Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
Fangir
by Rainbow Rowell
This is the third Rainbow Rowell book I have read, and I've loved all three. I really must track down Landline and see if I can go 4 of 4 with it.
I am a fangirl. I've been wanting to read this book since I heard about it, just after reading Eleanor & Park. It's neat that it came out of a NaNoWriMo project, as well. But the reason I finally got around to reading this was because we're going to have a book discussion about it for my Harry Potter group in a month or so and I am leading the discussion. Therefore... I had to read it! It took me a few months to get through it, because I was reading in short bursts of about 30 minutes every few weeks. But that's not to say it was a hard read. In fact, I found it quite easy and lots of fun.
I'm a fangirl. I write fanfiction. I write slash fanfiction. I write a LOT OF slash fanfiction. I write a lot of slash fanfiction for Harry Potter. And this book is about a young girl starting college; she writes a lot of slash fanfiction for her fandom, which happens to be a series of magical wizards and witches set at a magic school. Therefore, I could IMMEDIATELY relate to the main character. I believe it's important for people to be able to see themselves in the characters they read about. It's amazing that literature can give us complex characters from so many different walks of life. And I certainly could relate to this one in particular.
It was a joy to see a book that addressed the struggle of a fanfiction writer--about the unique challenges fanfic presents and what it's like to be completely obsessed with a world as a fan, so much that you make parts of it your own by creating fanart or fanfiction. I loved getting to know what that was like for Cath, who is like me in so many ways and not like me in so many ways as well. Cath is a brilliant and passionate writer, introverted, and definitely more comfortable writing sex scenes than imagining herself in them. I, too, was the girl who ate a lot of energy bars because she was nervous about how the dining hall worked and it seemed safer to stay in the room than venture out (which, like Cath, I got over). But Cath is also a twin, the daughter of a single father who needs some help, starting out at college, and developing new friendships and relationships with people around her. Cath was wonderful to get to know, and I appreciate the chance to dive so deeply into her head and really understand what makes her tick.
I loved the excerpts of canon fiction and of fanfiction at the beginning of each chapter, which made Simon Snow, Baz, and all his friends feel real to me (maybe not as real as Harry Potter, but enough that I could believe this was a world Cath wanted to explore). And I loved the other characters as well--her sister, her father, her roommate, her roommate's boyfriend, her writing buddy from class, even her mother. Though there were times I wasn't such a fan of some of these characters, one thing that Rainbow does exceptionally well is characters. The other thing she does well is creating a full, rich world around the characters. I was instantly transported to this college with Cath, driving home with her, sitting on her bed in her dorm room with her. Everything felt so real--the emotional struggles, the arguements, the situations, the interactions, the dialogue, and the stories within the stories.
And I loved Levi. He was almost unbelievably understanding and incredibly attractive to me because of that. His asking Cath to sit and read him some of her fanfiction? Magical. It was neat seeing what that relationship grew into and how it evolved to something that worked for both of them. Equally interesting was watching her relationship with her twin sister hit the rocks.
The whole book was really enjoyable, and not just because I could identify personally so strongly with the main character. I loved what it says about fandom--that you don't have to hide your love for something, but sometimes there are other things in life to explore in addition to fandom.