Voices, Voices Everywhere

 

About halfway through the winter break I sent a text to my team that began “Has anyone finished the mermaid book yet?” (Please note, if you have read said book, that I am not making a correction that would inevitably turn into a spoiler) As seasoned Smackdowners will recognize, what I was really asking was “Do I actually have to finish this book?” That would typically be the kiss of death as the whole team had either finished or was part way through our other book The Field Guide to the American Teenager, but there did not seem to be a lot of excitement for that choice either. So, I dutifully finished A Song Below Water in the waning days of a strange and silent holiday, and while it was a bit of a slog, I’m glad I did. 

 It’s not too surprising that over my years doing the Smackdown my impressions of our YA selections have often been colored by whatever else I might also have been reading at the time. This break, I had a few things on the go and one of them - perhaps speaking to a growing embrace of childhood nostalgia as I age - was a history of Marvel comics.  It was not long after I sent that text to my team and sunk back into Sean Howe’s Marvel Comics: The Untold Story (stubbornly ignoring A Song Below Water) that I recognized my own hypocrisy. What was my beef with A Song Below Water? Primarily, that it was making me wade through a whole alternate mythic reality in order to connect with some interesting characters and a social justice narrative I was intrigued by. Sounds an awful lot like the very thing that drew me to comic books as a youth. Stepping into that alternate universe actually helped me to connect with some important ideas and the storylines that I remember to this day, while literally colored by Spider-man or Captain America, were actually “about” things that mattered both then and now. Whether mermaids, sprites, gargoyles or gorgons are your thing or not, this book isn’t really about them, and I think for some kids, engaging with this mythic dimension could deepen their connection with - and understanding of - race, culture and social responsibility.

 All that being said, I can’t get around the fact that the book just flat out wasn’t singing a siren song to me (Groan!). It’s well-written, the characters are engaging and there are some important issues to grapple with regarding social equity and general teenage social dynamics, but for some reason, it just wasn’t a book that I was longing to come back to. I wonder if it was possibly that I didn’t hear too much difference between the voices of our two narrators (which is perhaps not too surprising given how close they are and some of their shared experiences) and there were a few too many times where I felt lost in the narrative as a result. As always, I’ll own that as a potential flaw in my own cognitive processes, but the fact remains that engagement was not an issue that arose with The Field Guide to the American Teenager. While I may not have been pining to return to reading it during my work day, when I settled in to it in the evenings I was happy to do so and legitimately curious about where things were going to go for our young narrator. 

 If I offered a brief synopsis of the plot of the novel, I am not sure it would differentiate itself much from any formulaic teen book/movie (high school cliques, dueling romantic issues, new kid in town, divorce is hard etc.), but for me the reading experience was an engaging one and it wasn’t just a matter of the narrator’s sometimes acerbic voice. Like most of us, I presume, Norris - while bright, thoughtful and articulate - isn’t quite as self aware as he thinks he is and the ultimate drama in the novel comes through his moments of self-realization, That sounds all heavy and deep, but there is a lot of snappy patter and titillating drama and Norris will take you along with him on his journeys of self-discovery. It’s maybe not quite Bridgerton (so I hear), but it’s a fun read and I could see it being a hit with a really wide-ranging audience in junior high and high school. The Field Guide to the North American Teenager is our choice to move on into the next round.