Review: That Pretty Pretty; Or, the Rape Play

Yes, a review of a play and not a book.  But this seemed like a good place for it, especially after my last review on Margo Lanagan and how I’d very much like to take her to see this play.  I went to see it with my husband because we know one of the actors in it, but I went having no idea what it was about.  How could I have guessed that it would be about two of my favorite feminist topics: the conflation of matrydom with strength and the male gaze.

This is a really difficult play (two people got up and walked out!) but I also laughed pretty consistently throughout.  It takes almost the entire play to figure out exactly what’s going on through all the layers of meta-narrative.  But because it’s so weird and funny (and I would say sexy but in the context of my relationship to the performer I knew that would be weird) you’re willing to go along with it.

So why am I writing about this here?  Maybe someone living in New York who loved Tender Morsels or knows of an older teen who did and wants to take them to see this.  Or anyone who isn’t squeamish about their intellectual ideas, because there is violence and rape and if you’re not laughing at it, you’re missing out.

Ticket prices vary, but use “FACE15″ to get $15 preview tickets.

Review: Graceling

Graceling – Kristin Cashore

Katsa serves her Uncle, the king, by killing and torturing anyone who threatens to wrong him. This is her skill, her grace, and just like some people serving the king can sing or cook or ride extraordinarily well, no one can match her ability to fight. She’s got a secret side gig where she fights for the little guy and tries to save the world from the abuses of power, but she still thinks of herself primarily as a killing machine. And then she meets a prince from another kingdom who challenges her to rethink everything she took for granted about her life and what she could expect from it.

I won’t say much about the plot, because descriptions of any of its action could quickly turn into spoilers. Even spoiling some of its small moments would be a shame because there were so many times where the anticipation and enjoyment of a banter-filled conversation brought me such joy, and my husband just started the book today. I think I read half of the pages twice because I enjoyed them so much.

Still, it only took me about a day to read the whole thing; I was fighting off a cold and so I hid in my office all day reading. But mostly I just loved this book. The often creepy plot (the bad guy is really scary), the romance, the LOTR-ish perilous journey towards evil, the romance (the romance is so fun). I want to start rereading it immediately but will probably settle for counting down the days (months) until the next book, a prequel, comes out.

I know I bring a very critical feminist eye to the YA books I read, or at least the ones that take on issues that I consider central to my feminism. From that perspective, there is a lot of meaty stuff here. And I appreciate that the two main characters often have different ideas about what constitutes strength, though I don’t think Katsa helps evolve Po’s ideas in the way he does for her. In fact, I might criticize what a Mary Sue he is, except that I love him too much and kind of believe he’s really that great. I like that the happy ending isn’t a happily-ever-after sort of thing and think that it was true to the characters. I like that Katsa uses birth control, and wants to teach girls how to stand up for themselves and fight, and completely trusts in her abilities and never apologizes for that. I like that Po turns into a term of endearment a word that a creepy, misogynist guy used to belittle and sexualize her.

So yeah, I loved this book and glad I listened to all the praise it’s gotten. I feel like I’ve been really lucky this year with highly-praised books. Which makes my decision to dive back into 2666 hard to keep since I just got What I Saw and How I Lied, The Spectacular Now, and Pretty Monsters today, since they are all also highly praised YA books that I’ve been looking forward to.

Review: He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut

He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut: And 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know – Jessica Valenti

This book is comprised of 50 short chapters on what Valenti considers to be the most ubiquitous and damaging double standards affecting women (and men to a lesser extent) in America today.  There are about 3 pages of discussion about the issue and then a short paragraph about what the reader can do to combat the problem.

For a real-life, grown-up feminist there’s not much new here.  There were no double standards I wasn’t already aware of and no arguments about why those things are bad that I hadn’t heard before.  I think this is probably best suited to young or burgeoning feminists, people who still think that hard work is all it takes and that being one of the boys is a sucessful coping strategy.  Though there is tons of cursing throughout, and a few too many exclamation points for my taste.

That said, I had a lot of problems with the book.  I think Valenti undermines otherwise strong arguments in favor of making emotional points that sometimes aren’t true, and ignores complexity to be pithy and sometimes inaccurate.  She expects us to take her pronouncements as true without anything to back them up, she refers to a lot of anecdotal evidence and studies and someone somewheres; she needs citations.  She even puts Joss Whedon on a pedestal he doesn’t deserve and acts like Buffy was a perfect example of feminist tv (I love both Whedon and Buffy, but he shouldn’t be given a free pass: lots of his female characters are problematic.)  I guess I don’t have the stomach for printed polemics, at least on the internet people include links.

I don’t have similar problems with her blog, Feministing, maybe just because the nature of blogging is different and I’m more forgiving when I can just skip posts I’m not interested in or disagree with.

Review: Under the Rose

Under the Rose: An Ivy League Novel – Diana Peterfreund

Senior year at Eli University kicks off inauspiciously when a botched initiation night leads one of Rose and Grave’s new recruits to bail on the whole society.  The first club to have female members in its 177-year history, their battle last year against the society’s “patriarchs” hasn’t united them as much as exposed the cracks in their camaraderie.  And now, both current members and patriarchs are receiving threatening, and specific, emails asking for money in return for silence about the society’s practices and the scandals of its members.  They try to band together to roust the traitor, but with everyone under suspicion, they find themselves drifting apart and different factions begin to form.

Amy, the narrator, has grown up a bit since the last book.  She’s still insecure about some of the wrong things, but it doesn’t take as much for her inner toughness to come out.  She’s smart and relatable, and this time she gets to have some hot (and moderately explicit) sex.  While I would add the first book in the series to YA collections, this one isn’t as neat a fit there.  But there’s nothing so objectionable that a teenager should be discouraged from reading it. 

It’s hard to discuss some of the themes of the book without spoiling the plot, but one of my main objections was what seemed to be the author’s blind spot about something, that turned out to be just the character’s, and ended up being dealt with well.  And I enjoyed how a lot of the characters were allowed to act like people and make mistakes and to be an ally or enemy depending on the situation.  It also tackled religion without being scornful of the whole enterprise, just the wackos.  I liked that the way the plot unfolded was true to to story that had been told all along.  There’s a lot of juicy wish-fulfillment, but also a lot of big ideas about networks and power and success and how women fit in.  I’d invite Amy Haskel to that dinner party I’d like to have with Frankie Landau-Banks.

Review: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Sophomore and former Debate-Club geek Frankie is tired of being overlooked and underestimated at her posh boarding school. Freshman year her problems were an older and more popular sister, a cheating boyfriend, and an unmemorable face. Now the issue is how very noticeable she became over the summer, growing up and out in all the right places. Almost immediately she snags a popular boyfriend, but her age and her gender conspire to keep her seeming innocuous. Frankie knows she should demand better treatment from her gorgeous, entitled, but still generally nice, boyfriend Matthew. But she doesn’t want to rock the boat because of how much she looks up to him and his golden-boy friends. When she discovers they all belong to the same secret society as her father, she is jealous not because of any power or influence they wield but because of the bonds they are forming that will help them throughout their lives. She knows that while she might be allowed to eat lunch with them, she will never fundamentally be one of them. Determined to earn their respect, she shadows Matthew and learns the secrets of the group. Seizing an opportunity to control their behavior without their realization, she begins orchestrating large-scale pranks meant as commentary on the role of privilege and control in all of their lives. Though sadly few students seem to understand the significance of the pranks, least of all the boys carrying them out.

Lockhart has always been one of my favorite YA authors and all of the reviews and mentions I’ve seen of this book have raved about it. I didn’t find it quite as compelling. It’s ideas, and they were Big Ideas, often overwhelmed the story and characters. Frankie is a type of feminist I am glad exists, one I would never want to be, but would probably enjoy arguing with at a dinner party. She is so thoroughly steeped in the norms of the patriarchal power structure that she thinks the only way to succeed is to be a better boy than the boys. And yes, “patriarchy” is a word used often in this book. Frankie also loves Foucoult’s Discipline and Punish which inspires in her the idea of fighting against the panopticon. With all the Big Ideas in the book, it was easy to get thrown off when I disagreed with the author/narrator’s point of view, though I probably agreed twice as often as I didn’t. Frankie is tired of feeling powerless and only feels like she isn’t when she gains the upper hand over the powerful men around her. Which she finally feels she has done by the end of the book when a friend and adversary admits he no longer likes her, but respects her. An interesting but flawed book for intelligent and socially conscious teens.