BOOKS and MOVIES
BOOKS. Under the cut: Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris, and Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah.
Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld. This is set in a New England boarding school in an indeterminate time period, which really pissed me off. At times it feels quite modern, with talk of computers and things, and then the narrator refers to her time at school in the past, like “Back then I didn’t know x...”,or jumps to the future like “And then we became best friends forever”, and then some girl is inviting her to listen to some Bob Dylan, and I’m like, WHEN IS THIS BOOK SET. Also, look, I’m sorry, but American boarding school stories just can’t compare to British ones. Britain invented the boarding school story. Enid Blyton invented the boarding school story. I don’t really care how weird it is being a scholarship kid at a rich private school (I can watch Gossip Girl or read my high school diaries if I want to know that), I want to know about the midnight feasts and the wacky practical jokes you played on the French teacher! So... whatever the novel was trying to say about class and money and school, it didn’t work for me. In addition, the main character was kind of sucky, and the structure was more of a discrete set of tales than a continuous narrative. And the love story was awful. The main character gets a crush on this guy in her first year, and then in senior year he starts coming over and hooking up with her in the middle of the night. They don’t properly date, they don’t talk about it outside of her bed, he basically treats her like a toy, and she’s all “WHOOHOO I LOVE HIM”. And there’s never any indication of why he suddenly decided he liked her. That was when I lost interest in the whole thing.
The Lollipop Shoes - Joanne Harris. This is the sequel to Chocolat, you know, that movie sponsored by Lindt and starring Juliette Binoche and an attractive man named Johnny Depp who had long hair and played the guitar at a time when you were really susceptible to men who had long hair and played guitar? Yeah, that one. I haven’t read Chocolat since high school, but this sequel is rocking. It’s set four or five years on, when Vianne and her daughters are settled in Montmartre, trying to build a new life and hoping that the wind won’t blow them away again. There’s a lot more magic than I remembered in Chocolat, but it works. The story is told through three first-person narratives: Vianne, struggling with her chocolate shop, her fiancé (not Roux), and her daughters, the younger of whom was born with cri-du-chat syndrome; Anouk, who is bullied and teased at school until she begins to use the magic that her mother denies; and Zozie, a woman who tells you frankly that she steals lives, but she turns out to be something much more diabolical. And that’s how you write an unreliable narrator, dudes. Harris does some pretty amazing things in this book. Her style is vivid and seductive, and although I was getting a little tired of hearing about the scent of chocolate (fragrant cocoa, notes of vanilla, a hint of space, blah blah blah) all the time, it’s a page-turner. There is a lot of Mexican mythology woven in, and while I suppose the novel could be called magic realism, I never found it to be unbelievable or cliché.
Does My Head Look Big in This? - Randa Abdel-Fattah. This is a YA novel about Amal, an Australian-Palestinian-Muslim trying to survive life in high school. It begins with her deciding to wear the hijab and dealing with the effects of that decision. Her parents don't want to force her, but all her friends think they must have. Even the headmistress of her (non-Muslim) private school thinks it must be her parents' influence, but eventually agrees so long as Amal's hijab is in school colours. The rest of the novel is Amal dealing with the pressures of school, the prejudices she encounters at school and in public, the problems of her friends, and how difficult it is to have a crush on a boy when your religion dictates no physical intimacy until marriage. Yeah, this novel is different to other YA fare in so many ways. Amal's friends range from a girl who thinks she's fat to a Jewish boy to a girl with a strict Muslim mother. Sometimes I felt the author was trying too hard to tackle every stereotype or problem facing Australian teenagers, and often the explanations of Muslim practices were a bit forced, but I really appreciate the effort. It was a novel that needed to be written. How often in YA do you see a passage like the following:
I'm terrified. But at the same time I feel like my passion and conviction in Islam are bursting inside me and I want to prove to myself that I'm strong enough to wear a badge of my faith. I believe it will make me feel so close to God. Because it's damn hard to walk around with people staring at your 'nappy head' and not feel kind of pleased with yourself -- if you manage to get through the stares and comments with your head held high. That's when this warm feeling buzzes through you and you smile to yourself, knowing God's watching you, knowing that he knows you're trying to be strong to please Him. Like you're both in on a private joke and something special and warm and extraordinary is happening and nobody in the world knows about it because it's your own experience, your own personal friendship with your Creator. I guess when I'm not wearing the hijab I feel like I'm missing out. I feel cheated out of that special bond.
Even though Looking for Alibrandi flies the flag for Catholicism, it doesn't have a lot to say about Josie's personal relationship with God. Which I understand, because personal faith is not an easy thing to articulate in general, least of all in fiction, but I'm glad that Does My Head Look Big in This? tries so hard to hit its marks. It may not hit them all, there are definitely a few misses, but it's a good read and a great addition to Aussie YA.
MOVIES
Lost in Austen: Crapfest 2008 led me to take comfort in proper Jane Austen adaptations. Well, first I watched North & South, because I was homesick for northern accents. It's still a wonderful adaptation, and I'm in love with Margaret's hair. Basically a big part of period adaptations for me is the hair. It's about the only thing I have half a chance of replicating, although I haven't figured out the style that Margaret wears for most of N&S, and I can't find any good photos of it online. Anyway, next thing I watched was the ITV Mansfield Park with Billie Piper. Now, I'm not a big fan of Mansfield Park as a novel -- Edward/Fanny creeps me out because they're basically brother and sister -- but I thought this wasn't a very successful adaptation. Mrs. Norris was nothing like I imagined her to be, the Crawfords weren't quite evil enough, and Billie Piper is too pretty and lovely to be convincing as Fanny. There were no hairstyles to copy in this one, as Billie spends the entire time with her hair down around her shoulders, looking like a 12-year-old when her character is 18. Even at her wedding at the end it is down. PUT IT UP, FANNY, YOU ARE A WOMAN NOW, NOT A WHORE. Obviously Billie Piper's face shape does not suit the period updos, but perhaps then she should stop taking period roles? Or they should put it up anyway, since Fanny is meant to be plain (uh... I think)?
Also, why are Billie Piper's eyebrows always so ill-matched to her hair?
Then I watched Northanger Abbey, and was pleased to have found it, as only two adaptations have ever been made of this glorious book. This was light-hearted and fun and I quite liked it. Catherine's gothic fantasies are hilarious... and yes, in any other JA adaptation I would have shuddered to hear that there were fantasy sequences, but they are wholly appropriate for this novel. I loved the tone of the scenes once at the Abbey, although I think they could have camped it up even more. And I loved seeing Bath, beautiful Bath, on the screen. The cast are suitably young and pretty, and I have good hopes for emulating Catherine's twists with ribbon and bun hairstyle. Next up I guess I will watch the Kate Beckinsale Emma, except that I don't really like either Kate Beckinsale or Emma.
Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld. This is set in a New England boarding school in an indeterminate time period, which really pissed me off. At times it feels quite modern, with talk of computers and things, and then the narrator refers to her time at school in the past, like “Back then I didn’t know x...”,or jumps to the future like “And then we became best friends forever”, and then some girl is inviting her to listen to some Bob Dylan, and I’m like, WHEN IS THIS BOOK SET. Also, look, I’m sorry, but American boarding school stories just can’t compare to British ones. Britain invented the boarding school story. Enid Blyton invented the boarding school story. I don’t really care how weird it is being a scholarship kid at a rich private school (I can watch Gossip Girl or read my high school diaries if I want to know that), I want to know about the midnight feasts and the wacky practical jokes you played on the French teacher! So... whatever the novel was trying to say about class and money and school, it didn’t work for me. In addition, the main character was kind of sucky, and the structure was more of a discrete set of tales than a continuous narrative. And the love story was awful. The main character gets a crush on this guy in her first year, and then in senior year he starts coming over and hooking up with her in the middle of the night. They don’t properly date, they don’t talk about it outside of her bed, he basically treats her like a toy, and she’s all “WHOOHOO I LOVE HIM”. And there’s never any indication of why he suddenly decided he liked her. That was when I lost interest in the whole thing.
The Lollipop Shoes - Joanne Harris. This is the sequel to Chocolat, you know, that movie sponsored by Lindt and starring Juliette Binoche and an attractive man named Johnny Depp who had long hair and played the guitar at a time when you were really susceptible to men who had long hair and played guitar? Yeah, that one. I haven’t read Chocolat since high school, but this sequel is rocking. It’s set four or five years on, when Vianne and her daughters are settled in Montmartre, trying to build a new life and hoping that the wind won’t blow them away again. There’s a lot more magic than I remembered in Chocolat, but it works. The story is told through three first-person narratives: Vianne, struggling with her chocolate shop, her fiancé (not Roux), and her daughters, the younger of whom was born with cri-du-chat syndrome; Anouk, who is bullied and teased at school until she begins to use the magic that her mother denies; and Zozie, a woman who tells you frankly that she steals lives, but she turns out to be something much more diabolical. And that’s how you write an unreliable narrator, dudes. Harris does some pretty amazing things in this book. Her style is vivid and seductive, and although I was getting a little tired of hearing about the scent of chocolate (fragrant cocoa, notes of vanilla, a hint of space, blah blah blah) all the time, it’s a page-turner. There is a lot of Mexican mythology woven in, and while I suppose the novel could be called magic realism, I never found it to be unbelievable or cliché.
Does My Head Look Big in This? - Randa Abdel-Fattah. This is a YA novel about Amal, an Australian-Palestinian-Muslim trying to survive life in high school. It begins with her deciding to wear the hijab and dealing with the effects of that decision. Her parents don't want to force her, but all her friends think they must have. Even the headmistress of her (non-Muslim) private school thinks it must be her parents' influence, but eventually agrees so long as Amal's hijab is in school colours. The rest of the novel is Amal dealing with the pressures of school, the prejudices she encounters at school and in public, the problems of her friends, and how difficult it is to have a crush on a boy when your religion dictates no physical intimacy until marriage. Yeah, this novel is different to other YA fare in so many ways. Amal's friends range from a girl who thinks she's fat to a Jewish boy to a girl with a strict Muslim mother. Sometimes I felt the author was trying too hard to tackle every stereotype or problem facing Australian teenagers, and often the explanations of Muslim practices were a bit forced, but I really appreciate the effort. It was a novel that needed to be written. How often in YA do you see a passage like the following:
I'm terrified. But at the same time I feel like my passion and conviction in Islam are bursting inside me and I want to prove to myself that I'm strong enough to wear a badge of my faith. I believe it will make me feel so close to God. Because it's damn hard to walk around with people staring at your 'nappy head' and not feel kind of pleased with yourself -- if you manage to get through the stares and comments with your head held high. That's when this warm feeling buzzes through you and you smile to yourself, knowing God's watching you, knowing that he knows you're trying to be strong to please Him. Like you're both in on a private joke and something special and warm and extraordinary is happening and nobody in the world knows about it because it's your own experience, your own personal friendship with your Creator. I guess when I'm not wearing the hijab I feel like I'm missing out. I feel cheated out of that special bond.
Even though Looking for Alibrandi flies the flag for Catholicism, it doesn't have a lot to say about Josie's personal relationship with God. Which I understand, because personal faith is not an easy thing to articulate in general, least of all in fiction, but I'm glad that Does My Head Look Big in This? tries so hard to hit its marks. It may not hit them all, there are definitely a few misses, but it's a good read and a great addition to Aussie YA.
MOVIES
Lost in Austen: Crapfest 2008 led me to take comfort in proper Jane Austen adaptations. Well, first I watched North & South, because I was homesick for northern accents. It's still a wonderful adaptation, and I'm in love with Margaret's hair. Basically a big part of period adaptations for me is the hair. It's about the only thing I have half a chance of replicating, although I haven't figured out the style that Margaret wears for most of N&S, and I can't find any good photos of it online. Anyway, next thing I watched was the ITV Mansfield Park with Billie Piper. Now, I'm not a big fan of Mansfield Park as a novel -- Edward/Fanny creeps me out because they're basically brother and sister -- but I thought this wasn't a very successful adaptation. Mrs. Norris was nothing like I imagined her to be, the Crawfords weren't quite evil enough, and Billie Piper is too pretty and lovely to be convincing as Fanny. There were no hairstyles to copy in this one, as Billie spends the entire time with her hair down around her shoulders, looking like a 12-year-old when her character is 18. Even at her wedding at the end it is down. PUT IT UP, FANNY, YOU ARE A WOMAN NOW, NOT A WHORE. Obviously Billie Piper's face shape does not suit the period updos, but perhaps then she should stop taking period roles? Or they should put it up anyway, since Fanny is meant to be plain (uh... I think)?
Also, why are Billie Piper's eyebrows always so ill-matched to her hair?
Then I watched Northanger Abbey, and was pleased to have found it, as only two adaptations have ever been made of this glorious book. This was light-hearted and fun and I quite liked it. Catherine's gothic fantasies are hilarious... and yes, in any other JA adaptation I would have shuddered to hear that there were fantasy sequences, but they are wholly appropriate for this novel. I loved the tone of the scenes once at the Abbey, although I think they could have camped it up even more. And I loved seeing Bath, beautiful Bath, on the screen. The cast are suitably young and pretty, and I have good hopes for emulating Catherine's twists with ribbon and bun hairstyle. Next up I guess I will watch the Kate Beckinsale Emma, except that I don't really like either Kate Beckinsale or Emma.
