Saturday, July 26, 2014

The twist

Did you see it coming? Did you like the ghost element, or find it annoying? Did it work with the rest of the story?
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15 comments:

kc said...

This is a hard question for me to answer because I knew before I started the book that it had a big twist, so I was looking for it and consequently kept being suspicious of everything. So I feel like I saw "it" coming but maybe I didn't see it precisely, not in all its detail. That's the problem when a book with a twist becomes popular: It's impossible to go into it cold and experience it innocently.

Was she seeing ghosts or just hallucinating as a result of the trauma and the medication?

5:38 PM, July 27, 2014
cl said...

I also read there was a twist so, like kc, I was looking for it, which has the unfortunate effect, for me, of pulling me out of the story a little too often. Had I read anywhere that there was a "Sixth Sense" twist, I would have been pissed. I didn't see that coming.

I thought the twist we were waiting for had to do with, of course, how she was injured and who was responsible, so I toyed around with the same notions Cady had herself (rape?), an effort to knock her out of the inheritance race by one of her aunts, a suicide attempt over something to do with Gat or so on.

I would have been disappointed with a rape or incest storyline which, with Mirren's signs of illness (pregnancy?), seemed to be where we were being led.

In retrospect, I thought the clues to the "twist" were subtle. I did stop to wonder why Cady's young cousin called to ask her about drugs and ghosts when he had older siblings to talk to. And I also thought it was odd that Mirren, Johnny and Gat greeted her from the cliff and not with the others when she returned for her 17th summer. I would need to return to the text to note how often the others were clearly missing from overall family life, but the four seemed to work as a self-contained unit, so I glossed over that.

I think what made it a genuine "twist" for me was the assumption, regardless of what I searched for, that Cady was a victim of whatever happened and not a perpetrator.

4:09 PM, July 28, 2014
cl said...

Oh, on that note, I was very dissatisfied with the actual events surrounding the fire — however impulsive the plan, the stupidity of separating and not timing their actions. I didn't think it was very believable in the course of how the rest of the story was crafted.

11:45 AM, July 29, 2014
cl said...

KC, I think the author wanted us to lean toward believing that Mirren, Gat and Johnny were ghosts rather than hallucinations. The children's mention of ghosts and Aunt Carrie asking whether Cady had seen Johnny following one of her son's nightmares lent some credence to others perceiving something supernatural afoot. And those incidents, though in summer 17, seemed to be noted when Cady was more or less lucid (talking with real people and not her dead friends). Although all of summer 17 is at least somewhat suspect.

The ghosts also expressed sentiments I don't think Cady's mind could have worked out itself — rather than another dreamy, perfect summer, her friends expressed resentments over Cady's self-pity and lack of enthusiasm about her future. And Mirren's wishful thinking about the boyfriend she never had. And their fear the day Cady dove off the cliff. Of course that could be Cady's imagination, but it's an awfully sophisticated series of hallucinations if so.

Also, if all of summer 17 could be a delusion, it also could mean it never happened. For example, maybe Cady set the fire solo and can't accept that she's been ostracized from all of the family, and Gat, for her actions to prevent Gat from going away. The Sinclairs would be capable of that, given the way they shove matters under the rug. I think that's the least likely scenario, with too many holes at the end, but once there's a hallucination theory, many possibilities emerge.

12:05 PM, July 29, 2014
kc said...

I agree, c, the fire scene didn't quite come together, for the reason you said, and also because I'm not sure I buy these kids as arsonists. That's some pretty hard-core criminal activity.

12:07 PM, July 29, 2014
cl said...

Agreed, it seemed out of character to view that as the only option and to execute the plan so thoughtlessly.

2:12 PM, July 29, 2014
Erin said...

I guess the fire thing didn't bother me that much because they were drunk. That explains why they bungled it, doesn't it? Whether the arson was plausible in the first place, that's more iffy to me. But I did feel they were truly desperate. They felt their whole family, their whole way of life was at stake.

CL, I read it very much like you did. I felt like we were being guided toward a sexual assault or something, which would have disappointed me also. Excellent point about the real surprise being Cady's role as perpetrator vs. victim.

2:55 PM, July 29, 2014
kc said...

Yes, excellent points, c, on why the ghost explanation is probably the correct one. This brings up another interesting question to me too, and that is does YA work best when there's some fantasy/supernatural/ dystopian element involved? It seems like the blockbuster YA books — the ones that have crossed over into adult audiences — have been things like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight. Is it more palatable for adults to read YA fiction of that kind rather than straight realistic fiction written for that set?

(Tangent: I wonder how many teens are delving into "Shades of Grey" — are they even tempted by "adult" smut the way we might have been decades ago, now that they have such easy access to all manner of porn?).

Erin, good point about their inebriation impairing their reason. I had forgotten that they were drinking.

5:59 PM, July 30, 2014
cl said...

KC, that's a good question on the crossover appeal. The ones you cited that made it to film were also adventures stories and works in a series — a safe Hollywood gamble, maybe? I mean, I wonder if a really clever single-movie screenplay ("10 Things I Hate about You," which is genius, or maybe "Heathers") could get the same consideration today when Edward and Bella could just have hot, profitable vampire sex over the course of three summer blockbusters.

6:58 PM, August 01, 2014
cl said...

Also, from paying pretty close attention to what YA agents and editors are looking for right now, I think trends can top storytelling, much as they will tweet and blog otherwise. They say supernatural is out, and they're looking for the next something-meets-something. One of those "somethings" (Hunger Games, Eleanor & Park, etc.) is basically a call for a knockoff with a built-in audience that would be an easy sale.

7:11 PM, August 01, 2014
cl said...

I wonder about Fifty Shades, kc! I guess we'll see the YA interest when it's in theaters. That'll be the next one parents are losing their minds over, trying to keep the kids out.

I've read that Fifty Shades was originally fanfic about Twilight.

I'm really put off by the term "mommy porn" attached to that series. I think it's supposed to be a shaming device to attach a child's endearment to an x-rated concept, like mothers should restore themselves to Virgin Mary status once they've given birth. Not to mention targeting moms as the key audience, that other women (or men) are supposedly more discerning about what they read.

I started Fifty Shades once! It was bad writing. I put it down after Christian visits Ana at the hardware store, though I admit I was intrigued by his purchases.

You know, the thing is that once I hear I "have" to read something (The Da Vinci Code! The Fault in Our Stars!) something in me just rebels, and I won't do it. Then if it's about how there's something I shouldn't read, for nearly any reason, my dark little heart tells me to track it down.

7:48 PM, August 01, 2014
kc said...

Susan told me she looked at "Fifty Shades" and found it "unreadable."

I think it's funny that badly written porn always causes such a sensation. It's the same with "Game of Thrones." If those books didn't have a bunch of rapey stuff in them, they wouldn't be nearly as popular. It always boggles my mind to see someone at, say, the airport reading "Fifty Shades," like they WANT people to know that they are reading about raunchy sex. Some dude wouldn't sit there with an open copy of Playboy, but these women just read that shit openly, presumably because it has some "literary" everybody's-reading-it veneer. We did, though, have a teacher call us up and ask us to delete her answer to "What Are Your Reading?" because she thought better of it.

5:10 PM, August 07, 2014
kc said...

"I wonder if a really clever single-movie screenplay ... could get the same consideration today when Edward and Bella could just have hot, profitable vampire sex over the course of three summer blockbusters."

That's a brilliant point, C, and sad. Why is so much these days written as a series? Profit is surely the main reason, as you say. I tend to think a series is not usually something that someone has thought through as a complete work of art but is something that continues because it's essentially unfinished. I suppose the emphasis on character is another reason. It's probably easier to develop a character and set him adrift in various scenarios rather than creating something entirely new. It's too bad that so much of publishing seems to be mere marketing.

Do you think characters are sort of fetishized these days? This isn't entirely on topic, but I was reading an interview with an actress who was being questioned about the emotions of her character and her character's presumed feeling for other characters, and I found it so bizarre that this actress felt free to give definitive sounding answers as though her character existed off the page and out of context somewhere instead of being fundamentally confined to the script. I mean, it just seemed like the only answer you could give to such questions is "That character is a fictional creation and exists only in the script." But we have all this marketing and culture that give characters a "life" outside of the text. Even authors do it, like JK Rowling announcing — ex-post-text — that Dumbledore is gay. Dumbledore is not real! He can only be gay if he is gay in the text. You can't give him attributes that are not written down.

Can you?

6:08 PM, August 07, 2014
kc said...

(Also, I don't mean to make it sound like recurring characters are bad. They make perfect sense in some genres like mysteries, where you develop a detective or villain. But in other contexts the practice seems a little dubious and more like flagrant marketing).

6:13 PM, August 07, 2014
Erin said...

Yes, can't deny the money-making power of a series. (This, I think, is why there are three "Hobbit" movies rather than one.)

I have seen a lot of "50 Shades" talk on Facebook lately from educated and otherwise respectable women, and I can't believe they aren't embarrassed to say they're excited about the movie.

9:20 PM, August 07, 2014

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