YA Dystopias
I love, love, love dystopia novels, so I was all excited that this was the new big YA publishing trend. Unfortunately, while you know Hunger Games was my favorite thing ever, most of what I've read since has been pretty disappointing. I keep meaning to do comprehensive reviews, but I've been having a hard time doing so. (Do you ever find that everything you write comes off as unbearably arch or something like that?) However, I just read The Girl in the Arena by Lisa Haines and it was so frigging irritating, I'm moved to write on it.
That said, if the title leads you to believe the author was trying to capitalize on The Hunger Games, fear not (it was published in 2010). Judging from the dated cultural references, the author actually wrote it five years ago; the publishers were trying to capitalize on Hunger Games. (Though while the author didn't rewrite it with less dated cultural references, she might have rewritten it to put it into the first person present tense voice that is apparently mandatory in this genre.)
In short, the book focuses on the Gladiator Sports Arena ("GSA"), which is pretty much what it sounds like - Ancient Rome + Fight Club. It takes place in an alternate modern-day U.S. in which:
1) an amateur GSA sprung up during the Vietnam War,
2) it went big and became a huge sport around the time of the narrator's birth, 17 years ago,
3) there's some nifty holographic technology that allows you to generate celebrity fascimiles to interact with in your home, and
4) things like Natalie Portman's haircut in V are still culturally relevant touchstones.
Good times. But here's the thing. My anthropology degree isn't good for much, but it is good for noting things about fictional book cultures that are entirely ridiculous. We're expected to believe that in the past 17 years over the time between this stopping being an underground backyard thing that this became a major sport, a whole "Glad Culture" has sprung up in which Glad Wives marry Neo-Glads and raise their sons to be Glads and daughters to be perfect Glad Wives, including sending them to a college for same. We're also expected to believe they're completely inculcated into this culture, such that the kids don't feel they have any other options.
And that there are entire Glad neighborhoods that Glad-types (despite being rich) are being gentrified out of. And that Glads and their wives are accorded huge celebrity status, but the kids are getting beaten up at school for being part of Glad culture (a culture involving huge amounts of weaponry, let us remember).
In seventeen freaking years.
We're also meant to believe that inculcation happened despite the fact that the GSA is run by a huge evil corporation that is constantly trying to screw over its employees, something of which everyone is totally aware.
So this is the set-up and it is, in every way, completely preposterous. It's also really frustrating, because it's entirely avoidable. All these problems could have been done away with by extending the alternate universe backwards and having this be a long-standing part of US culture and history. Or perhaps by making the Glad-types an already existing ethnic, cultural, religious group who got coopted to do the stupid Glad thing. Or basically anything else.
But no, instead we went the completely preposterous route, which leads me to:
HUGE BOOK RUINING SPOILERS
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Basically, our heroine's mother is on her seventh Glad husband, after which she can no longer remarry without losing her Glad pension. Her husband gets knocked off in a fight, unsurprisingly. Unfortunately, our mildly-idiotic heroine had lent her step-dad her "dowry bracelet" for good luck, the conquering hero accidentally took it as a trophy, not realizing what it was, and you can guess what that means - they're engaged!!! Even though the girl was going to rebel and not be a Glad Wife (scandalous!)!
This gets us about 50% of the way through the book, but it was mildly interesting before this point. Afterwards - Oh. My. God. So naturally, this becomes a huge cause celeb, with the New York Times running disapproving articles about forcing kids into marriage (reasonably, though I think we're supposed to think they're prudish)and paparazzi staking out her house. Meanwhile, the evil GSA corp. uses their Magical Contract Language to take away her mother's house and pension unless she agrees to marry the guy, but "getting outside legal help isn't done in Glad Culture" (the "as it has existed for like 17 years which we totally buy into despite the fact that we weren't actually born into it and anyone with a brain can see the entire culture is based around screwing us over for the corporation's benefit" is unstated).
At this point, I basically started yelling "WRITE A TELL ALL BOOK, GO ON TALK SHOWS AND MAKE A ZILLION DOLLARS" at my Kindle, but that is apparently too logical. Instead, we get the following sequence of events:
1) her mother commits suicide;
2) she kind of falls in love with the stupid fiance gladiator but decides instead of marrying him she'll challenge him to a fight for money and trust the corporation not to screw her out of that and afterwards she'll be able to provide for her autistic, oracular brother (oh, did I not mention him? That's because that whole plotline is as dumb as it sounds) (did I also not mention that women can be gladiators? apparently they can - how this is reconciled with the apparent fetishism of the perfect Glad Wife is never explained);
3) she sets up the aforementioned celebrity hologram machine with her image to do the fight, but then it dies in the middle of said fight and she has to go in anyway, making that entire plotline useless, which is why I elided most of it;
4) aforementioned oracular brother throws himself in front of her sword (why?) and this ends the fight (again, why?) even though he survives;
5) corporation predictably decides to screw her out of her money but NOW she decides to consult a lawyer and write a tell-all book so it's all good.
I was skimming pretty desperately at this point, so I don't really know or care what happened with the fiance or the best friend who was also predictably in love with her, but yeah. That kind of sums the whole thing up.
Oh! And I forgot to add that the dialogue was all written literally like this:
-- Why am I a brainwashed little nitwit I ask -- Isn't that a really boring and unsympathetic way to write a book character?
-- Yes, said Tommy -- but it serves the plot, speaking of which give me that bracelet.
I actually don't mind the first person present tense thing that drives a lot of people nuts, but we invented typographic dialogue conventions for a reason, people. You have to pass a pretty high bar to deviate from them without driving people nuts.
Where is all the awesome YA dystopia, I ask? Where?
That said, if the title leads you to believe the author was trying to capitalize on The Hunger Games, fear not (it was published in 2010). Judging from the dated cultural references, the author actually wrote it five years ago; the publishers were trying to capitalize on Hunger Games. (Though while the author didn't rewrite it with less dated cultural references, she might have rewritten it to put it into the first person present tense voice that is apparently mandatory in this genre.)
In short, the book focuses on the Gladiator Sports Arena ("GSA"), which is pretty much what it sounds like - Ancient Rome + Fight Club. It takes place in an alternate modern-day U.S. in which:
1) an amateur GSA sprung up during the Vietnam War,
2) it went big and became a huge sport around the time of the narrator's birth, 17 years ago,
3) there's some nifty holographic technology that allows you to generate celebrity fascimiles to interact with in your home, and
4) things like Natalie Portman's haircut in V are still culturally relevant touchstones.
Good times. But here's the thing. My anthropology degree isn't good for much, but it is good for noting things about fictional book cultures that are entirely ridiculous. We're expected to believe that in the past 17 years over the time between this stopping being an underground backyard thing that this became a major sport, a whole "Glad Culture" has sprung up in which Glad Wives marry Neo-Glads and raise their sons to be Glads and daughters to be perfect Glad Wives, including sending them to a college for same. We're also expected to believe they're completely inculcated into this culture, such that the kids don't feel they have any other options.
And that there are entire Glad neighborhoods that Glad-types (despite being rich) are being gentrified out of. And that Glads and their wives are accorded huge celebrity status, but the kids are getting beaten up at school for being part of Glad culture (a culture involving huge amounts of weaponry, let us remember).
In seventeen freaking years.
We're also meant to believe that inculcation happened despite the fact that the GSA is run by a huge evil corporation that is constantly trying to screw over its employees, something of which everyone is totally aware.
So this is the set-up and it is, in every way, completely preposterous. It's also really frustrating, because it's entirely avoidable. All these problems could have been done away with by extending the alternate universe backwards and having this be a long-standing part of US culture and history. Or perhaps by making the Glad-types an already existing ethnic, cultural, religious group who got coopted to do the stupid Glad thing. Or basically anything else.
But no, instead we went the completely preposterous route, which leads me to:
HUGE BOOK RUINING SPOILERS
*
*
*
*
*
Basically, our heroine's mother is on her seventh Glad husband, after which she can no longer remarry without losing her Glad pension. Her husband gets knocked off in a fight, unsurprisingly. Unfortunately, our mildly-idiotic heroine had lent her step-dad her "dowry bracelet" for good luck, the conquering hero accidentally took it as a trophy, not realizing what it was, and you can guess what that means - they're engaged!!! Even though the girl was going to rebel and not be a Glad Wife (scandalous!)!
This gets us about 50% of the way through the book, but it was mildly interesting before this point. Afterwards - Oh. My. God. So naturally, this becomes a huge cause celeb, with the New York Times running disapproving articles about forcing kids into marriage (reasonably, though I think we're supposed to think they're prudish)and paparazzi staking out her house. Meanwhile, the evil GSA corp. uses their Magical Contract Language to take away her mother's house and pension unless she agrees to marry the guy, but "getting outside legal help isn't done in Glad Culture" (the "as it has existed for like 17 years which we totally buy into despite the fact that we weren't actually born into it and anyone with a brain can see the entire culture is based around screwing us over for the corporation's benefit" is unstated).
At this point, I basically started yelling "WRITE A TELL ALL BOOK, GO ON TALK SHOWS AND MAKE A ZILLION DOLLARS" at my Kindle, but that is apparently too logical. Instead, we get the following sequence of events:
1) her mother commits suicide;
2) she kind of falls in love with the stupid fiance gladiator but decides instead of marrying him she'll challenge him to a fight for money and trust the corporation not to screw her out of that and afterwards she'll be able to provide for her autistic, oracular brother (oh, did I not mention him? That's because that whole plotline is as dumb as it sounds) (did I also not mention that women can be gladiators? apparently they can - how this is reconciled with the apparent fetishism of the perfect Glad Wife is never explained);
3) she sets up the aforementioned celebrity hologram machine with her image to do the fight, but then it dies in the middle of said fight and she has to go in anyway, making that entire plotline useless, which is why I elided most of it;
4) aforementioned oracular brother throws himself in front of her sword (why?) and this ends the fight (again, why?) even though he survives;
5) corporation predictably decides to screw her out of her money but NOW she decides to consult a lawyer and write a tell-all book so it's all good.
I was skimming pretty desperately at this point, so I don't really know or care what happened with the fiance or the best friend who was also predictably in love with her, but yeah. That kind of sums the whole thing up.
Oh! And I forgot to add that the dialogue was all written literally like this:
-- Why am I a brainwashed little nitwit I ask -- Isn't that a really boring and unsympathetic way to write a book character?
-- Yes, said Tommy -- but it serves the plot, speaking of which give me that bracelet.
I actually don't mind the first person present tense thing that drives a lot of people nuts, but we invented typographic dialogue conventions for a reason, people. You have to pass a pretty high bar to deviate from them without driving people nuts.
Where is all the awesome YA dystopia, I ask? Where?