I loved Conversion, Katherine Howe’s first foray into young adult territory, more than most of what I’ve read so far this year. The parallels she draws are insightful without hitting the reader over the head with them. She’s also done a fine job of getting at what it’s like to be under the kind of extraordinary pressure that might cause conversion disorder in these teenage girls.

Colleen Rowley is a senior at an elite all-girls private Catholic school in Danvers, Massachusetts, the site of the former Salem Village. She’s in competition with another classmate for valedictorian, is interviewing for admittance to Harvard, and has just started a flirtation-maybe-something-more with a boy who goes to a nearby school. She’s under a lot of pressure, but she feels like she can handle it.

Then her classmates start getting sick. One of them exhibits strange verbal tics. Another loses all of her hair. Another – one of Colleen’s close friends – coughs up pins. There doesn’t seem to be a common thread among their symptoms. More and more girls begin getting sick, and the situation quickly snowballs. Different diagnoses are given, some girls go on television to share their stories, and the media is a constant presence at the school. In her author’s note, Howe explains that the succession of hypotheses she describes in her book for the illnesses (from Tourette’s to PANDAS to environmental causes) very closely mirrors the case of Le Roy, NY from 2011.

Scattered throughout the book are chapters set in early 1700s Salem, narrated by Ann Putnam as she gives her confession for her part in the Salem witch trials several years earlier. (Putnam was the only person involved to confess.) It’s clear that the bulk of the story belongs to Colleen, but these sections set in the past are made more powerful for their brevity. Ann describes her initial reticence to go along with the girls who first started making accusations, but slowly, slowly, she gets caught up and becomes a primary accuser, even legitimately experiencing some of the physical symptoms she only pretended to have before. It’s easy for the reader, too, to become caught up. We read about the heady feeling Ann gets when she realizes that this time, the adults – the men, mostly, but the women too – are listening to her, really listening. That this time, her words have power.
             
And this is where the story holds its real power, too: what will teenage girls do when faced with the pressure they experience? When they’re pressured to excel academically, spiritually, and socially, but also told to be “good” and “pure” and given no power to act on their own or be heard with their own voices? It’s easy to say that we’ve come a long way since the 17th/18th centuries in the way teen girls are treated, but that type of pressure? Girls – and particularly girls – in the here and now experience it just as Howe’s version of Ann Putnam did 300 years ago. When written in this way, the parallel is obvious.

It was easy for me to relate to Colleen, which is unusual for me to write. There are many reasons I tend not to read contemporary realistic YA, but one of the primary ones is that I don’t find many that are authentic to my experience. Not that they need to be – I certainly want to read about people different from me. But there’s something to be said for reading about an experience similar to yours, and I could easily relate to Colleen’s, even though I didn’t attend a Catholic high school and never interviewed at Harvard. I felt the same kind of intense academic pressure to succeed, even finding myself in competition for a top ranking. These things matter very little now, but at the time, they held paramount importance. I felt tremendous academic pressure while at the same time worrying about my hair, my skin, my weight, and yes, my inability to speak and be heard about any of it, my feelings that my words were lesser and my concerns were lesser.

The full impact of the story is weakened slightly by a detail at the very end, involving the yellow bird from the cover. I feel like it undermines the parallels Howe draws between the two events and adds a hint of manufactured creepiness that isn’t necessary. I’m being deliberately vague since I know most of you won’t have read the book yet, but I’d be interested to hear if those of who have read it agree with me in this respect. Events wrap up fairly quickly near the end, too – Colleen tells us which college she’s going to, who made valedictorian, and so on. It feels rushed, almost like Howe was checking things off her list.

Those things aren’t huge problems, though, and they don’t prevent the book from being a standout. Howe’s author’s note is a must-read, if only for the reason that she explains she used some of Ann Putnam’s own words in the story. It adds historical authenticity and drives home the point that the girls then and the girls now aren’t that different – and that we don’t treat them all that differently.


Review copy picked up at TLA. Conversion is available now.