of humor, and even when she was flailing around I was on her side and cheering for her.
It helps that I liked Ashely a lot. And I identified with her. In some ways, she isn't much like me in high school at all (I was a nerdy overachiever, and I knew I was going to go to college), but in other ways, she really is (I identified so well with the working-hard-all-the-time-and-still-having-no-money thing). But I think the biggest thing is that I identified with her because she sounds like a believable teenager to me. Now, I'm probably not the best judge of this, since it's been almost a decade since I was a teenager, but I can definitely tell an inauthentic teenage voice. (This is why, even though I usually love McKinley, Dragonhaven didn't work at all for me.) Ashley felt very real. I also believed her female friendships, particularly with Nat: she clearly loves Nat very much while still seeing Nat's flaws, and she has a great mix of admiration, annoyance and amused tolerance that reminds me of my relationships with my friends in high school.
Anyway, I really liked this. It's a fast read and a funny one without being mindless, and I loved Ashley's voice and point of view. Frankly, if you can check a sample, do, because if you like Ashley's voice I expect you'll like the book, and if you don't, I expect you won't. But, generally, recommended.
, by Laurie Halse AndersonAshley's got more important things to worry about than the prom: graduating despite all her detentions, her troublesome boyfriend, her job as a costumed rat at EZ-CHEEZ-E, figuring out what on earth she's going to do with herself once she does graduate. But when the math teacher absconds with the prom funds, her best friend Nat (head of the prom committee) is heartbroken, and while Ashley doesn't care much about the prom, she does care a great deal about Nat. So she signs up to help Nat figure out how to hold the prom after all... a process that quickly snowballs into a comedy of errors.
Despite dealing with what might look like heavy issues (living without a lot of money, the difficulty of doing well in school when you also have to work and watch your siblings, a, um, problematic boyfriend, feeling like you don't have a lot of options for your future), Prom is a funny book—and more importantly, it's funny not because we're laughing at Ashley's problems but because we're laughing, wryly, with her as she observes the sheer ridiculousness of it all. (And also, the serious issues are thoroughly interwoven with sillier ones: Nat's crazy grandmother, Ashley's eccentric father and her believably goofy younger brothers, the mania of the prom committee, her mother's obsession with the prom, and so on.) Ashley is in over her head, but she attacks everything with cleverness and a sense of humor, and even when she was flailing around I was on her side and cheering for her.
It helps that I liked Ashely a lot. And I identified with her. In some ways, she isn't much like me in high school at all (I was a nerdy overachiever, and I knew I was going to go to college), but in other ways, she really is (I identified so well with the working-hard-all-the-time-and-still-having-no-money thing). But I think the biggest thing is that I identified with her because she sounds like a believable teenager to me. Now, I'm probably not the best judge of this, since it's been almost a decade since I was a teenager, but I can definitely tell an inauthentic teenage voice. (This is why, even though I usually love McKinley, Dragonhaven didn't work at all for me.) Ashley felt very real. I also believed her female friendships, particularly with Nat: she clearly loves Nat very much while still seeing Nat's flaws, and she has a great mix of admiration, annoyance and amused tolerance that reminds me of my relationships with my friends in high school.
Anyway, I really liked this. It's a fast read and a funny one without being mindless, and I loved Ashley's voice and point of view. Frankly, if you can check a sample, do, because if you like Ashley's voice I expect you'll like the book, and if you don't, I expect you won't. But, generally, recommended.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-13 08:59 pm (UTC)Dragonhaven, my God. I not only didn't believe him as a teenager, I didn't believe him as a boy.
Have you read any of Anderson's other books?
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Date: 2010-07-14 05:25 am (UTC)I think the reason Dragonhaven bothered me so much was that the premise interested me a great deal, and then the voice—inauthentic and obnoxious both—killed it for me.