BOOK REVIEW: POSTER BOY

by Dede Crane. Groundwood Books, House of Anansi press. Young Adult. 214 pages, trade paperback, 2009.

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Would you be willing to rearrange your entire life, to the point of alienating your peers, on the slim chance that doing so would save someone else's life?

Dede Crane takes the political and makes it uncomfortably personal in this engrossing book. Main character Gray Fallon is a middle-class teenager who enjoys getting high, chasing girls, and hanging out with his friends. He also likes to torment his younger sister, Maggie, who he calls Maggot. The abuse is not one-sided; Maggie calls her brother "Graydumb" (his full name is Graydon) and makes him feel intellectually inadequate. Maggie is a middle school scientist who is happy studying pictures of insects or experimenting with jars of rice.

The family dynamics are skewed when Maggie's mysterious pain leads to a doctor visit and a grave diagnosis. Gray's parents focus all their energy on Maggie's care. His mother neglects her silk-screen business. His father, a career academic, faces the crisis with sheer logic and facts. Gray becomes obsessed with finding the cause of Maggie's illness. He convinces his mother to jettison every product in their house which contains potentially dangerous chemicals. This includes cleaning products, shampoo, and meat- the family goes (mostly) vegetarian.

Crane gives her readers a crash course on environmental hazards and green living. Telling the story through Gray's eyes keeps Poster Boy from reading like a lecture or polemic on the dark side of consumer culture. He is basically insecure, with longish hair and a stoner's sense of humor hiding his real desire to help those around him. His attempts to hook up with popular girl Natalie and lose what he calls his "v-card" form an interesting subplot. Gray's friend Davis tries to overcome his own father's abuse by growing pot plants and spinning endless Chuck Norris jokes. It sort of works, just as Gray's efforts to clean up his lifestyle and raise awareness sort of work.

Gray eventually retreats from everything he knows. He comes to believe that his house, school, and part-time job at a theater are all fraught with danger. It is hard to argue with Crane's research. Our world is in need of help, and there are ways to reduce one's impact without going to the extremes that Gray eventually does. But in the end, this book is less about activism and more about acceptance. Each member of Gray's community must deal with the trauma of Maggie's illness. For Gray, this means coming of age and understanding that his family's need for him is greater than his need to make a statement.

Dede Crane, who has taught creative writing at the University of Victoria, said in an interview that she second-guesses her writing, marking up her own copies of her books with perpetual edits and revisions. As a writer, she is never satisfied with her knowledge or her decisions. She keeps writing anyway. That contradiction forms the central theme and conflict of Poster Boy. Gray will never live a perfect life, succeed in all his endeavors, or even answer his questions about life and death. But in attempting the impossible, Gray gains a life worth living and becomes compassionate. It is a necessary message for teen readers as well as adults.

Book Review: I'll Be Watching

Pamela Porter. Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, 2011.
Young Adult. 280 pages, paperback.

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About the author

Winter, 1941. Canada has entered World War II. Resources are scarce in the small prairie town of Anger. How long can four children, ages 7 to 16, survive in a house with no electricity, running water, or living parents to provide for them?

Though Addie, Jim, Nora, and Ran Loney have simple needs- food, firewood, education, love- Porter’s book about them is complex and intricate. It is a young adult novel, but it is also a prose poem along the lines of Ellen Hopkins’s Crank. It is a coming-of-age story, a work of historical fiction, and a ghost story, since the Loney kids’ parents Margaret and George stick around and add to the ongoing dialogue after their hardscrabble existence claims both their lives.

That dialogue is mostly one-sided narration, though recalled conversations between characters are important too. At times the book seems like a court document, with each character explaining how she or he helped or abandoned the Loney children in their time of need. If Porter ever decides to write a true oral history, of any era or event, I will want to read it. She has crafted a credible fictional one here.

The large cast of characters, and Porter’s efforts to combine so many different types of books, are sometimes problematic. For example, the citizens of Anger persecute Franz Lahr, the town’s schoolmaster. He is of German descent and was only begrudgingly tolerated even before the start of the war. In one scene, Franz tries to teach the children about propaganda and is met with blank stares. Since the subject never comes up again, and since Franz is soon removed from the narrative, one wonders whether Porter wants to make a point or is just giving her townspeople reason to further ostracize the unfortunate teacher. Either way, I would have liked to see Franz’s story developed more fully, and to see how his students dealt or failed to deal with the subject of propaganda.

In spite of such shortcomings, Porter does a superior job of pulling components from diverse types of texts and integrating them into a seamless unit. I could not find a reading level label on I’ll Be Watching, but I recommend it for eighth graders and up. Its multiple viewpoints and sparse exposition can discourage younger readers. I would definitely use it in my classroom to teach genres, voice, poetic devices, and even types and elements of sentences.

Book Review: Midsummer Night In The Workhouse

by Diana Athill.

House of Anansi Press. 2011. Paperback, 196 pages.

Diana Athill, former editor for Andre Deutsch and Costa Biography Award-winning memoirist, has penned a collection of genreless short stories held together by themes of conflicted love, moral ambiguity, and nonconsensual power sharing. This is her first collection; the stories here first appeared "between the 1950's and 1970's," according to the book's front flap. Of the twelve stories, only one, "An Afternoon Off", features a male protagonist.

What unites nearly all Athill's women are their ill-fated, awkward, or visibly doomed relationships with men. In "No Laughing Matter," Jane's boyfriend ends their relationship, refuses to sleep with her, and patronizingly offers to keep seeing her- "but less. Not alone so much." It is a slap in the face, and college-aged Jane is devastated. In "The Return," Englishwomen Jan and Sarah visit Greece. There they must outwit an old man and his nephew who proposition them on a remote island. Athill turns this awkward situation into an ominous one by making the old man the only available boat driver. This is a stark shift in power, since Jan and Sarah can afford a Greek vacation while the old man only has three teeth.

It is the kind of dynamic one comes to expect from Athill by the book's end. The stories are kept interesting by their variety. Sometimes the woman is complicit in her own downfall; at other times she only imagines she is. And the losses, of power, companionship, identity or status, are not always bad outcomes. In the last story, "Buried," Enid Klein reconnects with her brother after he wrecks their car and they must hike through the farmland of their childhood to get back home.

Not all women like literary books. But every woman has had a relationship, a family, a growing up experience. Every woman has, at some time or another, been wounded in love. For these reasons, Athill's book has something to offer every woman. Midsummer Night In The Workhouse is a revealing and surprisingly quick read. It is literary without being stuffy, universally true without being hackneyed. Athill's voice rarely offers comfort, but I left her book feeling more comfortable about gendered relationships and my role in them.