The Hate You Give, vs. Optomists Die First

The Hate you Give is a book far outside my frame of reference and experience.  The book speaks to the experience of a poor black female in a racially tense American ghetto.  It is a book with a message, both personal and political.  The book speaks about the struggles and injustices perpetrated and experience by both sides of the racial divide - the white establishment, and the black “gangster”.  But while the book tries to promote an understanding of racial tension from both sides of a complicated issue, it became cumbersome and complicated, with too many threads that did not really tie together realistically. The book becomes preachy, with stereotyped conflicts moving to full-blown crises exceptionally quickly, and with unrealistic changes of personality occurring almost overnight (witness Starr going from reluctant witness to bomb throwing protestor in one fell swoop.) There are sections of the book that recite reams of information, not because it adds to the plot, but because the author has a political message to convey.   This is information that is politically important, but feels like it a lecture. 

One of the greatest strengths of The Hate You Give, is Starr as a main character.   She works through complicated and dynamic relationships.  Almost as well created are the characters of the father and mother, and possibly Uncle Carlos (less so).  But woven in to these complicated and interesting lives are flat characters that seemed unrealistic.  Perhaps the most unlikely is Ofrah, a community organizer and activist, and interestingly uninteresting.   Another disappointment is DeVante, a character that could have had much more depth, but comes across as a case study. 

The Hate U Give is quite preachy, with the story lectured to the reader.  It is an important story because of its message, and I felt like I should empathize or at least sympathize with the story line.  At least for me, I felt almost guilty that the importance of the story was overshadowed by the perceived “literary finger wagging”, and shallow supporting characters.   Almost…

 Optomists Die First initially had my attention.  I liked the Canadian setting in Vancouver and Toronto, with timbits thrown in to make me feel at home.  The pace is fast moving, and I liked the flow of the story line.   Unfortunately, I was bothered by the representation of Mental Health issues.   Within the first 5 minutes of reading this book the protagonist has obsessively used hand sanitizer, fainted during a presentation, and checked bookshelves to ensure shelves would not fall over.  Symptoms were frequent but inconsistent, like haphazardly opening the DSM* and pointing your fingers at random to another mental health issue. The characters seemed to be defined by nothing more than their mental health issues. 

It is not that the book was poorly written, but the portrayal of the subject matter of mental health is both simplistic and stereotyped.  For example, Petula suffers from (among a plethora of other mental illnesses) anxiety, but this anxiety miraculously dissipates once Petula falls in love.  The love itself is a kind of “insta love” that by definition, should be shallow, but ended up being deeply felt, with a very mature and adult like understanding of the tension between telling the truth and wanting to maintain a perceived persona.  In a book that is dealing with the complicated issues of mental health, it is incongruous that the very real issues of “perceived self” vs. ‘true self” can be so lightly ignored.

So… admittedly, I did not make it through the book.  I liked the “quirkiness” of some of the characters.  I liked the plot, although it was highly predictable.   But the shallow depiction of a serious issue like mental health, the predictability of the plot, and the unrealistically deep understanding of relationships in a young, anxiety bound, adolescent character had me closing the book before I read another DSM diagnosis. 

*DSM:  Diagnostic Statistic Manual.  Used by mental health professionals to identify psychological and psychiatric disorders.

Our vote:   The Hate You Give, but more by default than merit.