WE HEART VAMPIRES!!!!!!, Emma
1. So I'm obsessed with Meg McCarron's new short story WE HEART VAMPIRES!!!!!!. The story is kind of breathless and hot and sticky, sexually powerful and ambivalent, a little queasy, uncomfortable, scary. I'm probably biased since it's all wrapped up in my own concerns--female desire, sex, girls' friendships, terror?
I was reading Hope Larson's Chiggers in NYC, when I was jet-lagged and Kat had already gone to bed, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I was expecting to. I'll read any book about girl's friendships I can find (and I'm desperate for more!), but in this case, I was kind of like, "Ick, these are the kinds of interactions I had with people in fourth grade before I made any real friends."
There's a scene where Abby is showering and two of Abby's camp "friends" enter the bathroom area talking about her behind her back, and she overhears their not-so-complimentary words about her. Then she gets out of the shower, devastated, and walks by them as they pretend not to notice her. It was a tremendously believable scene. It brings to mind all the petty betrayals and jealousies, the irritability and cruelty of middle school, but at the same time, it seemed oddly toothless. I'm a little troubled by this, since by all reckoning it's a story I ought to love, and not entirely certain why I loved WE HEART VAMPIRES!!!!!! and felt irritated by Chiggers.
2. On a somewhat different note: I don't normally like classics--I find it frustrating to penetrate language that would have been transparent but is now outdated--but Jane Austen's Emma turned out to be so fresh and exciting! The romance so subtly clued! I guess I expected the romance to be heavy-handed, but the cues were so very subtly dropped.
Mr. Knightley did get first contact but Austen built him up so well and so quietly, giving you only the barest hint of his true feelings so you don't feel like she's forcing him into the role of the love interest (and forcing you to accept that)--and then being older and the narrative not dwelling on his physical characteristics, you don't immediately suspect him of being the love interest. So she builds him up slowly and carefully until you're a little infatuated yourself, and only then does she gratify you with a sign of his interest. The almost-hand-kissing scene made my heart clench!
I only wish I hadn't known going in that Mr. Knightley would be the love interest (from general cultural awareness and reinforced by first contact), so that the moment Emma idly notices his "superior figure" standing tall among all the other men as she's dancing would've given me the intended heart-in-mouth thrill of infatuation. As it was, it was still pretty thrilling. Good romances seem to be as delicately balanced as good mysteries--you want the result to be satisfying but not wholly predictable? You build up a reader's subconscious feelings while not showing your hand? Something like that.
Her observations of the other characters, especially Mrs. Elton (everyone knows a Mrs. Elton!) and Miss Bates are so perfect and so modern--or timeless, I suppose. I was put off when Emma talked about how vulgar the Cox girls were until I figured that a modern-day equivalent would be a girl in a Hollister T-shirt, a denim miniskirt, bleached blond hair, too much eye makeup, double-fisting Solo Cups. Mr. Martin is that painfully awkward guy in Accounting with the oversized light blue dress shirt and the khakis and the buckteeth--Harriet is way out of his league, and I'm sure I'd let her know it too.
It disturbs me, though, that I find myself identifying so strongly with Emma, especially when (or perhaps because) I mentally modernize the supporting characters and replace "vulgar" with "tacky". Yikes.
I was reading Hope Larson's Chiggers in NYC, when I was jet-lagged and Kat had already gone to bed, and I didn't enjoy it as much as I was expecting to. I'll read any book about girl's friendships I can find (and I'm desperate for more!), but in this case, I was kind of like, "Ick, these are the kinds of interactions I had with people in fourth grade before I made any real friends."
There's a scene where Abby is showering and two of Abby's camp "friends" enter the bathroom area talking about her behind her back, and she overhears their not-so-complimentary words about her. Then she gets out of the shower, devastated, and walks by them as they pretend not to notice her. It was a tremendously believable scene. It brings to mind all the petty betrayals and jealousies, the irritability and cruelty of middle school, but at the same time, it seemed oddly toothless. I'm a little troubled by this, since by all reckoning it's a story I ought to love, and not entirely certain why I loved WE HEART VAMPIRES!!!!!! and felt irritated by Chiggers.
2. On a somewhat different note: I don't normally like classics--I find it frustrating to penetrate language that would have been transparent but is now outdated--but Jane Austen's Emma turned out to be so fresh and exciting! The romance so subtly clued! I guess I expected the romance to be heavy-handed, but the cues were so very subtly dropped.
Mr. Knightley did get first contact but Austen built him up so well and so quietly, giving you only the barest hint of his true feelings so you don't feel like she's forcing him into the role of the love interest (and forcing you to accept that)--and then being older and the narrative not dwelling on his physical characteristics, you don't immediately suspect him of being the love interest. So she builds him up slowly and carefully until you're a little infatuated yourself, and only then does she gratify you with a sign of his interest. The almost-hand-kissing scene made my heart clench!
I only wish I hadn't known going in that Mr. Knightley would be the love interest (from general cultural awareness and reinforced by first contact), so that the moment Emma idly notices his "superior figure" standing tall among all the other men as she's dancing would've given me the intended heart-in-mouth thrill of infatuation. As it was, it was still pretty thrilling. Good romances seem to be as delicately balanced as good mysteries--you want the result to be satisfying but not wholly predictable? You build up a reader's subconscious feelings while not showing your hand? Something like that.
Her observations of the other characters, especially Mrs. Elton (everyone knows a Mrs. Elton!) and Miss Bates are so perfect and so modern--or timeless, I suppose. I was put off when Emma talked about how vulgar the Cox girls were until I figured that a modern-day equivalent would be a girl in a Hollister T-shirt, a denim miniskirt, bleached blond hair, too much eye makeup, double-fisting Solo Cups. Mr. Martin is that painfully awkward guy in Accounting with the oversized light blue dress shirt and the khakis and the buckteeth--Harriet is way out of his league, and I'm sure I'd let her know it too.
It disturbs me, though, that I find myself identifying so strongly with Emma, especially when (or perhaps because) I mentally modernize the supporting characters and replace "vulgar" with "tacky". Yikes.