Author: Jennifer Ziegler
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Rating: WARTY!
Here are seven words of advice to authors like Jennifer Ziegler on how not to be popular: write a novel just like this one.
This is ALAS! (A Long And Snarky review!)
Maggie Dempsey is a cool name for a character! I love it. I don’t love the character, unfortunately. She is vacuous, uninventive, spineless, clueless, and thoroughly un-entertaining and in the end, downright obnoxious. She does have minor grounds for meriting sympathy, but she wipes those out easily. The grounds are that, for no discernible reason, she's dragged around the country by her parents, being forced to start a new school every few months. At her last school in Portland (Oregon, not Maine), she fell for Trevor, who evidently has now found himself a new babe, yet Maggie is not only too dumb to grasp that he has, she's also so devoted to him that's she has the hots for two guys at her new school!
Seriously, is there ever a moment in her life when Maggie has anything else on her mind other than which guy she can sell herself out to next? Is there ever a time when she has something else to do other than contemplating her last guy or her next? Is she really that shallow? Can we never have a novel written by a female writer which doesn’t sell out her gender by openly declaring that her main character cannot exist except as some species of appendage of a trope guy?
Having got that off my chest, and that aside, the basic story started out OK, but it rapidly went to hell in a hand-basket, and that's before it started giving off the occasional anti-Semitic vibe (anti-Semitic in the truly sad clichés it calls into play). It's mildly funny and even somewhat entertaining in parts, with some interesting plot ideas, but that's not enough, in the end, to salvage this story for me. It’s written by a resident (at least a past resident!) of Austin, and it's set in Austin, but the bottom line to that is that this exact story could have been told in any western civilization city and lost nothing for the migration, because it has nothing whatsoever to do with Austin and offers not a shred of the Austin atmosphere!
Determined never to be hurt again after leaving her boyfriend behind in Portland, Maggie decides to deliberately make herself unpopular and uninteresting at her new school, so she doesn’t get involved with anyone and so is preserved from pain when she inevitably leaves. The problem is that she's so utterly clueless about how to get herself organized and live her life that she fails even in being a failure. I suspect there's a trite moral awaiting us at the end of this story, but it's going to be completely wasted because of Maggie's comprehensive bigotry whereby she joins the school "losers" because she thinks the school winners are losers! Way to insult the entire population, Ziegler! A moral is most definitely needed, but I can guarantee sight unseen that that the one we would get at the end of this novel would have nothing to do with what's actually required. I can't verify it because I quit reading when I hit the last forty pages since the novel was emitting such a god-awfully stomach-churning stench by then that I couldn't stand to be around it any longer.
Maggie's is a poor strategy for several reasons, not least of which is that she's robbed herself of any interests or diversions and so is now even more dependent upon her fantasy men than she would have been had she simply become popular. That's how stupid she is. She has some serious issues with logic, which is hardly surprising given the abuses her parents are dumping on her by dragging her around the nation unnecessarily, although of what quality her previous friendships were - given that no one from her past ever emails, writes, or calls her - is a mystery.
Her new friendships would not serve her any better given the unnecessarily large number of utterly absurd tropes with which Ziegler has larded Maggie's new school. The very fact that Maggie openly admits that she would be part of the most obnoxious group at the school were she not half-heartedly trying to go against the grain this time, is quite sufficient a reason to detest the kind of person Maggie is.
Ziegler seems to be seriously technologically challenged: no one in her world seems to use cellphones or email, much less social media. For example, when there is to be an announcement regarding an important new development in the "losers" group charity dance, Ziegler has them putting up bills around town. She's obviously never even heard of Twitter or flash-mobs! Actually I think only twits tweet, so I didn't really care that she's so challenged.
Her parents are at best an enigma, at worst, the poorest examples of parenting ever depicted in a novel. They're simply obnoxiously bad parents. They're anachronistically depicted as hippies, which is so antiquated a concept that it’s almost cute. Unless Maggie's mom and dad are in their sixties, which isn’t at all evident, the hippie thing doesn’t work for me. If they were in their sixties and had a teen daughter in high school, that would be a story worth telling, but that would not be this cheap excuse for a melodrama.
Maggie, like all too many main female characters, I'm grieved to report, isn’t the sharpest key on the keyboard, flailing around, all but falling over herself for two guys one after another at her new school after she swore to avoid them like the plague. This alone tells us how shallow she is. Her consistent failure to come up with intelligent ruses and excuses to avoid them tells us how brain-dead she is. Her lack of any sense of self-worth when the most obnoxious trope hits on her appallingly tells us how vacuous she is. Her having no evident willingness or ability to stand up for a principle (as when she cheats herself out of seeing "the latest James Bond" (Ziegler couldn’t name a James Bond movie?!) by allowing the less obnoxious trope to drag her into a movie he's going to see - a movie in which she has zero interest - tells us how spineless she is. That she accidentally (and then repeatedly) flashes her underwear at the guy she sees this movie with, and somehow thinks this will turn him off shows what a rock-bottom moron she is.
On the interesting side, Maggie accidentally falls into a friendship with Penny, an overweight girl who is entirely uncritical of Maggie (and perhaps the only student in the school who is) as well as completely accepting of the fake quirks Maggie accretes to herself in her determination to be unpopular. Maggie gets to know Penny, but we don't, and she's probably the most interesting character in the entire novel except for the fiery, petite Drip, about whom we learn less than we do Penny. If Ziegler had written the story about just those two it would have been an immeasurably better tale than the sad waste of paper she delivers. In fact, it’s these quirks and out-of-left field ideas that she has which initially kept me reading, despite my detestation (and protestation) of the truly sad male tropes.
In another classic example of how shallow she is, Maggie tries to come up with some extra-curricular activity or other in order to beef up her college application, and hits on joining the "losers" group borne of the bigoted idea that if she associates with losers no one will want her. The truth is that the only real loser in this entire novel is Maggie herself. I'd been leaning towards thinking that this story was fine but for the romance; the problem with that, is that the sad excuse for a romance starts taking over the entire story which is right where the entire story becomes completely uninteresting to me. There are fewer tropes and clichés written on bathroom walls at truck stops than appear as an excuse for romance in YA novels.
Frankly, the romance is so asinine that it's nauseating. This magical guy Jack manages to magically appear in Maggie's life magically. He's magically always there. It’s magical. Even when she joins her extra-curricular club he's magically there. She goes to a movie and he's magically there, too! She farts sweetly and he's magically there. (That last one didn’t happen yet). Could Ziegler telegraph any more loudly the inevitable trope result of the inevitable trope romance? Could Maggie be any more of a completely vapid wilting wench than she already is? Who knows? That last is rhet(Butler)orical.
Maggie is put into one situation after another from which her spinelessness prevents her from excusing herself. For example, Jack asks her out to dinner and it would be the easiest thing in the world for her to say no, but her lack of back-bone leaves her saying yes. That same evening before her date arrives, she finally learns (from one of the most contrived plot points ever) that yes, her ex is indeed dating someone else. Duhh! She could right then call up Jack and tell him no, since she's so upset and angry, but her lack of anything even resembling a notochord prevents her from canceling the date. Her parents prove predictably and tiresomely obnoxious. So Jack-off on the rocks has asked her out to dinner and therefore dominantly insists upon paying, and she dumbly knuckles under for it. And god forbid we should leave out the trope that he tips well, and therefore would absolutely make the best husband imaginable, of course.
On the date she is so vacuous and shallow that she can't even come up with one good argument against her date's republicanism. Not that he is a Republican! Maggie is too stupid to figure it out, and has blindly pigeon-holed him without it even registering! Their exchanges from this point onwards are not even fit to appear in a twelve-year-old's romantic fiction story. It would be quite easy to do the thing which Democrats have consistently and blindly failed to do, which is to call out the Republicans on their appalling hypocrisy: hypocrisy which has them on the one hand championing Jesus Christ and religion, but on the other, failing in every regard to adhere to and follow even one of the fictional principles espoused by the fictional Christ in the fictional New Testament!
Maggie is such a loser that she even sells out her vegetarianism by allowing herself to be dragged to a restaurant where meat dishes are in abundance. I don't think vegetarians can have a truly fulfilling relationship with a carnivore, but apparently Ziegler disagrees. She's entitled to, but the reason Maggie is in this position is because Ziegler has once again sold feminism down the river by chaining her "heroine" to Jack and allowing him to lead her like a prize pet on his date to his choice of venue.
I get that this is a fish-out-of-water story with a twist of lemming, but if that's what Ziegler thought she was writing, it isn’t what she delivers. She fails because Maggie isn’t really trying to do what she claims she's attempting. She's not; not even half-heartedly. Her character doesn't even make sense: that on the one hand she's so devoted to her memory of tragic Trevor that she can’t move on, but on the other, she has each of her hands on the trope rump of a trope guy - a magical trope guy with magical eyes and magical muscles - and she's moving right along. She doesn't even remotely behave as though she's being eaten up inside by her grief over her previous relationship. We're told that she is, but we're never actually shown that she is. In this, Ziegler presents us with an object (abject?!) lesson in how to spectacularly lose the case of Teller v. Shower.
Instead of trying to avoid people and relationships, which was her stated aim, Maggie is devoting all her time and energy to them, and we're given no reason why the rest of us should go along with Ziegler's follies. A simple "Leave me the hell alone" would dispose of Jack-of-all-tirades (maybe not - he's a borderline stalker), and a sharp kick to the nut-sack would run Miles, not to say ruin. So why doesn't Maggie deliver on those goods? Because Ziegler is betraying her character and refusing to let her. Ziegler's agenda here is at odds with that of her main character, and that would work fine if Ziegler had the writing chutzpah to get it done. She evidently doesn't. She is so poor at telling this story that when a golden opportunity pops up for Maggie to run Jack out of her life by going on a date with Miles, and then run him out of her life by dumping him after said date, the thought never even crosses her incredibly empty mind.
Here's a thing about his novel that I'd noticed but not noted until now: there is no bad language! This is a novel about rough-and-ready high school students and not one of them ever swears? Yes, Ziegler's writing a four-letter-word-free story, which is fine. I suspect her motive for this is religious, and my suspicion is bolstered by a lot of what she writes. I think the religious perspective ruins a good story, but sometimes it's of use and can actually add something. In this case, Ziegler doesn't have what it takes to do the addition. It’s patently obvious that she's writing reality-free fiction, so let me grant her that and drop the snark about it being unrealistic because I have a better point to make (and this even bypasses the fact that Ziegler made certain she put the word 'vaginal' in her novel to show how dangerously risqué and naughty she really honestly is!)
First, some context: on the bottom of p202 she writes, "But what really pees me off…". Seriously? The phrase is "pisses me off". Nothing else works. Urinates me off? Nope. Tinkles me off? Nope. Number ones me off? Nope. Golden rains me off? Nope. Only "pisses me off" actually works. So when Ziegler writes "pees me off" as a substitute, it does nothing save announce loudly to me that she's as clunky as she is clueless. I honestly hope she's not actually like that, because she does have a voice, and I live in hope that bad writers will get better, but just as Maggie is trying half-heartedly to convey unpopularity to Jack-off, what Ziegler is whole-heartedly conveying to me is a really bad impression of her as a writer. If she wants to avoid swearing, then why not "tees me off"? It’s only a single letter difference and it actually makes sense. How about "ticks me off"? God forbid she should actually come up with an invented phrase that's actually funny. I don't get at all why she felt the need to embarrass herself with this when she could have achieved her end with something perfectly suitable and devoid of the accompaniment of screeching fingernails on a chalk-board.
After the meal with Jack, Maggie bemoans the fact that she failed to disgust him and turn him off, but she's so abysmally dumb that she never once thinks of merely saying good night and heading home alone to kill the mood. Instead, she dumbly persists in the very behavior she has deluded herself into thinking will do the job, and it's the same behavior she's repeatedly tried and failed at. This screams to me that she's as limited of rationale as she is unimaginative. She could have killed the promise of a date by the simple act of canceling it. She could have killed the actual date by going out that evening before Jack arrived, so that when he shows up to pick her up she's simply not there. Yes, I get that Ziegler's whole purpose is to get Jack and Diane, er Maggie Mayn't, together. She's telegraphed that sad goal ever since she Jacked him into the novel in the first place, but is it also a requirement of Ziegler's that she portrays her main character as an incompetent, and as a complete moron, in order to achieve her end? I would argue not.
Frankly, the one who is doing the better job of killing the date for my money is Jack himself. He's consistently obnoxious, treating her like a second-rate citizen - a weak woman, who needs to be coddled and paid for - and protected. Earlier in the day, they'd been cleaning up a park, and after the meal they go to that same park. Maggie cluelessly thinks she'll turn Jack off if she takes a turn on the park swings! Where did a brain as limited as hers come up with that idea? It’s here that he starts up again about past history: the incident in the park that morning where Miles is Miles and Maggie stands up to him. Jack is whining that he ought to have been there to protect her. How freaking condescending can you get? If I liked him to this point, which I certainly didn't, this would have made me detest him. How can Ziegler persistently betray her gender like this? She portrays Maggie as not even remotely affronted by Jack-Ass's behavior. On the contrary, she responds warmly to a kiss that he abruptly and uninvitedly forces on her.
It was right at this point that I just wanted this novel to be over with so I could move on to something less landfill to read, but I figured that I was so close to the end that I could finish this and further deplete the ammunition stocks of those who whine about DNFs! The problem is that Ziegler was as determined to turn me off the novel as Maggie supposedly was to avoid dating. And Ziegler was doing a far more efficient job than ever was Maggie. About 40 pages from the end, Maggie openly declared herself, at the "losers" dance, to be the complete dip-shit and dirt-bag she had promised to be all along, and I honestly could not stand to deal with any more of her juvenile crap. I had hoped against hope that something different would come out of the story, but why I had this blind faith in Ziegler, given what a complete let-down she'd proven herself to be to this point, I have no idea. Call me the eternal optimist when it comes to novels; however, this novel is now determined to be of the species Wartius maximus and I'm outta here!
