Tagged with YA

This is a book club book, so I don’t want to say much about it before I get the chance to talk about it with Celia. And that’s fine, because I don’t have a ton to say about it. A young goth punk alcoholic in recovery, whose father died a few years prior discovers Debbie Harry, falls in love, and realizes he’s a transvestite. It’s an area that’s not covered adequately in the literature, but I’m not sure it’s covered adequately here, either.

High school cheerleaders as government spooks hide in plain site behind their sparkles and designer bags. Sounds juicy, right? It's a real page turner; I went through it in about 24 hours. I totally recommend it to a teen, tween, or fellow adult young adult literature aficionado, and I'm requesting the 2nd installment (Killer Spirit) from NYPL as I type.

It's weird to me that Carrie Pilby seems to be marketed as a romance novel. Check out the Harlequin Teen edition cover. Although there is some dating, Carrie Pilby is not boy crazy. What she is, is crazy crazy, and seeing a shrink. A 19-year-old Harvard grad, Carrie is a little socially maladjusted, probably from skipping three grades. Her brilliant mind is inflexible, and she really can't make small talk. When we meet her, motherless Carrie has no friends and a frequently-traveling father. Her therapist gives her a to-do list and through completing the tasks on it (e.g., join something, go on a date, do things you love, etc.), she gets over some of her rigidity, superiority, and loneliness. It's surprisingly believable.

America is what's supposed to be a step from heaven for the Park family, when they emigrate there from Korea. Young Ju's family makes its way to the US when she is about four, if I remember correctly. The early parts of the novel, which chronicles her life until just before she leaves for college, are impressionistic, conveying how one's memory of childhood comes in flashes, not narratives. The telling remains episodic, though of course it gets clearer as Young Ju matures. Sometimes I don't like that kind of writing, but in A Step from Heaven it's just how she tells a sometimes painful story. Even the reader needs a little literary distance from Young Ju's abusive father, and from seeing the abuse turn Young Ju's American-born brother Joon Ho into a monster, as well.