![]() Anita’s only characteristic is her quest to follow that trope where someone used to be obsessed with school and then follows their real dreams. Uh…another trait, another trait – oh! He – he skateboards! Eliza is simply a manic pixie dream girl. ![]() His traits, you ask? He, um, says “yo” a lot. His only traits are: a) he plays basketball and b) he is nice. Peter is the most vanilla male character I have EVER read. And it starts to seem like such a little thing to do to make somebody so happy.” GAG ME. But to me, it’s always seemed really pure. Eliza’s explanation of why she has sex is the most disgustingly-f*ckboy thing I’ve ever read: “I think we have this idea that it’s bad, the way dudes are always thinking about sex. (Maybe that’s where she got her name.) I CAN’T STAND when male authors are clearly writing their ideal woman as a character, and I’ve never seen it done more than it is here. And the worst offense in my book: Eliza is the biggest manic pixie dream girl since Kirsten Dunst in f*cking Elizabethtown. Gender roles abound (when a character’s family is described as uber-normal: “His dad had some kind of job that involved an office and suits and ties, and his mom stayed at home and cooked things and generally acted mom-ish.” Like, are you kidding me?!) and Wallach’s research for his female characters seems to have been just through bad sitcoms (“‘Boys never understand anything,’ Anita said, and though it didn’t technically follow from what they’d been talking about, it was the kind of statement that was always appropriate-at least in a roomful of girls”). Snooze.įor having one of his characters justify not liking The Great Gatsby by saying Fitzgerald didn’t like women, Wallach sure doesn’t seem to like females here. Eliza is a beautiful girl who has sex, and Anita is a beautiful girl who aspires to. This is a multiple-perspective book, and two of the POVs are female: Anita and Eliza. ) But when it got there, hoo, boy, did it arrive. If you give Emma a book that slowly turns up the sexism, she’ll keep reading – so she can review your terrible book and f*cking end you. ![]() If you give Emma a book that is sexist from the start, she’ll put it down right away. (It’s like that saying about the frog in the pot of boiling water. The sexism in this book was slow to emerge. Unless you count darling Eliza’s forcefully included interest in experimentation. Simply put, it’s gross.Ĭan you say plot device? There was a transgender character who was never mentioned without a reminder that he was trans: once, he’s even referenced as “Jess-who-used-to-be-a-girl.” This is the only example of a character that isn’t cis and straight as they come. The way Wallach treats this issue is deeply uncomfortable and based on senseless, unfounded generalizations. The character of Anita is black, and she has a difficult relationship with her parents, who push her too hard. The thing is, he obviously has nothing figured out. The entire thing screams of a white guy who thinks he has race “figured out” and now desperately wants to spread his knowledge around. What I have a problem with is a white male doing it like Wallach does here. I have no problem with white authors writing POC characters, obviously, because diversity is so, so important in YA books. This was my first warning sign for this book. characters (specifically the female ones) coverage of social issues (especially race, sexism also including LGBT+) ![]() Here’s a list of the general categories of what Bugged me with a capital B: Many of you know that the second I take out my teeny book-review notebook, I’m about to be one angry reader. Did I almost donate a book I’ll end up giving 5-stars? From the get-go I loved Wallach’s writing style (and by style I mean word choice, NOT CONTENT, bleh) and I thought there was some promise to the premise. I almost unhauled this book and then figured I might as well give it a shot. When I read the first dozen-or-so pages of this book, I was thrilled. If you don’t like that one, I also considered this: Tommy, my man, Ayn Rand called! She wants to congratulate you on using fiction as a vehicle for your beliefs even more than she did with f*cking Atlas Shrugged ! Hey, Tommy Wallach, Urban Dictionary called! They want to know if they can use the entirety of this book as the example of their definition of “mansplaining”! Two months to become something bigger than what we’d been, something that would last even after the end. That gave us two months to leave our labels behind. They said it would be here in two months. The athlete, the outcast, the slacker, the overachiever.īut then we all looked up and everything changed. Synopsis: Before the asteroid we let ourselves be defined by labels:
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