The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants – Ann Brashares
Ok, I was on holiday when I read this one, it was sitting in the cottage, and I’d kind of run out of easy books to read and didn’t feel up to reading anything too heavy. And I’d vaguely heard of it but couldn’t remember why or what kind of book it was. That’s my excuse.
On the positive side, I found this very hard to put down. The characters were pretty well drawn, although it was only Tibby that I could really get into (I’m sure that says more about me than about the characters). The paragraph where she describes her parents losing their idealism in the face of middle-age, mammon, and small children is so brilliant I’d like to quote it whole (but won’t because I’m lazy and it’s probably illegal). Of the others, Carmen I could sympathise with but her experience felt just too one-dimensional (perhaps it is when you live it), Lena I could understand but not quite get into, and Bridget I didn’t entirely like (I could feel all too well her frustration with her coach, but not her relationship with Eric).
I was less convinced by some of the minor characters. Well, specifically Eric – I can’t be interested in a guy who shows so little self-control, even if I can see it might well be a female fantasy to be able to charm a guy who is out of your league. Bailey was brilliant, and her relationship with Tibby easily my favourite strand in the book, although you wonder if any twelve-year-old could really be that wise (given her circumstances I’m willing to accept that one). Carmen’s new family I couldn’t quite understand – they seemed on the one hand to be trying really hard to be nice to her, and yet on the other to be remarkably distant. If that’s just a culture clash then it doesn’t quite come across, and that’s a shame, as it’s something I could easily relate to. At least I liked the way Carmen’s thread ended. And Lena’s Greek Island too felt both too American (cheerios, wanton snogging) and not American enough (otherwise mysteriously isolated from foreign food and culture). Of course not knowing that kind of Greece myself I can’t say if that’s not 100% accurate, but it felt to me like an American’s caricature of what “abroad” might be like more than a real experience. And of course I know whereof I speak (not).
I suppose when you’re a teenager life does feel this full-on and people (grown-ups in particular) so self-absorbed. It’s easy to read this and say that many of the kids in it seem unpleasantly self-centred. But then, I was probably more like that at that age than I’d like to think, and I probably still am. And while it’s easy to think of teenagers as sometimes overblowing their experiences because of their lack of, well, life experience, is it not equally valid to think of those emotions as seeing life for what it is, and everything that comes afterwards as a kind of “heat death”, a greying and hardening and growing callous, a shutting out of the world more than putting it into perspective? Perhaps that’s why of the four main characters I was drawn most to Tibby; she was the one I felt who was seeing the world more clearly because of her age, not less. And maybe she embodies my ideal of being young as much as Bridget and Carmen contradict it, while perhaps there’s truth on both sides.
I’ve never been a teenage girl growing up in America so perhaps it’s not surprising if the gulf between my experience and some of these characters is not easily bridged. But then – isn’t that what fiction is all about?
On the positive side, I found this very hard to put down. The characters were pretty well drawn, although it was only Tibby that I could really get into (I’m sure that says more about me than about the characters). The paragraph where she describes her parents losing their idealism in the face of middle-age, mammon, and small children is so brilliant I’d like to quote it whole (but won’t because I’m lazy and it’s probably illegal). Of the others, Carmen I could sympathise with but her experience felt just too one-dimensional (perhaps it is when you live it), Lena I could understand but not quite get into, and Bridget I didn’t entirely like (I could feel all too well her frustration with her coach, but not her relationship with Eric).
I was less convinced by some of the minor characters. Well, specifically Eric – I can’t be interested in a guy who shows so little self-control, even if I can see it might well be a female fantasy to be able to charm a guy who is out of your league. Bailey was brilliant, and her relationship with Tibby easily my favourite strand in the book, although you wonder if any twelve-year-old could really be that wise (given her circumstances I’m willing to accept that one). Carmen’s new family I couldn’t quite understand – they seemed on the one hand to be trying really hard to be nice to her, and yet on the other to be remarkably distant. If that’s just a culture clash then it doesn’t quite come across, and that’s a shame, as it’s something I could easily relate to. At least I liked the way Carmen’s thread ended. And Lena’s Greek Island too felt both too American (cheerios, wanton snogging) and not American enough (otherwise mysteriously isolated from foreign food and culture). Of course not knowing that kind of Greece myself I can’t say if that’s not 100% accurate, but it felt to me like an American’s caricature of what “abroad” might be like more than a real experience. And of course I know whereof I speak (not).
I suppose when you’re a teenager life does feel this full-on and people (grown-ups in particular) so self-absorbed. It’s easy to read this and say that many of the kids in it seem unpleasantly self-centred. But then, I was probably more like that at that age than I’d like to think, and I probably still am. And while it’s easy to think of teenagers as sometimes overblowing their experiences because of their lack of, well, life experience, is it not equally valid to think of those emotions as seeing life for what it is, and everything that comes afterwards as a kind of “heat death”, a greying and hardening and growing callous, a shutting out of the world more than putting it into perspective? Perhaps that’s why of the four main characters I was drawn most to Tibby; she was the one I felt who was seeing the world more clearly because of her age, not less. And maybe she embodies my ideal of being young as much as Bridget and Carmen contradict it, while perhaps there’s truth on both sides.
I’ve never been a teenage girl growing up in America so perhaps it’s not surprising if the gulf between my experience and some of these characters is not easily bridged. But then – isn’t that what fiction is all about?
posted by tomdg at 10:09 PM
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