Post by Charlynn on Dec 16, 2010 22:33:44 GMT -5
Lock and Key
Before this past summer, I had never heard this woman - Sarah Dessen's - name before. Now, though, I swear, she is everywhere. My younger sister (20) - who is just starting to delve into the wonderful world of recreational reading - thinks she's the cat's pajamas. My 40 year old aunt stalks the bookshelves for the author's latest release. A girl that I have trained at work (17) has every single book the author has written, absolutely loves her. She told me so the first night we worked together. I've seen/heard several other high school students discussing her work while subbing this year so far. I accidentally stumbled upon her blog on LJ a couple of weeks ago, and our rather anemic local library has two of her works in their YA section.
Needless to say, I was curious as to why this woman was so popular.
I picked a random title - one of the ones the library had on its shelves, Lock and Key. Initially, I wasn't very impressed. In the first portion of the book, Dessen flows between the present and the past, but the time-line is vague, and I'm of the opinion that setting shifts should be clearly denoted by at least a separation of text. Now, this doesn't necessarily have to be a new chapter. Even in my own writings, I'm not that picky, but I also tend to show flashbacks in italicized print to differentiate it from the present storyline. However, once I got through this introductory portion of the book, I found myself slipping into the work and becoming interested in it... which, honestly, I had not expected to happen.
The general premise is of a seventeen year old high school senior who is abandoned by her mother. Her father split when she was a little girl, and her much older sister went off to college soon afterwards, leaving her alone with just her substance abusing mother. Through lies and manipulations by the mother, the main character believes that her sister abandoned her, too. For several weeks after her mother left, she lived alone in unsavory conditions until her landlords discovered her living conditions and reported them to social services. Suddenly, her sister is back in her life, and she's thrust into a steady home environment in a wealthy community.
Though her parents were not dead, in a way, she was an orphan, but I did not feel that this book fit into the archetype category as well as it fit into this one, because, although the work shows how she eventually becomes a part of a new family, the focus of this wasn't on the actual foster care system but rather upon the trust the main character must learn to have towards those people in her life, about the trust in herself she must find in order to enable her to trust others, and about the relationships she eventually builds with her sister, her brother-in-law, her next door neighbor (eventual boyfriend) who also finds himself in a less than savory home situation, her boss, and other people she encounters in her new, posh world that she never would have associated with before her mother left her.
I think that the best thing Dessen does with this book is keep it real. Whenever a slightly dicey situation would come about, I would cringe in anticipation of it being too cliched or juvenile, but I was pleasantly surprised when the author did not resort to these tactics I've seen in other YA novels (such as The Twilight Series). For example, when the main character is thrown into this life of privilege, she does not immediately take advantage of her sudden plush circumstances. She is hesitant to spend money on clothes, she insists upon working, and she struggles to accept the things people are trying to give to her. She doesn't immediately straighten out her life, twice slipping back into her old world by sleeping with a sort-of ex and also, on another occasion, getting extremely drunk and putting herself in a dangerous situation. And, when the two sisters eventually, finally, hear from their mother, the main character does not do the expected - she doesn't either immediately contact the mother to throw her faults back in her face and she doesn't just ignore her; she gradually decides upon sending a copy of her college acceptance letter, and that's it. Finally, what I think helped this book is that, underneath the exterior of a girl who has been abandoned by her parents, something most teenagers, I hope, have not experienced, this story is of an outsider learning to assimilate and trust, and that's something everybody has felt before - like they don't belong, making this book more universally relative than just another story about a modern day orphan.
Before this past summer, I had never heard this woman - Sarah Dessen's - name before. Now, though, I swear, she is everywhere. My younger sister (20) - who is just starting to delve into the wonderful world of recreational reading - thinks she's the cat's pajamas. My 40 year old aunt stalks the bookshelves for the author's latest release. A girl that I have trained at work (17) has every single book the author has written, absolutely loves her. She told me so the first night we worked together. I've seen/heard several other high school students discussing her work while subbing this year so far. I accidentally stumbled upon her blog on LJ a couple of weeks ago, and our rather anemic local library has two of her works in their YA section.
Needless to say, I was curious as to why this woman was so popular.
I picked a random title - one of the ones the library had on its shelves, Lock and Key. Initially, I wasn't very impressed. In the first portion of the book, Dessen flows between the present and the past, but the time-line is vague, and I'm of the opinion that setting shifts should be clearly denoted by at least a separation of text. Now, this doesn't necessarily have to be a new chapter. Even in my own writings, I'm not that picky, but I also tend to show flashbacks in italicized print to differentiate it from the present storyline. However, once I got through this introductory portion of the book, I found myself slipping into the work and becoming interested in it... which, honestly, I had not expected to happen.
The general premise is of a seventeen year old high school senior who is abandoned by her mother. Her father split when she was a little girl, and her much older sister went off to college soon afterwards, leaving her alone with just her substance abusing mother. Through lies and manipulations by the mother, the main character believes that her sister abandoned her, too. For several weeks after her mother left, she lived alone in unsavory conditions until her landlords discovered her living conditions and reported them to social services. Suddenly, her sister is back in her life, and she's thrust into a steady home environment in a wealthy community.
Though her parents were not dead, in a way, she was an orphan, but I did not feel that this book fit into the archetype category as well as it fit into this one, because, although the work shows how she eventually becomes a part of a new family, the focus of this wasn't on the actual foster care system but rather upon the trust the main character must learn to have towards those people in her life, about the trust in herself she must find in order to enable her to trust others, and about the relationships she eventually builds with her sister, her brother-in-law, her next door neighbor (eventual boyfriend) who also finds himself in a less than savory home situation, her boss, and other people she encounters in her new, posh world that she never would have associated with before her mother left her.
I think that the best thing Dessen does with this book is keep it real. Whenever a slightly dicey situation would come about, I would cringe in anticipation of it being too cliched or juvenile, but I was pleasantly surprised when the author did not resort to these tactics I've seen in other YA novels (such as The Twilight Series). For example, when the main character is thrown into this life of privilege, she does not immediately take advantage of her sudden plush circumstances. She is hesitant to spend money on clothes, she insists upon working, and she struggles to accept the things people are trying to give to her. She doesn't immediately straighten out her life, twice slipping back into her old world by sleeping with a sort-of ex and also, on another occasion, getting extremely drunk and putting herself in a dangerous situation. And, when the two sisters eventually, finally, hear from their mother, the main character does not do the expected - she doesn't either immediately contact the mother to throw her faults back in her face and she doesn't just ignore her; she gradually decides upon sending a copy of her college acceptance letter, and that's it. Finally, what I think helped this book is that, underneath the exterior of a girl who has been abandoned by her parents, something most teenagers, I hope, have not experienced, this story is of an outsider learning to assimilate and trust, and that's something everybody has felt before - like they don't belong, making this book more universally relative than just another story about a modern day orphan.