Living in a War-Torn Future

Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now received a number of awards when it appeared about five years ago.  It’s a fine book, but I guess I’m not entirely sure why it won such acclaim.

Living in the near future, 15-year-old Daisy is sent by her father in New York City to live with her cousins in rural England.  (Daisy doesn’t get along well with her stepmother, she seems to have an eating disorder, she has spent significant time in therapy, the world is poised on the brink of war—it is for one or more of these reasons, presumably, that her father sends her away.)  Her teen-aged cousins are, in Daisy’s own view, an odd assortment.  When their mother—Daisy’s Aunt Penn—travels to Oslo (and then becomes stranded there by the outbreak of war), Daisy and her cousins are left to fend for themselves in a sprawling country manor.

Daisy finds herself falling into a sexual relationship with her 14-year-old cousin Edmond.  (Eww, gross.  I know!)  Fortunately for the reader (not so fortunately for love-struck young Daisy), the relationship is quickly broken up when British soldiers take over the family house, sending Daisy and her young cousin Piper to live in a safer, more remote part of the country.

Daisy and Piper soon find themselves alone, though, and resolve to return to the rest of their family.  As the two young women trek across the British countryside, struggling to survive, the novel hits its stride.

The character of Daisy has a genuine voice, the novel creates an interesting vision of a future in which small wars inspired by terrorists spread across the globe, and much of the book moves with the pace of a good action story.  The ending of How I Live Now definitely disappoints—not because it doesn’t end “happily ever after,” but because it just feels unfocused and rushed.  Still, I can imagine that there is a certain segment of young readers who will enjoy this book.

 

Letters from Prison

I’m not sure how I ran across Kalisha Buckhanon’s Upstate—I think that a friend may have passed it to me.  It’s been sitting on a stack of books for a number of years.  I was looking for something relatively short to read during a busy week, and Upstate fit that bill.

Told entirely as a series of letters, Upstate is the story of Antonio—a teen from Harlem who goes to jail for killing his father, a violent man who abused his wife and children—and Natasha—Antonio’s girlfriend, who dreams of a better life for herself.  In the letters, which span almost a decade, Antonio describes his feelings of anger, fear, and isolation; Natasha shares her own struggles on the outside with family, school, and future.

I have to admit that, for the first quarter or so of this book, I wasn’t sure if I would stay with it.  As I kept reading, though, I really became attached to the characters and their stories.  And—even though it has a few fairly graphic passages—Upstate is probably a book that a lot of teen readers will enjoy.

 

What’s Wrong with Boys Today?

In Boys Adrift, Dr. Leonard Sax examines—well, allow me to let his book’s subtitle do the work:  The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men.

With the declining academic performance of American boys and the “Failure to Launch” syndrome among young American men as his starting points, Sax devotes a chapter to each of the five factors that he faults:

1.  A change in educational philosophy in the past three decades.  According to Sax, the American kindergarten curriculum today looks a lot like the American first-grade curriculum of the past; five-year-old boys, he continues, are often not developmentally ready to sit in place for six hours a day to learn reading and math.  In addition, he suggests that current educational systems stress knowledge about things (the German Kenntnis) at the expense of knowledge as experience (the German Wissenschaft)—and young boys are often likely to be more engaged and interested in school when it includes real experiences in the world.

2.  Video games.  Sax acknowledges that the effect of video games on children is much-debated.  He argues, though, that video games (and especially violent video games) have an effect on brain development.  Video games may provide young males with a sense of control and power, but they also prevent those males from real engagement with other people and activities.

3.  The widespread use of prescription drugs to treat ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).  Sax presents powerful data and definitions to suggest that ADHD is incredibly over-diagnosed in contemporary America.  The drugs most frequently used to treat ADHD may have a lasting impact on brain development (even when those drugs are used for a relatively short time); lab studies indicate that these drugs may—in the long term—impede the part of the brain responsible for motivation.

4.  Environmental toxins.  A chemical used in the production of plastics (including the plastics commonly used in water and soda bottles) may be responsible for the onset of early puberty in girls and for a delay in development in boys.  These chemicals may be ingested by pregnant women (and transferred to children in utero) and by children themselves.

5.  The devaluation of masculinity in twenty-first century America.  One of the most important points that Sax makes in this section is that many boys and young men lack the necessary and appropriate role models to help them understand what it means to be men.

Throughout the book (and in the final chapter), Sax provides some practical advice for parents and teachers.  I would like to see a lot more of this advice, but—given that these are big issues—it’s understandable that Sax can’t provide quick and easy solutions.  The book’s lengthiest chapter (one that includes pages of emails from parents, young women, and young men in the “Failure to Launch” generation) is interesting, and it’s connected to the five problems discussed in the rest of the book, but it feels a bit like it’s taking the reader down a side street.

If you’re the parent of a boy—or if you’re a teacher of boys—this relatively short book is absolutely worth your time.  It raises a number of valid points for consideration and discussion.

 

Adventure in a Troubling Future

Two teacher friends recently read and recommended Neal Shusterman’s young adult novel Unwind.  It’s a fast-paced adventure story, and it raises some interesting questions, but it’s not quite up there with The Hunger Games.

After a second civil war (fought between pro-life and pro-choice forces), politicians in the United States adopt a compromise:  Women may no longer terminate pregnancies, but parents may have an unwanted child “unwound” between the ages of 13 and 18.  These unwindings take place at the nation’s (euphemistically-titled) harvest camps.  By order of the law, 99% of each unwound child is donated to people in need of organs, limbs, eyes, teeth, and brain tissue. 

The novel revolves around three characters:  Connor (a trouble-maker whose parents have decided to unwind the problem), Risa (a ward of the state who is selected for unwinding because she demonstrates no exceptional skill), and Lev (a slightly younger teen who is a “tithe,” a child chosen by his family for unwinding as a religious sacrifice).  When Connor learns about his parents’ plans for him, he runs away, meeting Risa and Lev as he dodges the police.

The three ultimately make their way to a safe house, but that is just the start of their journey.

Shusterman’s novel raises more issues than much young adult fare, but it’s not the strongest writing that I’ve encountered in the genre.

 

One of the Great American Novels

I used to teach American literature, which meant that I had the chance to reread The Great Gatsby every year.  I suppose that it’s been seven or more years since I last taught American lit, so I’ve been wanting to get back to Fitzgerald’s classic again just for pleasure.

This is such a powerful novel, and I found myself remembering some of the book’s exact words before I even read them.  There’s no point in me summarizing the story of Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan, Tom Buchanan, Myrtle Wilson, and Nick Carraway—you’ve already read the book.  (Please tell me that you didn’t rely on Spark Notes to get through a novel that is only nine chapters long!) 

Let me just say that—on this reading—I was really drawn to Gatsby’s desperate, sad, fatal desire to reclaim something from his past.  Here again are the final paragraphs of the novel, some of the finest lines in American literature:

And as I sat there, brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out Daisy’s light at the end of his dock. He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close he could hardly fail to grasp it. But what he did not know was that it was already behind him, somewhere in the vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.