soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2018-05-12 08:58 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2018-05-12 08:58 pm
Before I Fall, by Lauren Oliver
A YA groundhog day book, about a teenage girl who keeps reliving the day she dies. In some respects it's very good - it's compellingly written, very page-turny, and was good at getting to my emotions.
But I'm also I'm really frustrated with it.
(content note: discussion of suicide and bullying below the cut)
The main character is one of the popular girls in high school and is in her senior year. She and her three best friends spend all their time together and care about each other very much, but they are extraordinarily mean to people who are socially lower than them. Which is most people.
The trajectory of the book is Sam learning over the course of her 7 or so repeats how to maybe care about other people's feelings and lives some too, which is a good and worthy emotional arc, but it felt a little unbelievable.
Over the course of the book you find out more and more about the degree of awful Sam et alia have been to others, and especially the horrors they have heaped upon a girl named Juliet Sykes. It is A Lot. And I have trouble believing that a girl who was totally cool with being that degree of a bully would change so drastically in only a few days. Really? Really?
Another frustration: Sam's love interest, Kent, is portrayed as being a Good Person and yet he loves Sam for who she is DESPITE having seen her be a heinous bully for years and years, just because he remembers a single time she stood up for him when they were in elementary school. Kent....maybe isn't quite so much of a good person as the book wants us to believe, if he's just okay with the kinds of cruel behaviour Sam has consistently been engaging in for years.
And another frustration: the ending. The book ends with Sam dying in a different way than she'd died previously and apparently that's enough to break the cycle, which feels weird to me based on my familiarity with fandom's Groundhog Day tropes but whatever. The real problem with this ending is that it seems like a cop-out to me. Sam has come to the conclusion that bullying people is bad, and that various people she and her friends have been awful to are maybe decent and interesting people too, but also that she still loves and cares about her popular friends, including Lindsey the bullying ring-leader. But Sam never has to really deal with this conflict, because she dies to save Juliet Sykes from suicide.
If she'd lived, how would she make peace with loving Lindsey but not wanting to condone Lindsey's behaviour anymore? Would she even be able to maintain her friendship with Lindsey? And how would she deal with the kind of image she presents to her school once she no longer behaves the way she always has, when she's always been so obsessed with being seen to be the right kind of person? Especially if she is visibly dating someone uncool like Kent?
The changes that Sam would have to make to her life to live up to what she's learned over the course of her repeating day would be really hard, but instead of her having doing the work, the narrative lets Sam just do one Good Act and peace out. I'm reminded of the line from Hamilton, "Dying is easy, young man; living is harder."
And it's weird how Sam goes through that entire last iteration with this sense that she's going to end the day permanently dead. How does she know that her latest effort to save Juliet will end in Sam dying? Maybe she could have pushed Juliet out of the way of the truck while managing to clear herself as well. Maybe she would have been hit but sustain severe but non-life-threatening injuries. Maybe she would have been able to actually talk Juliet down this time. There was no way for Sam to know for sure how the day would end and so her certainty comes off kinda oddly.
So ultimately between all of the above I'm not sure what to think about this book. It's about important topics and overall it's trying its best to do right by these topics, but....idk. I don't love it.
But I'm also I'm really frustrated with it.
(content note: discussion of suicide and bullying below the cut)
The main character is one of the popular girls in high school and is in her senior year. She and her three best friends spend all their time together and care about each other very much, but they are extraordinarily mean to people who are socially lower than them. Which is most people.
The trajectory of the book is Sam learning over the course of her 7 or so repeats how to maybe care about other people's feelings and lives some too, which is a good and worthy emotional arc, but it felt a little unbelievable.
Over the course of the book you find out more and more about the degree of awful Sam et alia have been to others, and especially the horrors they have heaped upon a girl named Juliet Sykes. It is A Lot. And I have trouble believing that a girl who was totally cool with being that degree of a bully would change so drastically in only a few days. Really? Really?
Another frustration: Sam's love interest, Kent, is portrayed as being a Good Person and yet he loves Sam for who she is DESPITE having seen her be a heinous bully for years and years, just because he remembers a single time she stood up for him when they were in elementary school. Kent....maybe isn't quite so much of a good person as the book wants us to believe, if he's just okay with the kinds of cruel behaviour Sam has consistently been engaging in for years.
And another frustration: the ending. The book ends with Sam dying in a different way than she'd died previously and apparently that's enough to break the cycle, which feels weird to me based on my familiarity with fandom's Groundhog Day tropes but whatever. The real problem with this ending is that it seems like a cop-out to me. Sam has come to the conclusion that bullying people is bad, and that various people she and her friends have been awful to are maybe decent and interesting people too, but also that she still loves and cares about her popular friends, including Lindsey the bullying ring-leader. But Sam never has to really deal with this conflict, because she dies to save Juliet Sykes from suicide.
If she'd lived, how would she make peace with loving Lindsey but not wanting to condone Lindsey's behaviour anymore? Would she even be able to maintain her friendship with Lindsey? And how would she deal with the kind of image she presents to her school once she no longer behaves the way she always has, when she's always been so obsessed with being seen to be the right kind of person? Especially if she is visibly dating someone uncool like Kent?
The changes that Sam would have to make to her life to live up to what she's learned over the course of her repeating day would be really hard, but instead of her having doing the work, the narrative lets Sam just do one Good Act and peace out. I'm reminded of the line from Hamilton, "Dying is easy, young man; living is harder."
And it's weird how Sam goes through that entire last iteration with this sense that she's going to end the day permanently dead. How does she know that her latest effort to save Juliet will end in Sam dying? Maybe she could have pushed Juliet out of the way of the truck while managing to clear herself as well. Maybe she would have been hit but sustain severe but non-life-threatening injuries. Maybe she would have been able to actually talk Juliet down this time. There was no way for Sam to know for sure how the day would end and so her certainty comes off kinda oddly.
So ultimately between all of the above I'm not sure what to think about this book. It's about important topics and overall it's trying its best to do right by these topics, but....idk. I don't love it.
no subject
no subject