Characters: 3 Story: 4 Writing: 5
Another wild ride from Lisa Lutz. The setting: pervasive sexual harassment at a New England prep school and the girls who decide not to put up with it any longer. The boys at Stonebridge have a long standing practice of ranking the girls’ sexual prowess on a secret web site. It’s been going on for years, handed from one head boy to the next and tacitly approved by an administration that seems to know all about it.
Alternating between four first-person perspectives, Lutz’ hysterical and sardonic writing puts us in the heads of four characters: Ms. Witt, a new teacher who is appalled by what she sees (and who feels like my favorite — Izzy Spellman — with a new name and career); Mr. Ford, a long-time teacher who is writing a novel based on the school; Gemma Russo, a scholarship student hiding her background from the others; and Norman Crowley, the weak, guilt ridden, webmaster who supports the secret website even though he hates everything about it. Lots of other fun characters — newby Linny who takes matters into her on hands in delightfully inventive ways; Claudine Shepherd the bitter librarian; Martha Primm, the world’s worst guidance counselor; and Greg Stinson, the well-meaning but completely inadequate Dean of Students.
The female characters are well-developed; the male characters are stereotypes — like the old madonna / whore dichotomy, the men in this book are either evil or weak and ineffectual. I did enjoy one section where Gemma tells Jonah (one of the weak and ineffectual variety) that he is sweet — maybe too sweet. He responds that it is hard to know how to be a guy and that he was always confused. A small tip of the hat to how the new “norms” of behavior can be difficult and confusing for men. Ms. Witt takes the education of the girls in hand when she creates the Blowchart — a cartoonish flowchart that helps a girl understand when she should give a guy a blowjob (spoiler alert: the chart leads to “No” a lot more often than it leads to “Yes”). I have no doubt that this graphic will spread rapidly on the web once the book is published.
It’s over the top and lots of fun to read, if not totally plausible. Plenty of good messages exhorting girls to take matters into their own hands and not succumb to pressure or tradition.
Great quotes:
“The young may have a better excuse for cruelty, but they are no less capable of it.”
“I have a visceral memory of our fight to the death over the title. It feels like a migraine in my solar plexus.”
“She got up close to the coffeepot and was watching the drip, like a kid staring at her pet goldfish.”
“I also have a few strong and well-documented theories associating personality disorders with specific tie knots.”
“He looked exactly like I thought he would. Shaggy blond hair, skinny, with Mr Potato Head lips and a nose that should have been on a girl.”
“Having a marginally intelligent teenager regard you with superiority can put a man into a deep psychological trough.”
“Some people count sheep. What finally sent me to sleep was cycling through possible job alternatives in alphabetical order. For soporific purposes, you can’t leave anything off the table. I fell asleep sometime after carpet installer”
“Shame is cunning. Even if it doesn’t come from a rational place, it sticks. But that doesn’t mean it’s real.”
“You can keep telling girls to be polite, to keep a level head and it’ll all work out in the end. But don’t be surprised when they figure out that you’ve been feeding them lies. Don’t be alarmed when they grow tired of using their own voices and playing by your rules. And don’t be shocked when they decide that if they can’t win a fair fight, they’ll just have to find another way.”
Books to look forward to ... 