Book Musings: The Carbon Diaries

The Carbon Diaries 2015

I once picked this book up and read the first twenty-odd pages at the Barnes and Noble at home. I didn't buy it then, but when I saw it on display at the Harvard Co-Op last week when I was spending all my money on books I took a second look.

The main character Laura-- whose name I just had to look up and I finished this yesterday-- lives in London (well just outside) in 2015 when the world is destroying itself and Carbon is on rationing. She's supposedly a hard-core girl, in a punk band, just trying to get by.

I couldn't connect connect with her at all. She was very much a character "trying to be a teenager" in a cautionary tale. She's whiny, and I think we're not in her head enough, even though it's a diary. She rarely feels, making it hard to understand her. The world felt too far from ours to exist only five years (six at time of publication) hence. Her romance at the end felt too sudden, too "oops, need to give her a new boy" but what I think killed it for me the most was how absolutely absurd her parents were.

There are negligent parents all over YA. In a story dealing with the damage wrought on the present by past generations, yes there will be a little bashing of that generation. But her parents-- all the adults-- were so outlandish that I had trouble accepting the rest of the world because of them. They raised pigs, joined cults, drove fruit wagons. They were completely oblivious to both of their daughters until the very end of the novel and had pointless traits-- the mom was from New York but only to give Laura cousin there who she could write too and see how much better off they had it and explain Briticisms.

The ephemera in the novel is also printed with incredibly small text, and made the read less complete for me because I couldn't make it out. It was about two hundred pages too long too, a danger of diary books.

The idea is good, but the follow through? Not so much.

Book Musings: The Hate List

Hate List

Initially I had difficulty relating to Valerie's character, not because she was unsympathetic or unrecognisable, but because she existed in relation to her boyfriend, Nick, who had been the perpetrator of a school shooting. She was only real in relation to the crime, it seemed, and it took me a long time to be able to picture her physically or as a person. In a way, this was a deliberate choice by Brown, because Valerie doesn't know who she is initially either.

It took a long time for her to become a character independent of her plot-- this is interesting, because at the end Brown notes that Valerie came to her fully-formed. If I didn't have this knowledge, I would have imagined she wanted to tell the story of a shooting and crafted Valerie because of this, not the other way around.

The plot is structured non-chronologically, starting with Valerie's return to school and then flashing back to the time during and surrounding the shooting. I understand her reason for doing this, because it's about aftermath, not before...math. However, I think this choice should have been committed to. There's enough backstory in the text not-in-flashback that it could have stood on its own. That, or start with the shooting-- conventional, yes, but a good hook. That would, of course, change the tone of the book, so I think the first choice is the best.

This book was FILLED with secondary-characters. Some of them were unnecessary. The art teacher seemed to have very little role when Valerie was discovering art by herself. I could never picture Valerie's mother fully, though she did have an interesting character. I needed more physical markers. Her brother's defection and anger at her is never dealt with, and is jarring when he had been so supportive. In general, the cast was well-fleshed out, but could have used tightening. Characters easily could have been combined.

Nick was a great character--though perhaps Shakespeare is a cliched love for a troubled teen-- he was well-rounded and the least likely character to be well-rounded in a book about a shooting. The final scenes made me cry, with one poignant detail about a boy being shot after he had just met his baby brother in the hospital. I don't know why it triggered tears; the dark irony, maybe, but I admire this book for that moment. I was definitely invested in Valerie, but I'm not sure she could exist outside the novel. It's like a pH test. Maybe she scores a 6, but she's not perfectly balanced.

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Airlines

We interrupt this period of finals-time under appreciation of this blog to bring you a story about a young woman who had a horrible experience with United's disability policies. As a Cane Wielding Traveller I cannot imagine going through this. Please read and give her your support

http://evilpuppy.livejournal.com/365126.html

New York, New York!

I just returned from the city that never sleeps. One thing that shocked me as I visited with my friends was that the NYC subway is one of the least accessible I've seen.

Now, I was told all the buses are handicap-equipped and special cars run along the subway line for us gimps, but when I say it was less accessible than London, take note. I found myself longing for an escalator, and throwing my hip out a little from the stairs. There were elevators, yes, but not too visible and I would be dubious about using them. Just noticing.

I'm moving to Boston next year, so more observations from there, in additional to another summer in London

Taken Over by the Fear

I have come to the conclusion that people who have not had a lot of exposure to disability are not just ignorant. I think that they are afraid of the disabled, and not in the way other people have said. I don't think it's a fear of the unknown or the 'that could be me'. I think it's because of the token factor.

Let me explain. In media that attempts to portray both the abled and the disabled, often there is one disabled character. The "token". Except there isn't just one person, one type of disability in the real world. There are as many, if not more, different types of the disabled than the abled. We work through it in different ways, and have different needs. This scares people because it means that there is not one fix-all solution.

In my battles with various disability resources my mom is often saying: "they probably don't have many cases like yours", which is true. I'm a product of the generation just starting to, and starting to be able to, raise their disabled kids to have the same expectations as the non-disabled.  I need help to make that happen, but not the sort of help they are used to getting. I don't need the PCA/note-taker/tuition sort of help. I need the luggage-shipping/laptop/application fees sort. Unlike some of the others with disabilities, usually not physical, I cannot work and attend school. At the same time, undergraduate is not my end goal. I have more than that to give.

There it is. What I have to give. People with disabilities have things to give, the same as the non-disabled. The trouble is, the support to do these things is different for each person. A non-disabled artist can wait tables and then go home at night to create. Then they become a success story, or they fail and find a different route. But if you don't have the physical stamina to do both, then you cannot do either. Social Security does not give the money per month that a minimum-wage, part-time job does. Even with Medicare, that's not enough for a dreaming twenty-something, and so without finding their own way the disabled are not allowed this path. Oh no! one shouts. Taxpayer money should not go to people who may not succeed!

Maybe that's it, then. Maybe many of the abled are afraid of taking a chance. The disabled take chances almost every day. Eventually you grow numb to the fear, even if you're always afraid. And, if you're like me, you don't accept the contingency plan they give you, the one that is based around what you cannot do. You alter the one based around what you can do, combining what is possible and what is practical. You do this, in the hopes that one day they will stop being afraid and then you will be able to do what is imaginable. You tolerate the college disability coordinators who are better with learning disabilities than physical ones, and the doctors who are used to the ones who don't talk back. You encourage the next generation, because eventually hope will win out.

And I'm not saying every disabled person has a talent for the arts, or is above average in skill. Not every abled person is, nor does every abled artist have the chance that they could have. However, they should have that chance, or be allowed to do what they can succeed in doing without question. That's all I'm hoping for.

My mom says I'm not practical, but when I jump I usually land on solid ground. Maybe this dream will too.

What I Am

I met a girl a few weekends ago named Danielle. Her brother was attending a scholarship competition at my university, and I approached because I know how hard Oglethorpe is to navigate with a disability. Danielle is in a wheelchair, you see.

She grinned. No. Everyone had been very helpful. They had to take some weird routes, and sketchy elevators, but she wants to apply to Ogle when she's looking at schools. I was shocked, because when everyone else was assuming she was the student going through, I never did, because I thought that even my wonderful school might not be worth that fight. I'm drenched in the daily compromises I make in order to not make a fuss. I go up three flights of stairs when I have to, I never asked for the key to the service elevator. But if I did, if I had maybe people would have woken up just a little bit more.

Things are going well. Internship wheels are turning. Hyperbaric on my leg is going okay, though mornings are rough. Still love my school.

Oh. And I got into grad school at Simmons College in Boston. Not sure where I'll go, but I have somewhere!