Author Archives: Susan Knisely

I am currently listening to the audio edition of You Don’t Have to Say you Love Me, a memoir by Sherman Alexie, written after his mother Lillian’s death in 2015. In it he wrestles not only with grief, but also with the regret, guilt, and bitterness that characterized his relationship with her.

Born in 1966, Alexie grew up in Wellpinit, Washington, on the Spokane Indian Reservation. His family was poor, his dad often drunk and absent, his mother sober but sometimes cruel, and “On the reservation, violence [was] a clock, / Ordinary and relentless.” This is the formative experience that shapes all Alexie’s writing, but his power as a storyteller is his ability to craft a narrative both culturally specific and universal.

Speaking of the narrative, it is definitely not straightforward, and possibly not for everyone. The audiobook is read by Alexie, himself, which is a positive. He is known for his dramatic readings and has won slam poetry championships, so it’s doubtful any other narrator could own the material as he does. It has the feel of performance art, shifting seamlessly from prose with the texture of dramatic monologue, to poetry, to “rez accent” dialogue (Alexie recounts a conversation he once had with a white girlfriend, who said his mother had a “fancy accent.” When he tells her “[r]ez accents are the opposite of fancy,” she counters: “But rez accents make everything sound like music.”)

The stories Alexie tells aren’t presented chronologically, and even their authenticity is sometimes in doubt. In the first chapter alone there are multiple instances of family members questioning each other’s memories of how and if things happened. “You’re always making up stuff from the past,” his sister tells him. Even a writer friend teasingly accuses Alexie of being “the unreliable narrator of your own life,” for allegedly inventing a conversation between the two (about, of all things, storytelling and truth) and including it in the first chapter of his memoir. This is actually a perfect setup for Alexie’s subsequent examination of his relationship with his mother, a woman who told “many clever and clumsy lies,” as well as some that resonated with spiritual truth.

And that’s the thing about this memoir. Even if the anecdotes Alexie shares didn’t happen exactly as he remembers them, and even if one’s own life experiences and circumstances differ significantly from Alexie’s, the conflicted parental relationship he struggles with is recognizable and relatable, albeit uniquely described. That’s why I have appreciated this memoir so far and look forward to finishing it, though I don’t anticipate a particularly happy ending or any real resolution.

Alexie, Sherman. You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me. Ashland, OR: Blackstone Audio, 2017.

After watching I Am Not Your Negro, the Oscar-nominated documentary based on an unfinished James Baldwin manuscript, I finally tracked down and read Baldwin’s much-referenced 1963 book, The Fire Next Time. This book contains two essays: “My Dungeon Shook—Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation,” and “Down At The Cross—Letter from a Region of My Mind.”

In the first essay, Baldwin endeavors to impart to his 15-year-old nephew the wisdom and advice he’ll need to survive growing up as a black man in America. Despite being “born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity and in as many ways as possible that you were a worthless human being,” Baldwin urges his nephew to trust his own experience, to resist internalizing messages of inferiority, and to continue to love. And in a more sophisticated exhortation than our contemporary “Make America Great Again” slogan, Baldwin writes: “Great men have done great things here and will again and we can make America what America must become.” This essay actually served as inspiration for Ta-Nehisi Coates’s 2015 book, Between the World and Me, which took the form of a letter to his own teenage son. The tragedy, of course, is that such letters are still necessary.

The second essay, “Down At The Cross—Letter from a Region of My Mind,” is quite a bit longer than the first. In it Baldwin recounts his experiences with the Christian church during his youth and the Nation of Islam as an adult, seeing in neither a solution to the racial problems that infect America. Throughout, he offers an unsparing analysis of the problematic role race has played in the development of American civilization, “which compromises, when it does not corrupt, all the American efforts to build a better world…”

This essay is a demoralizing read because of how applicable Baldwin’s criticisms remain. “People are not, for example,” Baldwin writes, “terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.” And also: “It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.”

Baldwin’s writing is not without hope, but his is a bleak optimism–more philosophical choice than true faith. This perspective is powerfully captured in a 1963 television interview (“The Negro and The American Promise,” WGBH), in his response to a question about whether he is a pessimist or optimist: “I can’t be a pessimist because I’m alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter, so I’m forced to be an optimist. I’m forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive.” As he did in his letter to his nephew, in this essay he holds out love as the only way forward. But he makes clear that when he uses the word “love” he is referring to “a state of being, or a state of grace—not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”

Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. Ashland, Oregon: Blackstone Audio, 2008.

After watching Dallas Buyers Club several years ago, I wanted to learn more about the early treatment challenges that caused people with AIDS to criticize and bypass the FDA’s slow-moving and bureaucratic drug approval process. This led me to a copy of Randy Shilts’ classic 1987 book, And the Band Played On, which covered the AIDS epidemic through 1985. I hesitated to start it, however, because of the 25+ years of subsequent developments that wouldn’t be covered, including significant advances in treatment options in the mid-90s. So when David France’s How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS showed up on the New York Times “100 Notable Books of 2016” list, I jumped on it!

David France is an investigative reporter who has been covering AIDS since the early 1980s. He moved to New York City in June 1981, immediately after graduating from college and just weeks before a headline in the July 3 New York Times proclaimed “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” This put France at a major epicenter of the epidemic from its opening days—and from the very outset of his adult life. It is this embedded perspective that gives an intense intimacy to what is also a thoroughly researched and gripping account of the gay community’s mobilization to political and scientific activism and advocacy.

Although death and dying pervade France’s narrative, there is hope and inspiration in the formation of groups like Gay Men’s Health Crisis, ACT UP, with its rallying cry of “Drugs into bodies,” and TAG (Treatment Action Group). Members with an affinity for research, though lacking scientific background and in some cases without college degrees, educated themselves on the inner workings of government health agencies like the FDA, CDC, and NIH, and became experts on immunology and virology. This allowed them to challenge and ultimately collaborate as partners with a medical establishment used to patients passively accepting whatever treatment options were prescribed. They were able to press for an accelerated drug approval process, modifications in clinical trial protocol, reductions in drug costs, and more.

France’s account traces drug development through the January 1996 annual Conference for Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, where breakthrough results of two clinical drug trials were reported, heralding the arrival of new treatment options supporting long term survival of people with AIDS. Finally, AIDS no longer equaled death! While this is a victorious point at which to conclude his story, a happily-ever-after ending would have been inappropriate, and France avoids one with the final words of his final chapter: “It was not over. It would never be over. But it was over.” His epilogue also bears witness to the toll the plague took on surviving activists, often in the form of depression, drug addiction, underemployment and unemployment. Not only had they lost so many friends and lovers, they were now set adrift without purpose in a life they hadn’t prepared for, because they never expect to live to see it.

Although I still plan to read Shilts’ And the Band Played On, I’m glad I started with David France’s book; it provided me with the education I was looking for, in a compelling and thorough manner. If you’re interested in this topic but don’t want to tackle a 600+ page book (either Shilts’ or France’s), you may want to consider watching the 2012 documentary written and directed by France, also titled How to Survive a Plague. It is currently available to stream on Netflix.

France, David. How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS. New York: Knopf, 2016.

Michael Chabon is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. He’s been on my radar for years, but I only recently sought out his work after running across a GQ article he wrote about attending Paris Fashion Week with his 13-year-old son. Because his account of the trip—a bar mitzvah present for his fashion-loving son, Abe—was so loving and insightful, I gravitated immediately to Chabon’s collection of personal essays, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son, rather than his fiction.

In Manhood for Amateurs, as the subtitle suggests, Chabon writes about the relationships he’s experienced and the roles he’s played as a boy and a man—son, brother, husband, son-in-law, father.  The essays that resonate most with me are those in which he contemplates fatherhood, a role he clearly cherishes. I think I find them so touching because they echo back to me experiences and feelings I’ve had as a parent.

In “William and I” he laments how little it takes to be considered a good father today (still apparently not much more than taking your 20-month-old grocery shopping with you), compared to what it takes to be considered a good mother (“[p]erhaps performing an emergency tracheotomy with a bic pen on her eldest child while simultaneously nursing her infant and buying two weeks’ worth of healthy but appealing break-time snacks for the entire cast of Lion King, Jr.”). He clearly expects more from himself and expresses reverence at the intimacy you develop with your children as a result of the mundane, day-to-day tedium of raising them, especially through “your contact with their bodies, with their shit and piss, sweat and vomit, . . . with their hair against your lips as you kiss the tops of their heads, with the bones of their shoulders and with the horror of their breath in the morning as they pursue the ancient art of forgetting to brush.”

I think what I appreciate most about Chabon’s essays is their honesty, which is both humorous and poignant. In “The Memory Hole,” Chabon begins with an admission that he and his wife regularly throw away a large percentage of the flood of artwork his four children bring home from school. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to hear another parent admit to this. However, what begins as a self-deprecating account of how they try to manage the influx (“We don’t toss all of it. We keep the good stuff—or what strikes us, in the Zen of that instant between scraping out the lunch box and sorting the mail, as good.”), skillfully transitions into a meditation on how quickly childhood passes, how many moments we squander, and how few clear memories we carry forward with us into the future.

In “The Losers’ Club,” the introductory essay in Manhood, Chabon writes about his failed attempt, as a lonely boy in suburban Maryland, to convene a fellowship of likeminded individuals by founding the Columbia Comic Book Club. (No one attends the inaugural meeting, which results in it also being the final meeting.) It feels like a vindication, therefore, when in “The Amateur Family,” one of the last essays in the book, he describes himself as “the geek matrix of four bright geek spawn.” While this essay revolves around the family’s collective love of the Doctor Who television show, what it really celebrates is the fellowship Chabon shares with his children, and that they share with each other: “In the hands, minds, and geekish chatter of my children, I have found again that long-lost, long-desired connection. Each of us stands ready, at any moment, to talk Who, to riff and spin and sketch out new contours for the world we collectively inhabit, creating and endlessly re-creating the fandom that is our family.”

What I love most about “The Amateur Family” is Chabon’s understanding of the innate human drive to connect with others in “a shared universe of enthusiasm”; the fact that he ultimately finds this connection within his own family just makes the account that much more wonderful. Not surprisingly, his respect for and recognition of this impulse also featured prominently in the GQ article on taking his son to Fashion Week—which is what turned me on to this book of essays in the first place. In the GQ article, it’s Chabon’s appreciation of his son’s need to connect with people who share his love of fashion, an interest that Chabon doesn’t share, that I found so moving. He obviously respected his son’s obsession before the trip, or he wouldn’t have taken him on it; but by the end of the trip he gets it—and his son—in a whole new way.

If you like reading meditations on parenthood, I’d definitely recommend this collection of essays. And if you don’t have time to read whole book, at least check out the GQ article!

Chabon, Michael. Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

I first listened to Andrew Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle in fall 2015, and it instantly became my new favorite book! Since then I’ve read other Smith books (Winger, Stand-Off, 100 Sideways Miles, The Marbury Lens), and while I liked them all I’d have to say that Grasshopper Jungle stands out as something completely unique. As a piece of writing, it is distinctive – not just from Smith’s other books but from most other books I’ve read!

In part, this might be because Smith wrote it at a point in time when he had decided to get out of the business of writing for publication. “I never felt so free as when I wrote things that I believed nobody would ever see. Grasshopper Jungle was one of those things,” he confesses in the acknowledgements section of the book, which someone else evidently did read since they convinced him to publish it. (Publication was obviously a good idea: Grasshopper Jungle was a 2015 Michael L. Printz Honor Book.)

What the book is ostensibly about, versus what I love about it, are two different things. On the surface, this book is about an apocalyptic plague of six-foot-tall, man-eating praying mantises, accidentally unleashed in the fictional, economically-depressed town of Ealing, Iowa. What I love most are the main characters, sixteen-year-old Austin Szerba, who narrates, and his best friend, Robby Brees. They are, among other things, smart, sincere, loyal, witty, matter-of-fact, unflinching, hilarious, and respectfully profane.

One thing I particularly love about Austin is his obsession with history and truth, which are recurring themes throughout the book. Austin begins his narration with the following rumination on history:

I read somewhere that human beings are genetically predisposed to record history.
We believe it will prevent us from doing stupid things in the future.
But even though we dutifully archived elaborate records of everything we’ve ever done, we also manage to keep on doing dumber and dumber shit.
This is my history.

Austin has been recording his own history for years, as evidenced by the thigh-high stack of journals in his closet; and his book narration is a continuation of this process. Included in Austin’s stream-of-consciousness recitations are his thoughts on the nature of history, the act of recording it, and the impossibility of getting it all down. These thoughts, at least in my opinion, inform, and are reinforced by, the stylistic quirks that permeate Smith’s writing in this particular book.

These quirks include repetition of words and phrases to the point where they become epigrammatic refrains; use of an almost clinical, detached language to describe horrifying and distressing events; and Austin’s practice of reporting not just the main event, but also a multitude of other events that are occurring simultaneously, to other people, in other parts of the world. While this last quirk would be considered digression in another book, in Grasshopper Jungle it is a manifestation of Austin’s beliefs about how to report history in order to approach the truth. Austin’s girlfriend Shann describes his process thusly: “I love how you tell stories. I love how, whenever you tell me a story, you go backwards and forwards and tell me everything else that could possibly be happening in every direction . . . .”

Elsewhere, addressing the futility of this endeavor, Austin states: “You could never get everything in a book. Good books are about everything;” and “Even when I tried to tell everything that happened, I knew my accounts were ultimately nothing more than an abbreviation.”

Austin is as devoted to telling the truth as he is to accurately recording history. To others, he never lies, especially if asked a direct question. The most he sometimes does is not volunteer the whole truth. (About a partial truth he told his parents, he says: “It wasn’t a lie; it was an abbreviation.”) From himself, he hides nothing, even if the truth is embarrassing or confusing. It’s why he doesn’t shy away from the realization that he is in love with, and sexually attracted to, both his best friend Robby, who is gay, and his girlfriend, Shann. He might not know what to do about these feelings, he might not know what they mean, but he never tries to lie to himself about them.

I also love the fact that Austin and Robby have favorite poems, which they recite out loud to each other. According to Austin:

Robby’s favorite poem is Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. It is a poem about war and lies, youth and thievery. . . .

My favorite poem is The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Stevens. It is a poem about everything else: sex, lust, pleasure, loneliness, and death. . . .

Because favorite poems often reveal something about character, and because I suspected they might reinforce the underlying themes of the book, I sought them out to read in their entirety. Although very different on the surface, both call on readers to reject artifice and sentimentality in favor of seeing things exactly as they are – at least to the extent humanly possible. In “Dulce Et Decorum Est” a gruesome description of a World War I soldier choking to death on poisonous gas is presented in stark contrast to the slogan (“That old Lie”) used to encourage young men to enlist at the start of the war: “Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori.” (The Latin phrase, borrowed from Horace, can be translated as “it is sweet and right to die for your country.”) And in “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” we are told to “Let be be finale of seem.” This philosophy definitely informs Austin’s approach to recording history, as evidenced by the matter-of-fact tone and blunt language he favors in his narration, along with his commitment to objectivity: “I do not know why, but that is not my job. My job is saying what.”

If you like quirky, irreverent books with absurd plots, which also have depths you can plumb, Grasshopper Jungle might be for you. As Andrew Smith said in a February 18, 2014 interview with Walter Heymann, “. . . Grasshopper Jungle is very realistic, but at the same time, it’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s the same way our world is.”

Smith, Andrew. Grasshopper Jungle. New York: Dutton, 2014.

Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family, was released on October 20, 2015, two weeks before the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance was defeated in large part due to fears generated over bathroom access by transgender individuals. I learned about the book through the flurry of news coverage immediately preceding its release, and I was first in line for Lincoln City Library’s print copy. Written by Amy Ellis Nutt, it tells the story of the Maines family who, in January 2014, won a landmark civil-rights case against the Orono school district after school officials denied their transgender daughter Nicole the right to use the girls’ restroom.

The value of this book at a time when every news story about transgender rights results in a flurry of mean-spirited comments is that it tells the story of a transgender child and her family from day one. It allows those of us who have no personal experience with being transgender or raising a transgender child to glean, just a little bit, through the power of story and the willingness of the Maines’ family to share theirs, what it might be like.

The story begins in 1997 when Wayne and Kelly Maines adopted identical twin boys named Wyatt and Jonas. Despite having the same DNA and being raised in the same household, the boys identify differently from early on. Even before he’s three Wyatt prefers girl things and displays distress over being treated as a boy. The anecdotes shared to illustrate this early dissonance are poignant and heartrending.

By the time the boys are three Kelly is already doing research, trying desperately to understand what is going on with Wyatt. Wayne, on the other hand, is deeply uncomfortable with Wyatt’s gender nonconformity and disapproves of Kelly’s willingness to partially accommodate the boy’s toy and clothing preferences. Although Wayne clearly loves both boys, his initial response is to withdraw and leave the reins primarily in Kelly’s hands.

Interestingly enough, at least early on the boys’ friends and classmates had the fewest problems with their differing gender identities: Wyatt had no problem making female friends and bonding with them over “girl” things; the son of a family friend contradicted his mother when she referenced the “Maines boys,” telling her that Jonas is a boy and Wyatt is a girl; and at one point, when the twins are nine, Jonas tells his dad to face the fact that he has a son and a daughter.

It wasn’t until fifth grade, when the grandfather of a classmate complained about a boy using the girls’ restroom, something Wyatt (now Nicole) had been doing with school approval for some time, that things got bad. In response to the complaint and ongoing harassment by the boy whose grandfather had lodged it, the school eventually told Nicole she had to use a staff restroom. The continuing conflict and increasingly hostile school climate began to take a toll on the family, and in 2009 they decided Kelly and the twins would relocate to Portland. They also filed their initial lawsuit against the school district.

Although this was a difficult time for the family financially and emotionally, it was also a turning point for Wayne who realized he needed to step up to the plate and begin advocating for his daughter. He became the more public face of the family, eventually giving speeches, writing letters and essays that appear in national publications, and lobbying politicians. In this sense, the story of Nicole’s transformation is also the story of her father’s transformation as he opened himself to a reality unfolding in front of him that contradicted his expectations and beliefs.

Nutt, Amy Ellis. Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family. New York: Random House, 2015.

“Meet Ben Fletcher: Accidental criminal. Liar. Master of mohair.” So proclaims the cover of UK author T.S. Easton’s delightfully silly YA novel Boys Don’t Knit. Ben Fletcher is a 17-year-old good kid and worrier, who gets drawn into an act of juvenile delinquency by his misfit friends. Ironically, considering he was the most reluctant participant, and due in part to a series of unfortunate circumstances, Ben winds up in the most trouble when they’re caught. Placed on probation, Ben is required to keep a journal (hence the diary-format of the novel) and to take an evening class at the local community college.

Due to limited choices, he winds up as the only male student in an introductory knitting class. (Other options included a car maintenance class taught by his father; pottery taught by the mother of a female classmate he has a crush on; and Microsoft Office for beginners, which he describes as being “for grannies and people who’ve just arrived in civilization after having been raised by wolves in the Appalachians.”) The challenge for Ben is how to keep his participation in the knitting class a secret from his father, who wants Ben to share his manly interest in soccer, cars, and World War II, and his classmates.

Of course, Ben winds up being a natural talent at knitting, so much so that he is drafted to participate in the regional heat of the All-UK Knitting Championship, in the junior category. He also ends up REALLY LIKING knitting, not only the social aspects of class, but also the calming effect it has on his mind. It begins to take over his life: He listens to knitting podcasts; furtively reads knitting magazines at the store (hiding a girly magazine inside the knitting magazine when he sees his friends approaching so they’ll think that’s what he’s really looking at, when it’s actually the other way around); and even sets up an Etsy shop. Eventually, despite his best efforts, he’s “outed” at school by an administrator wanting to capitalize on his success as a young entrepreneur. As you can imagine, this leads to constant ribbing from friends and enemies alike, and while it is painful to Ben it makes for amusing reading.

There is a lot of humorously cringe-worthy material in this book (intentional on the part of the author) which we, the readers, get to experience along with Ben (though as readers we are in a better position to be tickled by it than Ben). This includes conversations between Ben’s parents, which are filled with food-based double entendres that used to go over Ben’s head but now cause him no end of psychic pain. We also get to read excerpts of his friend Joz’s horribly-written novel-in-progress, titled Fifty Shades of Graham, which he’s having Ben proofread. It contains winning lines such as “Her large chest heaved angrily at me.” All in all, Ben has a lot of crosses to bear. His voice, as he shares his experiences with us via his diary entries, is as delightful and appealing as can be, making this a wonderful romp of a read.

Easton, T.S. Boys Don’t Knit (In Public). New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2015.

I remember hearing buzz about Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain’s account of what it’s like to work in a restaurant kitchen, shortly after it was published in the summer of 2000. Interviews and reviews that surfaced in the media piqued my interest, but I never got around to reading it at the time. Since then Bourdain’s fame has grown due to his participation in several television series, most notably No Reservations and Parts Unknown. Finally, last week, my husband checked out the eBook edition from Lincoln City Libraries’ OverDrive collection. He laughed so hard he cried as he consumed it nightly before bed, interrupting my reading to share excerpts so frequently that I felt compelled to check out, download, and listen to the audiobook edition, read by Bourdain, himself.

Early in the book Bourdain describes the life lived by restaurant kitchen workers as a subculture. From his anecdotes, which my husband swears aren’t exaggerations (he cooked for two years while I attended library school), that sounds spot on. This is not a ponderous or philosophical book, though Bourdain does share interesting insights and opinions. The prose is raw, in-your-face, and eloquently crude. As Bourdain reads his own words one imagines this is just the way he speaks in real life, when not restrained by television censors. If profanity bothers you, this is not the book for you!

By the end of the book any illusions the reader might have had that cooking for a living is glamorous will have been completely shattered. Bourdain paints a picture of a physically and psychically hard life, where drug addiction and dysfunction reign. Kitchen crews are described at various times as pirate crews and mercenaries. It wouldn’t be the life for me, but I enjoyed reading about it!

Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group, 2001. Internet resource. (Listen to sample)

I know Eleanor & Park has been out for almost two years and many librarian-types have already read and loved it, but I just got around to listening to it this past week. I’m glad I did. It was evocative, filled with both angst and sweetness. The tragedy is that in the end Eleanor’s family situation is too dire to overcome by any other means than escape. I don’t want to provide a plot summary or review – those are plentiful elsewhere – but I will share a few personal thoughts/impressions:

• The fact that the story was set in Omaha in 1984, when the characters were 16, definitely brought back memories. Though I graduated from a Lincoln high school in 1983, Rowell’s descriptions of students’ styles and (sadly) interactions rang true. References to music, the Old Market, and coffee at Village Inn also firmly grounded the narrative in a familiar time and place.

• I loved Park’s parents, the way sometimes one was the good guy while the other was the bad guy, and then at other times the roles would be reversed. It seemed realistic, since as parents we each have blind spots as well as soft spots. I also loved the way the point of view switched back and forth between Eleanor and Park, sometimes moment by moment.

• While high school definitely wasn’t a high point in my life (I considered myself somewhat disaffected at the time) I was completely sheltered from the type of dysfunction in which Eleanor’s life was steeped. However, I’m sure I had classmates who, unbeknownst to me, lived lives very similar to Eleanor’s. This is why I absolutely abhor the fact that parents try to ban books like Eleanor & Park from school libraries. If a book accurately portrays the lived experiences of some students, it strikes me as condescending and dismissive to claim that it is “inappropriate” for other students to even read about it, especially if the subject matter is handled compassionately, in a way that may cultivate empathy. And what about the potential value to students living lives similar to Eleanor’s in seeing their own experiences in print? Eleanor is beaten down, but she retains a sense of self, her quirky point of view, and is able to experience moments of sweetness and acceptance with Park. Although she doesn’t get the proverbial fairy-tale happy ending, she survives long enough to escape – and sometimes in real life maybe that takes precedence over the stereotypical though not universal “happy highs” of high school (e.g. boyfriends/girlfriends, parties, football, prom). That seems like an important message to me.

Having finished Eleanor & Park, I’ve now moved on to Fangirl, another book by Rainbow Rowell. This one is set in Lincoln, on the University of Nebraska campus. The main character lives in Pound Hall, is an English major who hangs out in Andrews Hall, and haunts the north basement of Love Library. Ditto, ditto, ditto.

Rowell, Rainbow, Rebecca Lowman, and Sunil Malhotra. Eleanor & Park. Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group, 2013. Internet resource. (Listen to excerpt)