REVIEW: Big Girl Small by Rachel DeWoskin, or, Adult vs. YA Literary Fiction

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What Happened to Goodbye! Just leave a comment here and you're entered.

Drawing a winner TONIGHT!

Don't read this novel if you have teenagers. Or ever were a teenager — especially a teenage girl. It will bring back high school in raw, oozing detail, like a psychic skinned knee. The cliques, the whispers, the glossy girls, the frantic parties, the stupid drinking, the disconnected sexual encounters and, perhaps worst of all, the carnival of lost souls that is the lunchtime cafeteria. High school: a world so hostile to the outsider that even a Navy Seal might hesitate at the threshold. -Maureen Corrigan, NPR

If I were going to review a review, I'd give that one a big giant A+ and ALL. THE. STARS. "A psychic skinned knee?" Are you kidding me with that? If that phrase doesn't evoke something painful and oozing and awful (which is what portions of this book feel like), then you should just stop reading because no author is going to do it for you. I put it here because I'm pretty sure it captures Rachel DeWoskin's Big Girl Small in a way nothing I could say ever would. The book is just plain good. The tension she builds that pulls you all the way through the story is brilliant, not to mention the fact that she spills the secret BIG BAD right in the middle of the book, yet you're still pulled through. I think I sprinted through the last quarter of the book like I was running down a hill. I loved the narrative thread, the way the book moved from relating the story to actually being IN it in the present again. I loved the way we saw things through Judy's eyes, which meant that often we didn't really get to see things that might have been satisfying. We staying in Judy's mind from start to finish, and the voice was just so strong and impressive that it didn't matter when things happened elsewhere that we couldn't see. 


So since Ms. Corrigan already did such a brilliant job reviewing the book (seriously, she's spot-on, even with her criticism. Her review is the reason I bought the book), I'd like to spend this review talking about something different: Is it YA, or isn't it?


First, the basics: Big Girl Small was published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, a subsidiary of Macmillan. FSG does have a "Books for Young Readers" subsection, but Big Girl Small isn't on it. This was clearly released as an adult literary fiction novel (which is probably why it wound up on NPR ... though it does happen, you don't often hear about YA on NPR).


But the book is about high school, in particular a teenage girl, and it's told in her voice. Judy, the main character, is smart and sarcastic, but also naive. She tells her story in a slightly jumbled way that rings true of a teen girl pouring her heart out about the worst thing that's ever happened to her. 


Big Girl Small is slightly dark and would sit well on a shelf next to anything by Sara Zarr or Courtney Summers. Judy's sarcasm is reminiscent of Jessica Darling. In short, it could totally be marketed as a YA book, and frankly I'm a little bit unsure as to why it's not. The only real difference I see between Big Girl Small and other true-YA books is that Judy's narration is a bit old at times. You can hear a grown-up's voice writing for a grown up. Judy is often super self-centered, as teenagers tend to be, but DeWoskin writes Judy as a little to aware of her own ego. Teenagers don't tend to refer to how egocentric they are, and they definitely don't apologize for it. Sometimes I feel like adults, when not thinking directly about a teenage audience or teenage voice, feel the need to apologize for some of those truly annoying and often abhorrent ways the teenage mind works. I see that in Big Girl Small.


I'm going to email Rachel DeWoskin and ask her what she thinks about how Big Girl Small might fit into the YA world and if she was thinking about a teenage audience when she wrote it. We'll see if she writes me back (her book only came out a couple weeks ago and it's turning into kind of a big deal, so I won't hold it against her if she's too busy to get back to me). 

Until then, what do you think? Why do some books about teens bypass the YA market and head straight to literary fiction? Do you think it's some kind of publishing snobbery? Or is there something subtle that separates the two? Comment away!

Don't forget, today's the last day to enter to win a copy of Sarah Dessen's 

What Happened to Goodbye! Just leave a comment here and you're entered.

Drawing a winner TONIGHT!

Too busy to write, not too busy to read!

I'm going to do a new post soon, I promise. You see, this week is bout week, which means I'm overwhelmed by my alter-ego of Mona Mour, Boston Derby Dame. Tomorrow The Wicked Pissahs (my team) will take on the Cosmonaughties. Both teams are currently undefeated, so it should be a good one. Also, it's sold-out.

photo by David Morris

I think I'll spend my next post explaining all that is wild and crazy about having an alter ego (after tomorrow's game and inevitable victory, of course), but for now, I'll just leave you with this:

I'm currently reading Fixing Delilah by Sarah Ockler. It's a book I saw floating around on the myriad of YA book blogs I read, and when I realized I had a couple more weeks before Bumped appears on my Kindle (are you dying to read that one as much as I am?!), I decided to check it out. I had Amazon send me the sample (um, best service EVER), and I burned through it, promptly purchasing the entire book. The first night I stayed up until after 1am reading, and I only stopped because I literally couldn't keep my eyes open for another second. I'm definitely going to do a review when I'm finished (especially if the plot is going where I think it's going, and even if it's not Sarah did a fabulous job with misdirection and OH THE MYSTERY!). And juicy plot aside, the voice is incredible. Delilah is totally speaking to me, which is what I'm really looking for in everything I read. For now, just trust that I'm willing to recommend the book without having read the entire thing. It's JUST. THAT. GOOD.

Pretty sure I'm going to finish it well before April 26th, when Bumped finally comes out, so I'm going to hit up Sarah's first book, Twenty Boy Summer, next.

I Want Her Life: Meg Cabot

I want to be Meg Cabot when I grow up.

Meg Cabot was the first author I remember being aware of as a person. That sounds weird ... but when I was younger, Ann M. Martin and Francine Pascal and Carolyn B. Cooney all seemed like names on a book cover. When I came to my second go-round with YA, which was in my early twenties, I started to think of the authors as actual people. Meg Cabot was someone who actually sat down at a computer somewhere and made up the words inside the pages. Which as far as I was concerned was pretty rad.

I set out to learn more about her, which it turned out was a pretty easy task since Meg was an early Internet adopter and had (and still has) one of the coolest, most comprehensive author websites. She also had A BLOG. Which was pretty awesome, because now I could find out more about how she came to put all those hilarious words on all those pages. Meg's was the first author blog I actually paid attention to, the first one to which I subscribed, and it's still my favorite.

So if I were going to trade lives with any author, even just for a day, it would be Ms. Meg Cabot. Why?

• She's hilarious. I learned from her blog that she doesn't have to work very hard to make her books funny, because she's pretty effing hilarious in real life. From her silly videos to her crazy advice column, I never cease to laugh at her writing.
• She gets to live in Key West, which is endless summer. But she gets to visit her sweet condo in Manhattan. But she also gets to visit her farmhouse in Bloomington, IN. I know what you're thinking ... Key West, Manhattan, and BLOOMINGTON? But you see, I did two degrees at good old Indiana University, and over the course of my seven years in Bloomington I fell head over heels in love with the small, quirky, Midwestern, liberal, hippie college town. I'd give my right middle toe to go back as frequently as she does.
• She gets to go on tour. Like a rock star. Which she totally is, in my world.
• She has an endless supply of sassy heels and cute, frothy, vintage-inspired dresses.

 But while all of those things are good and well, there's really this one, big, giant, gargantuan, oversized gorilla reason why I want her life.

THE GIRL CAN WRITE. A LOT.

Every time I'm staring at a blank page and a blinking cursor, my mouse huddling over Firefox and Tweetdeck poised for hours of procrastination, I just think, "Meg Cabot wrote a trilogy before lunch." Seriously! The woman is nothing if not prolific (and I can say that because she's SO MUCH MORE). She's got something like twelve series in progress as we speak. She's got a book coming out on the fifth of EVERY MONTH. Ok, hyperbole, but seriously. The woman can not only write well, she can write fast. She must do what my mother always refers to as "buckling down." I'm not sure if this means she straps herself to her desk chair or if she's just that disciplined or if she really does love it so much she can't stop ... whatever it is, I want to know what it is. I want to pour it into a tea cup and I want to drink it every day from brunch.

But here's the thing. The more I think about it, the more I might actually have Meg Cabot's life. Or maybe I am Meg Cabot. Wait, what? No, just look:

It's uncanny, right? We're practically the same person! Conspiracy theorists? Start your engines ... no really, please. I imagine it can be nothing but golden for my career if people on the internet think I'm Meg Cabot.*

*let me state for the record that I am not Meg Cabot. Only in my wildest dreams. Or after a box of wine.