STACKED

books

OCD Love Story by Corey Ann Haydu

|

Bea has OCD.

Bea doesn’t identify as someone with OCD. She doesn’t exhibit a lot of the trademark signs of the mental illness — she doesn’t really have compulsions or obsessions. Or at least, she tells herself she doesn’t, and by extension, she convinces us as readers she doesn’t have them. But slowly, as OCD Love Story unravels, Bea comes around to the idea that the things she does which other people don’t do are precisely what mark her illness.

It’s a school dance, and Bea’s at the local all-boys academy. When the power dies, she finds herself sitting beside a boy with whom she strikes up an immediate conversation and kinship. She can’t see Beck, but she knows she likes him right away. Even though he’s tentative about her seeing him, she pushes. She wants to know who this boy is. But when the lights come back on, she’s lost him and she knows nothing of him except his name. Maybe she’ll see him again. Maybe not.

When Bea shows up for her next therapy appointment, it’s all routine: she gets there early enough to grab the seat nearest Dr. Pat’s office, where she can listen to the session before hers. It’s a couple — Austin and Sylvia — and they’re having issues. Bea takes copious notes about them, including what they’re saying to one another, what their challenges might be, what she imagines their life at home must feel like. As Dr. Pat calls her into the office that day, she drops not only the bomb that she’s suspecting Bea’s challenges are due to OCD (and specifically the compulsions) and worse, Bea’s going to start going to group therapy. Such therapy would be good because it would allow for meeting other people who are suffering with similar problems and more importantly, it would provide her an opportunity for exposure therapy.

And it’s at the first group therapy session when Bea reunites with Beck. How many local boys have that name? She recognizes his voice. She recognizes him as him.

Beck has OCD. The things he told her about the night at the dance make sense. And more than that, Bea becomes aware of how his OCD manifests quite quickly. Their first “date” happens when Beck asks her to take him to the gym after therapy. Because he told his mother his sessions lasted three hours, when really, they were more like an hour. Those additional two hours were for his working out.

Even though she sees it immediately in him, Bea is blind to how her own OCD manifests. We as readers are blind to this for a long time, too. She is an expert at hiding it and revealing it to herself — and us by extension — slowly. Rather than tell us, rather than even showing us, she experiences it, and as readers, we experience it right along with her. We are there as she drives to Austin and Sylvia’s house over and over. We are there as she pinches her thigh hard to stop herself from acting upon something. We are there as she panics when she starts to drive and when she has to pull over. We are there when she tells us about the scrapbook from the boy who did something violent. As Bea has her ah ha moments thinking about her past, particularly when she tells us why it is she ended up in Dr. Pat’s office for therapy, we see more of the backstory. We see more of the forward progress in these moments, as well.

Bea is very sick, but she doesn’t show it off in the ways people would expect of someone with OCD. She fixates on people and on their lives. She stalks people she becomes fascinated with, even at the expense of those relationships in her life which are good and strong. Bea has a solid family unit, and she has a great best friend. But those are things she can’t wrap her mind around. She sees other people’s lives as so much more interesting and so much better than her own, even when it’s clear they are not. But she fears tremendously that things could change in an instant. She worries about sharp objects, about violence, about glass and knives and the pain they could potentially inflict upon anyone she loves and cares about.

She does have a huge moment later in the story recognizing this — and it’s one of the most painful moments of exposure therapy that she could have never planned. When she comes to understand that the image in her head of Austin and Sylvia’s rock star life isn’t what she’d imagined, Bea has her understanding of just how ill she is and yet at the same time, just how okay she is.

OCD Love Story has a bit of a misleading cover. This isn’t a light-hearted romance. There is indeed a budding romance here, and there’s sex and talk about sex (Bea’s not really ashamed of being sexually active), but I wouldn’t call what Bea and Beck experience traditional in any way. Those looking for a romance won’t really find it here — there isn’t hand holding, there aren’t first kisses, there aren’t moments that are really swoon-worthy. In many ways, I’d argue that almost makes the romance more authentic, but that’s to the real world, rather than the fictional world.


OCD Love Story does not have a misleading title, though: this is a love story through and through. It’s a love story to Bea coming to understand herself and coming to love herself, despite the very serious issues she’s tackling with internally. It’s Bea wrestling with loving those who are around her and support her because of and in spite of these things. Lish, her best friend, is an excellent friend. Haydu took serious time to craft a fully-fleshed cast of supporting characters in Bea’s life, and even though her lens is skewed throughout, we as readers recognize this skewed perception. She allows us this, telling us in one breath than Lish is doing something really nice for her and then immediately questioning whether Lish is sick of her or is just being nice because she feels obligated to do so.

Haydu’s writing is strong. Bea’s got a great voice, and she’s convincing in how she presents herself both to herself and to us as readers. She doesn’t seem sick. But slowly, she breaks. And as she breaks, it’s not because she’s presenting readers a show. It’s because she’s realizing she herself isn’t strong enough to keep up the charade, and she knows she doesn’t need to be (I think we can attribute part of that to her relationship with Beck — he’s never there to save her, but she’s there beside him as he struggles with his problems and she realizes it’s okay to be weak and allow people in when she needs it). This book will get under your skin as you watch someone who appears so strong crumble a little bit. Then crumble a bit more. Then break completely. And yet, as you watch this happen, you can’t help but feel like it’s going to be okay for her. There will be a bottom to the fall, but there’s a nice net there to catch Bea. The craft here is solid.

Pass OCD Love Story to those readers who want a straight on, unashamed look at mental illness. This is the kind of book that will realign their thoughts on what OCD is — it’s not just one of those challenges that can be the butt of a joke. You don’t have OCD if you check your alarm’s settings three times before bed every night. It’s not something that is easily recognized by those suffering, and Haydu does immense service to that with Bea. In many ways, this book is scary. It’s scary to experience the suffering right along with a character in a way that feels like it’s happening to you, too. In many ways it’s voyeuristic, but it’s through this lens that the book is so successful and powerful. An excellent, worthwhile debut novel. I’m eager to see where Haydu will go next.

I liked this book so much I called it my July favorite over at Book Riot’s monthly roundup.

OCD Love Story is available now. Review copy received from the publisher or picked up at BEA or something. 

Mini-Trend: Seven Kingdoms

|

I love maps in my fantasy novels. There was a period in my teen years when I wouldn’t check out a book unless it had a map. A detailed, colorful one, preferably. Looking at so many maps over the years, I’ve picked up on a few trends. The most recent one I’ve noticed: seven kingdoms, seven realms, seven countries.

Often the number is included in the official name of the world. Sometimes it’s just a descriptor. Seven has always been popular with fantasy writers, I think (J. K. Rowling has said the number has always held a special magic for her, and she’s not alone), so I suppose it’s not surprising to see. But a reader can’t be blamed when the worlds all blend together in her head as a result.

Links lead to places where you can see the official maps. I feel certain there are some I missed – let me know in the comments.

The Seven Kingdoms of Westeros
from the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin

I suspect some of the popularity of the seven kingdoms/realms/countries can probably be traced to Martin. Despite the much-used phrase “the seven kingdoms,” even some fans are confused as to what the seven kingdoms really are – the seven countries of the region before they were conquered and united by Aegon, which happens before the book series begins.

The Seven Kingdoms
from the Seven Kingdoms trilogy by Kristin Cashore
It’s not only the name of the world, but the name of the book series as well.

The Seven Realms
from the Seven Realms series by Cinda Williams Chima
Same for Chima’s series, which I’m sure I’ll get around to reading some day.

The Seven Kingdoms
from Prophecy by Ellen Oh
By the time I got to this book I was thoroughly confused (though Oh’s series is refreshingly based on a historical culture of the East rather than the West).

The Seven Kingdoms of Annar
from the Pellinor series by Alison Croggon
I’ve had the first book in this series sitting on my shelf for a while, but haven’t dug in.

The Lumatere Chronicles barely escapes this list with eight countries in its world of Skuldenore (though it can be argued that with Lumatere in such an ambiguous place for most of the book, it essentially only has seven).

Public Library Association Conference — I’ll be there!

|

I put in a proposal to present at next spring’s Public Library Association Conference with three of my closest professional colleagues (who are obviously also good friends): Drea, Katie, and Angie. You may remember that the three of us presented together at the YA Lit Symposium last fall in St. Louis, so we know we work well together and when we get talking about library-related stuff, we love to talk about it out loud and with others.

We waited patiently — and maybe impatiently — to hear back. And today we heard that our proposal was accepted.

So you’ll be able to hear us talk in Indianapolis on a panel we called “Beyond Duct Tape Wallets: Offering Dynamic, Effective, and Community-centered Teen Programs.” It’s not specifically about books or reader’s advisory, though I certainly plan on talking about both in terms of programming and reaching your community’s teens.

And maybe best of all is that I plan on talking a lot about this summer and what I learned about teen programming. Sure, I’ve been doing some form of teen programming now for four years, but I still learn something new. This year I learned how much failure you can have trying new things and when you go back to super basic stuff, sometimes you can have great success. 

Also, expect some passive programming talk.

What maybe excites me most about this is not that I get to talk and share with these three librarians who constantly inspire and motivate and cheerlead me, but I get to listen to two other very close librarian friends and colleagues as they talk about tween programming at the library. No, I won’t tell you who just yet because they get to make that announcement themselves.

I haven’t talked much on STACKED about what a challenging summer this has been professionally for me, but it has been. Today, though, between this and working some things out with myself mentally with the ending of our summer library club, I’m feeling almost refreshed and excited again about what I do (I always like it a lot — I love it, in fact — but it is easy to wear yourself out on the things you love).

I hope I get to see some of you next spring in Indianapolis!

Fat is not a disability: It’s a book deal breaker

|

I just wrapped up another day of doing the Shred.
It’s been a year since I started putting conscious effort into working out, and I’ve stuck to it.

There have been some months where I’ve gone more days not doing it than days I have done it. There’ve been weeks that have passed without doing a single workout.

But then there are days like today, and the day before, and the day before, where I get into the workout, find that groove, hit flow, and walk away not just sweaty and gross, but feeling higher than anything and super pleased with the workout.

In the past year, I’ve lost nearly 40 inches total.
And maybe 10 pounds or so.

I get down on myself about my weight periodically, but I’ve always been fat. I’ve always had it on my body, and it’s just a part of who I am. In the last year of working out, I’ve gained a much stronger sense of confidence in my own body and in the physical state in which I exist and inhabit. I won’t lie and say that losing double-digit inches in my hips and my waist hasn’t boosted my confidence and made me really happy — especially when it comes to trying on clothes or being able to not think twice about whether something I want to try on will or won’t fit.

But more of my confidence comes from being fat and being able to push myself through an intense, ass-kicking workout and seeing it through until the end. My fat body is able to move and to sweat and to endure for 30 minutes without collapsing, without falling in on itself, without my heart stopping in the middle.

My fat body is awesome for this, and I am grateful every damn day I can do it. My fat body is so awesome for being able to do this that I reward my fat body with doing it again. And again. And again.

I will never be thin, and this is a fact I accepted at nearly 300 pounds a few years ago, and it’s a fact I accept now, weighing significantly less than that.

My fat isn’t something I am regularly conscious of. It’s just a part of who I am, and I accept it as a reality of my existence. I’m okay with it. My body does and feels good things.

I like my body even though it’s fat. I like my body even if you or anyone else does not.

This is on my mind again after reading Becky’s great post over at Book Riot on Book Deal breakers. What are those things in a book which turn the book off to you completely? I agree with nearly every single thing on Becky’s list, and I add one more: books which are about the fat body and that play into fat tropes. More specifically, books about fat girls that play into the fat girl tropes.

Almost all of the time, these books use their fat characters as the story. It is the fat on their body which drives the entire narrative. The character usually hates herself for her fat body because there is nothing worse than being a fat teenaged girl. You don’t get dates. You don’t have friends. You don’t fit into clothes. Furniture and stairs creak and groan under the pressure your body exerts upon it. Trying on clothes in the dressing room is a joke. Sometimes, fat people themselves are the joke — the ones around you or with you, even.

These books center on the issue of fat — being fat means something bad here, and the way to happiness, to friendship, to sexual enjoyment, to being able to move and dance and exist is through getting rid of the fat. Be it through a “healthy new dieting routine,” through gastric bypass surgery, through working out and “putting a little effort into your look.” Miraculously, those changes add up to a character better understanding herself and her place in the world and when her body finally fits the acceptable mode, she is accepted.

It makes me feel ashamed that the message of most YA books featuring fat characters is that your body is wrong, it’s going to kill you, it’s going to hold you back, and it’s not worth the space it takes up on this planet. Because this is a message we already send teenagers and if you don’t believe it, I point you to a recent story about how the Boy Scouts of America won’t let obese scouts go to the annual Jamboree (which is an event centered all about being active and having fun but fat bodies aren’t allowed that privilege because fat bodies aren’t real bodies).

Being fat isn’t a disability. Being fat is a physical state of being.

Why is it that fat people only have books featuring characters like them when the plot of the book centers around the most obvious thing — their being fat? Why is the character’s entire being and existence wrapped up in this one element of who they are? And why is it that losing weight is the end goal? You can be perfectly happy and healthy and active and confident and love for yourself at any size or shape or weight. It is not about the state of the body; it’s about the state of the mind. Fat is a thing you have, not a thing you are.

The more we continue to believe that it is about the state of the body, rather than the state of the mind, the more we continue to tell fat people their state of existence isn’t okay.

We tell them their stories — as they are — do not matter. That their stories will not matter until they reach a certain, socially-constructed, mythical ideal shape. Many times that won’t matter, either, because then their stories are about how they did it. How they “beat” fat.

I want to see more books that feature fat characters — fat girls especially — because I wish that body-positive, empowering books like Susan Vaught’s My Big Fat Manifesto and Simmone Howell’s Everything Beautiful had been around when I was a fat teenager and everywhere I looked, I was made to feel like I did not matter. Because the thing these books do that so many fat character-centered YA books don’t do is they show that fat characters wear their bodies as they do and still have rich, fulfilling, exciting, dynamic, and interesting lives beyond their shape. That they have dreams and goals and their bodies are going to help them get there, rather than hold them hostage or disable them completely.

What I want is for a teen to pick up a book that features a fat character who isn’t a silly sidekick or a laughing stock. Who isn’t seeking a way to better herself by losing weight. There are some authors doing this, but we need more (just like we need more who are writing about diversity or sexuality). I give kudos to authors like Rainbow Rowell, who has written a fat girl in Eleanor in Eleanor & Park — but I must install this caveat to my statement of what we need.

We need more books featuring fat characters that are done with enough conviction — given enough of a life and story and narrative and richness of their own — that they stand alone and stand up to the intolerance that some readers might bestow upon them. In other words, I think that having to explain why your character is fat or talk about that choice and what it may or may not mean in a blog post assumes a lot about your readers, and it also maybe suggests that your character doesn’t have enough to her to stand on her own and be what she is without elaboration. I don’t think it’s necessary to consider the “how fat” question at all.

It stings me to read representations of fat hate, even if it’s meant to be “subtle” or throwaway, as I suspect is the case in David Levithan’s Every Day, where A is essentially a klutzy, worthless monster at 300 pounds and disgusted and repulsed by it.

This is already what we see and experience.

For so many years, I believed that my being fat would hold me back. And it has in some ways — but never because of my body. It’s held me back because of other people’s perceptions of what a fat person can or should be doing.

I was shamed for my body once, by a colleague — a boss — at a program, in front of a group of teenagers. To this day, I remember standing there as she made a fat joke to this group of teenagers who were having a really good time at a program we were running. After she told it, she turned to me, covered her mouth with her hand, and said “no offense, I’m sorry Kelly.” I felt two things: first, tiny and insignificant as a person for being reduced to just a fat body in the eyes of a professional and second, dread that my teens had to see that whatever they may experience in their lives now may actually never “get better” when they become adults.

We can do better than this.

Reviews, “Non-Fantasy Readers,” and Finnikin of the Rock

|

I read Melina Marchetta’s lovely Finnikin of the Rock this past weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed it – it’s exciting, plotted well, and full of thorny, complex characters. It has magic and adventure and love and revenge and kingdoms and threats of war and all that other good stuff I look for in a rousing high fantasy read.

As I always do, I read a lot of reviews of the book. I’m a review-reader. I read reviews before I read the book, while I’m reading the book, and after I’m done reading it. I noticed that many readers had come to Finnikin of the Rock and its sequels via Marchetta’s other titles, which are acclaimed and award-winning and, most importantly, realistic novels.

Most of these readers who came to her fantasy books via her non-fantasy ones really enjoyed Finnikin. I love to see this. I love that fantasy can gain new fans this way, even if those readers are reluctant to pick up other fantasy titles. It’s how I come to read a lot of non-genre (out of my own comfort zone) works, too.

The problem arises when I see a review that claims that a book like Finnikin is “not really a fantasy novel.” I see this sort of thing in a lot of reviews of acclaimed genre titles, particularly if those titles are by authors who don’t usually write genre fiction. With Finnikin, I see it in almost every single one of the reviews where the reviewer states they don’t normally read fantasy. It’s a strange statement to make for a book like Finnikin – that it’s “not really fantasy” – since Finnikin is high fantasy and therefore the most obvious kind of fantasy – set in a completely different world, with strange names and magic to boot.

When I read the reviews further, though, it became apparent that the reason these readers don’t feel that Finnikin is truly fantasy is because it is “really” about things that humans in the Real World can relate to: identity, loss, family. That it’s about the characters and how they cope with these things, how they relate to each other, how they explore their situation and rise above it (or don’t).

But Finnikin is not at all unusual in this regard, because these things are what all good fantasy books are about. I promise. That’s what makes them good books. If they’re not about these things, they’re just bad books – and you can find bad books in any genre. There are plenty of realistic books that place plot (or setting) on a pedestal and sacrifice character (or theme) at its altar. To say that fantasy does this more than other genres is just wrong – and insulting.

I was raised on fantasy novels. They’re what I’ve read since I knew how to read. They’re layered with meaning, full of substance. They’ve taught me more about myself and the people around me than I can explain. I love how creative they can be, how empowering, how beautiful their language, how intricate their plots. I love that they can create people and things so fantastical, so completely strange, but also make me feel like I know those unbelievable things and people like I do my own self. When a person claims that a great fantasy book isn’t “really” fantasy because it has depth, because it has meaning, because it says true things about life, I object strongly. I know it to be false, and it seems like an unwarranted slight against a genre that still endures critical ridicule despite its current popularity.

Here are just a few examples of some high fantasy YA novels I’ve read recently that all incorporate very human themes (read: that are all good books). Sarah Beth Durst’s Vessel is about a girl whose family had tremendous expectations for her, and she disappointed them completely. Now she’s lost, abandoned by the ones she loves, desperately seeking a new home and an identity in a world that has rejected her. Jennifer Nielsen’s The False Prince features a boy without a family who is also trying to find a place for himself, trying to regain the honor he felt he lost by a decision that was forced upon him years ago. Anything written by Shannon Hale – check out The Goose Girl for a prime example – is sure to include lovely, evocative writing and well-meaning but flawed characters.

If you read the descriptions above, without the titles, you wouldn’t know they belonged to fantasy books. At their hearts, all good books are about how people (or other sentient beings) grow and change. They’re always about us.

I think a lot of this sort of misconception springs from ignorance. If someone has only read one kind of fantasy book before – and let’s be honest, it’s probably The Lord of the Rings – she or he may have assumed other fantasy novels are just like it. But equating one fantasy novel with another is just like equating one realistic book with another. It would be ridiculous if someone said “Oh, I didn’t like To Kill a Mockingbird, so I don’t think realistic books are for me. If I like another realistic book, it must be because it’s not really realistic.”

As I thought about this more, I tried to get to the heart of what the critics were saying. They love Finnikin, but don’t care for fantasy usually. Why, then, does Finnikin speak to them so strongly while other fantasy novels don’t? If this were any other book, I’d assume that the fantasy elements were light and easily overlooked, but that’s not the case here. Finnikin is steeped in traditional high fantasy tropes. Its religion, cultures, quests, kingdoms, magic, and themes – particularly the search for identity and a lost homeland – are all trademarks of high fantasy. In fact, I’d say that Finnikin treads no new ground at all in any of these areas. For all its excellent writing, it’s not a very creative book.

Which leads me to my conclusion – Marchetta is a fantastic writer, and that’s why people love this book. It’s perfectly legitimate to not enjoy fantasy elements. I get that completely. Magic isn’t for everyone. But when the writing is just so darn good, sometimes it’s hard not to like a book in spite of the magic. That’s what happened to me with A. S. King. I’ll read everything she writes – which is almost always realistic – simply because her writing is just that good.

There may be other reasons, of course. The world-building is pretty standard, and not incredibly detailed or varied, so it’s easier for people who don’t normally read fantasy to follow it, I think. For many readers, elements like that are a distraction (whereas for mega fantasy fans, they’re enhancements). You get a lot of readers who can’t stand The Lord of the Rings because of this. But to claim that the fantasy elements somehow prevent real, deep meaning or substance from existing in all but a treasured few is disingenuous. (And for all its endless detail and pointless digressions, Lord of the Rings has an incredible amount of substance.)

I’d like to encourage readers who don’t normally read fantasy to think more broadly about the genre. Most fantasy has magic, yes, but the magic isn’t the entirety of the book. In any good fantasy, the magic (you can insert whatever traditional fantasy element you like instead of “magic”) will be a vehicle for the characters and their growth, in much the same way that the plot elements of a realistic novel are the vehicle for its characters.

Finnikin of the Rock is a fantasy. If you liked it, you like fantasy. Maybe not all of it, maybe not even most of it, but you do like some of it. Rather than denying it by saying you don’t normally read fantasy, be proud of it. This is a great book. It’s worthy of your love – and it’s worthy because it’s a fantasy, not because it’s not.