Casey A reviews The Prom by Saundra Mitchell

The Prom by Saundra Mitchell

In October 2018, The Prom premiered on Broadway. It was a musical inspired by real events with a great deal of glitter thrown on top, and I was one of the people lucky enough to see the original cast on Broadway, because a good friend surprised me with tickets on my trip. The musical was fantastic, but sadly had a much shorter run than deserved, but it’s a book now, and we can all bask in its glory. The book is adapted from stage by Saundra Mitchell. Obviously the stage show has coloured my reading of the book, much like when you watch a film adaptation and you know all the bits they missed out. So I’m going to keep the comparisons vague to avoid spoilers, but I will still reference the show in my reading.

The story is set in Edgewater, Indiana, where our narrator Emma Nolan, informs us that it is a bad idea to be gay. Heads up, homophobia is a very presiding theme in this story, so if you are looking for a cute romance with no obstacles or politics, this may not be your read. Emma’s story preceding the book has been a difficult one, all too familiar to a lot of queer readers, but sadly a story that still must be told. The second narrator is Alyssa Greene, love interest, student body president, and perfect daughter to the overbearing leader of the PTA. The tension in the story all revolves around the fact that out and proud(ish) Emma would dearly like to go to prom with her closeted girlfriend. The PTA gets in the way, Broadway actors find out about the scandal and try to help. All hell breaks loose.

I’m torn over the structure of the book. On the one hand, I really enjoy swapping between Alyssa and Emma’s narratives, and this structure actually gives Alyssa a lot more agency and power than she has in the show. However, there are glimpses of scenes which exist on stage that they had to cut due to a lack of POV character, and are mentioned as asides, which make little sense. It’s a bit like only watching half of a crossover episode and wondering what you missed out on. The Prom is a nice short read, clocking in at just over two-hundred pages, so I think it might have made more sense to either expand to allow more points of view, or simply axe some of those asides altogether and focus on the main plot. The weirdest of these is perhaps that the book opens with reference to a broadway show flopping, and then doesn’t allude to this at all for about fifty pages. It makes a lot more sense by the end, but I personally think that the articles which serve as prologue and epilogue detract a little from the main narrative and are really only there for fans of the show.

The tone of the book is inescapably teenage highschooler. It’s a YA novel adaptation and it knows it. Pop culture references are abound, and if you aren’t up to date on your American High School slang (I am not), you might find yourself rereading a few sentences. But for the most part, I found the pop culture references hilarious and engaging. Emma’s narrative has a sarcastic and witty snap to it which is delightful to read even when things are going wrong. It also spans a decent range from memes, music, and tv, as well as inevitably a large number of broadway shows. This book genuinely made me laugh out loud on multiple occasions, and it’s chock full of genuinely wise quotes about homophobia, acceptance, and life in general.

(This bit is only about differences to the show, so if you aren’t already a fan, be ready for spoilers.) Firstly, there are some great little cast easter eggs in the names of the characters, some very obvious and some quite sneaky. The words of many (if not all) of the musical numbers have also made it into the writing one way or another, with several of them providing a lot of backbone to the plot, and others acting as throwaway lines which maybe don’t quite work. As I’ve already alluded to, the broadway characters don’t get a point of view. Dee Dee and Barry are still in it, but Trent and Angie have been axed entirely (despite the cast of Godspell still being present). Dee Dee really is turned into a caricature of what was already a largely than life character, but Barry somehow manages to retain depth and dignity, despite soaking up most of Trent’s role in the narrative.

Seeing the show and then reading the book definitely changed my reading of the book, and I’m very interested to know what others think who haven’t read it. From an adaptation standpoint, I thought it was a very cute read, with a lot of power, which overall took the narrative from a new angle and made sure we got more of the love interest’s side of the story. I would recommend this book highly to people who have seen or know the show, and and anyone who just wants a nice triumphant story about love against all odds.

Casey A reviews Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee

Not Your Sidekick by C. B. Lee

C. B. Lee may have taken the most interesting spin ever on “write what you know” as her protagonist, Jessica Tran, is a first generation Asian American bisexual, just like she is, but the world of her story is certainly not Lee’s lived experience. Jess lives in the North American Collective, a super state formed after WW3, and her Nevada town of Andover is home to two superhero metahumans as well as their dastardly rival villains. Trying to describe this book without it sounding like a mid 1990s cartoon is a little difficult, but that’s because Lee uses comic superhero genre tropes as a backdrop to the narrative’s main concerns. Jess has to deal with several social and societal issues, as well as a little teenage drama thrown into the mix, as she juggles disappointing her parents, figuring out her friends, and a new internship with a mysterious employer.

Lee skirts around the usual race metaphor that people use when dealing with super humans, and instead grabs the subject of race head on, acknowledging the difficulties of the migrant experience. Occasionally Lee pops a word or two of Chinese into the dialogue, which is a welcome reminder that having a non-white character can invite more cultural complexity than simply stating a skin colour. In some ways it was a little disappointing to find that slurs which are currently used were still prevalent in the book’s setting, but I can understand that it is true to the experience that Lee was trying to get across.

Overall this book is great fun. It’s got a whole host of queer characters across the LGBTQ spectrum, and I found it was really good at moving focus between friends, family, and the wider world something which other YA books often struggle with. Despite a couple of heavy handed moments, Lee is great at introducing character’s queerness, including the subtle hints at one of the characters being trans before it’s explicitly mentioned.

When it comes to setting this story in the future, I don’t feel it was totally necessary. In many ways, it feels like Lee chose the future because old superhero comics would often set things in the future, or simply because authors often use time as a distancing tool. It could easily be an alternative version of now, rather than over a century from where we are, and I sometimes felt I was reading two different books, one a future sci fi and another a deeply felt modern high school drama. This feeling did ebb somewhat as the plot came together and certain discordant aspects fell into place. If you’re looking for speculative sci-fi you won’t find it here, but I think Lee does effectively use the setting she has created.

The pacing was good, and even with my misgivings about the setting, I found the plot and characters very engaging. I’m glad it’s part of a series, as a large amount of the narrative was a set up to something much larger, and I would certainly recommend this to readers who want something which isn’t too challenging on its own, but might lead to something more.

Casey is a non-binary bookseller and writer, a sometime poet and an all-the-time queer. Their favourite genre is usually sci-fi / fantasy, but they can be found reading kids books and angsty YA whenever the mood strikes. Most of their reads are for audiobooks because they have ADHD and printed text is not their friend. They recently attempted to start a bookstagram which you can find here @know.thy.shelf

Casey A. reviews Pulp by Robin Talley

Pulp by Robin Talley cover

This is not a pulp fiction book. This is a book which understands how to take a genre and perfectly shine a mirror upon it. I’m genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed it, as sometimes historical fiction (particularly American historical) can be far more concerned with the context of the time than how any of the characters are feeling or growing. Robin Talley seems to know this, and she writes characters who are flawed and conflicted, knowing when they need to grow and when they need to hold true to themselves.

Pulp has a two protagonist structure, alternating between the points of view of two lesbian high school seniors: Abby’s in 2017 and Janet’s in 1955. Where a lot of books try to obscure their contemporary protagonist into the vague “now” timeframe, Talley leans heavily into the political and social landscape of 2017, making even the contemporary chapters into a period piece themselves, which I think will age well. The comparison between the two eras is compelling and complex, and a large part of what kept me reading. 1955 is painted as a cold and harsh environment for queer people and people of colour alike, whereas the 2017 chapters serve to remind us how far we have come but how much we also still must do.

The pacing of the book was awkward to begin with. As a reader with ADHD, I struggled with Abby’s inner monologue jumping around over the top of dialogue, and found myself going back half a page at a time to catch the flow of conversation. However, this seemed to improve when I was only a few chapters in, and the quality of the Janet scenes made up for it until then. Throughout the plot, the two character’s are slowly woven together by their self discoveries, love of writing, reading, and most of all, pulp fiction.

Talley obviously wrote this book with a keen awareness of the need to be intersectional with her politics and diverse with her cast. The protagonists are White Catholic and Jewish, and the supporting characters span a range of racial backgrounds, sexual orientations and genders. I was pleasantly surprised to find a character using they/them pronouns! It’s seems to be written from a solid grounding in internet culture and fan fiction, so at times Abby’s point of view can come across as a little contrived, but in a way that I don’t think audiences who read a lot of YA fiction will mind much. If you are into fan fiction theory, transformative works, or metafiction, then this is certainly a good read for you.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about the roots of queer culture but I would exercise caution for those who are emotionally affected by the current political climate in the USA The book is very educational, even including things I didn’t know as an activist, but also leans heavily on protest culture in 2017 and can hit a bit close to home sometimes. I will say that if you should be looking for a satisfyingly hopeful book, I think you have found it. Robin Talley, to my mind, has very shrewdly shown us that however awful things may seem right now, they will get better because we will make them so.

Casey is a non-binary bookseller and writer, a sometime poet and an all-the-time queer. Their favourite genre is usually sci-fi / fantasy, but they can be found reading kids books and angsty YA whenever the mood strikes. Most of their reads are for audiobooks because they have ADHD and printed text is not their friend. They recently attempted to start a bookstagram which you can find here @know.thy.shelf