I Can't Believe I Can't Make a Snappy Title Out of These Two Titles

I am pretty sure that I traditionally spend a bit of my first Smackdown blog of the year decrying the challenges of trying to choose books that often feel jarringly dissimilar. I’ve come to realize, however, that it is one of the charms of the Smackdown and it really showcases the ever increasing diversity in YA. These two books offer profoundly different reading experiences in two different genres, but I think they do share a larger ethos and I’m glad I had the chance to read them in juxtaposition. 

So, even though I am Canadian and was just a toddler when the tragedy of Vietnam lurched to an end, I am of that generation that has been profoundly shaped by that war. No, I didn’t have any real skin in the game, but when all those broken people came home to their even more broken country and started to process things through art, I was a part of their audience. I think there is a pretty good chance that I’ve consumed more film and text relating to Vietnam than almost any modern event (although 9/11 is probably running a close second), so I’m either the perfect reader or the worst reader for Elizabeth Partridge’s Boots on the Ground. And while I think I brought that ambivalence into my reading experience a bit, ultimately, it won me over. If you have a pretty good grasp of the Vietnam experience, you’ll still enjoy reading this book; and if you have little to no knowledge of this event, I don’t think you could do much better in establishing foundational knowledge than you will after you move through these tight 200 pages. There are emotional nuances here that resonate through both the political and personal narratives woven through the text and while I’m not sure I emerged with any jaw-droppingly new realizations, I was left feeling like I’d experienced something and met some interesting and important people. One of my barometers for any Smackdown book is taking stock of who the kids are that I would give this book to. Now, certainly, as a classroom teacher, I would have loved to have this as a resource when teaching Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, and as a dad, I’d love to be able to have my kids sink into this before they watched Apocalypse Now, Born on The Fourth of July etc. I struggled, however, to think of a kid I would give this to (Although I did find one on Monday morning, oddly enough. Thank you Daniel Liu!), but I think that almost any kid could read that prologue and be captivated enough to keep going for at least a bit. It is a perhaps surprisingly crafted piece of non-fiction and I’m sad to see it go so early in the contest as it does deserve a broader audience.

But go it must, as we need to move We’ll Fly Away on to the next round. As I noted above, these books are not as different as one might expect; they both have soul and share an abiding concern with how systemic failures of the heart and the imagination can destroy our young. The plot of We’ll Fly Away, were I to describe it, would appear to be befitting of a more traditional YA novel, but when I finished it on Sunday night I realized that it is not ultimately a YA book. Let me explain: as with the previous book, I struggled mightily with who I would give this book to, and ultimately, I don’t know that I could give this book to a kid with a clear conscience. Now, it is not ultimately as disturbing as a laundry list of other books that have appeared in The Smackdown over the years. (Brad - Was it Nothing that shook us up so bad a few years back?) Here’s the thing, I could give this book to a hundred kids who would not recognize the characters in this book except as characters - bad dad, jock with heart of gold, etc. - and they, even if they had that same heart of gold and the social conscience to appreciate what Bliss called his “death penalty book” they will never really understand how true this book really is. On the flip side, there are kids who would read this book with a sense of profound recognition; as if someone has cracked open something inside them and peered into a place they thought they had locked down. I could not give those kids this book, because at their age I do not believe they could read it and see anything resembling hope in it. I do believe that you can read this book as an adult and find a deep sense of hope both for the characters in it and - as trite as it sounds - for a far better society than the one we have crafted. That’s pretty heavy, I acknowledge, and even as I struggled to write that, this is the line from A. S. Byatt that was running through my head: “What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don’t read the books.” 

Ultimately, what sold me on this book was not the compelling plot, the well-crafted characters, evocative imagery and symbolism or the profound understanding of trauma that bleeds through these pages. Those are all good reasons to read the book and move it on to the next round, but what Bliss recognizes throughout this novel is the profound power of the unfinished. Each of these characters contains multitudes - and here, I think not even so much of Luke and Toby but more, of Lilly and Annie - and it is here that the hope lies in this novel. There are no happy endings in this novel: Luke will not find his Bryan Stephenson (whose voice echoes throughout this novel) coming to save the day and Lilly will not look wistfully up to the sky on a rainy day in Seattle. In spite of that, however, this is a novel that testifies to the only real hope that matters: to see each other not only as we are, but as who we can be.

So, yes, we were all in agreement that We’ll Fly Away will move on, but I have not vetted these near midnight ramblings and want to acknowledge that my argument – that even our best and brightest might have to wait a bit to truly appreciate this novel – does not necessarily represent the thoughts of all our group.