| Boys, best friends, moms and dads –
these are little worries, common worries, so universal and mundane
that maybe they seem downright trite. But call it love,
friendship, family – and suddenly, the issues don’t seem so
silly. They just seem real, and relevant, no matter how grown-up
and mature you might fancy yourself to be. It’s enough to make
you realize how many “adult” problems – hating your job,
worrying about success, wishing you made more money – are pretty
damn stupid in the grand scheme of things.
Which may explain why
the best remedy I know for those periodic “I’m such a loser
for feeling so clueless about what I want to do with my life”
funks involves climbing into bed with my dog-eared copy of Life
Without Friends, and reading myself out of my self-indulgent
woe-is-me session. Somewhere around chapter twenty-one, I’ll
start getting over my self-pity, and realize that, like main
character Beverly, I’m my own worst enemy, obsessing over flaws
that no one else sees or gives a damn about, certainly not the
many people I’m lucky enough to have love me exactly as I am.
And in between the moping and the revelation, I’ll laugh at the
witty dialogue, and feel homesick as Bev wanders my favorite city
in the world, and get a little crush for the billionth time on
Bev’s adorable guy pal Derek.
See, the teen novels
that I love aren’t just good teen books: they’re good books
period. Fast reads though they all are – one of the great things
about a young adult novel is that you can read it cover to cover
in an hour – these are works that make me think and feel, that
remind me about the things I value most in life, and generally
when I’m most in need of reminding. |
favorite
teen books ...
Life
Without Friends Ellen Emerson
White
High
school senior Beverly Johnson has had a rough time of it
most of her life, though you might not be able tell from
looking at her. She lives in a nice brownstone in a nice
part of Boston with her Harvard professor father, goes to a
good private school, gets great grades.
She’s also depressed, angry, and very bitter,
thanks to a mom who committed suicide, an emotionally
distant dad, and the fact that after a tragic event at her
school last year, in which she played a big supporting role,
Beverly currently has no friends. Her ex-boyfriend Tim –
golden boy preppie, drug pusher, murderer -- is in jail, for
a crime Beverly still feels largely responsible for, due to
a supreme error in judgment that replays over and over in
her mind. Beverly can’t stop hating herself; it doesn’t
help that her classmates seem to as well, shunning her in
school each day, except on the rare occasions when someone
steps up to make a nasty remark. Her father doesn’t trust
her; her relentlessly chipper stepmother drives her up the
wall; her weekly sessions with a shrink strike her as a
waste of time. Life seems pretty miserable, until an
unexpected friendship with a cute, young groundskeeper at
the nearby Public Gardens helps Beverly learn to stop hating
herself, pick up the pieces, move on, be happy.
_________________
more
recommended
YA fiction:
A
Solitary Blue
Cynthia
Voigt
Over
the Moon Elissa
Haden Guest
Speak
Laurie Halse
Anderson |
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