Author: Constance C Greene
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Rating: WORTHY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
This is a very short book from Open Road Integrated Media with whom I've a great reading relationship, so it's nice to be able to review this one positively! It starts on page five and ends on page 72. I wish it were longer because it really is quite enthralling. However, there's no need to despair. It's the first of six: A Girl Called Al, I Know You, Al, Your Old Pal, Al, Al(exandra) the Great, Just Plain Al, and Al’s Blind Date. Normally I can't stand first person PoV, but some authors can use it appropriately and nail it completely and this author is one of them. It would not have worked as well had it been told in third person.
I think the reason it does work so well is that it's not about the narrator per se. Obviously she's involved, but the story is really more about things going on around her, about other people, rather than about herself and I think this is why it's so palatable. This self-effacement is further enhanced by the author's stubborn refusal to give a name to the narrator.
It's both set and was written in a bygone era - although not too bygone (it was published originally in 1969), and it gives a very different - and I have to say thoroughly refreshing - take on school. There is no love triangle here, no excessive emphasis on sports or jocks, no school bully, no bitchy girls, and no guys at all, if you discount the apartment building caretaker. It's all girls, girls who have no need of guys, but who are not immune to them, and it works perfectly.
Al is a year older than the narrator, but she dropped back a year when she moved to town, so they're both in seventh grade. Al lives just down the hall in their apartment block and soon the two are fast friends and all but inseparable. I love the matter-of-fact way in which the narrator relates the story, and I admired her trenchant observations and commentary on life around her.
There's nothing going on here - no fantasy, no paranormal events, no great adventure, no melodrama, which would seem to make the story boring to modern youth, but that's the very point of it - not the boredom, but that life can be an adventure even when it isn't obvious that one is happening, and that adventure doesn't necessarily mean drawing a sword and leaping into a kraken's maw. The delight of this story is that we become friends with these girls as we see their own friendship blossom and mature. We enjoy their company and look forward to meeting them again.
Alexandra hates her name and advises the narrator upon their first acquaintance that, "You can call me Al" which was very nearly a laugh-out-loud moment for me. Al is a self-declared non-conformist. She wears pigtails and is pretty much the only girl who does. She's somewhat overweight which the narrator, with refreshing honesty, declares might be an impediment to their friendship, but which isn't.
Al is rather worldly compared with the narrator, having traveled quite a bit. The narrator doesn't know where Ellay is until Al explains that it's the initials for Los Angeles. Al is also an ERA advocate in her own way. She wants to learn what she determines to be 'useful things' at school, so she wants to do "shop" instead of sewing and cooking. She wants to learn how to make bookshelves just like the boys are doing, but she's denied this opportunity. It's frankly a disgrace how primitive and backward the USA was in race and gender relations even as recently as the sixties and seventies. We should all of us be as ashamed as we are ever mindful of how badly things can deteriorate when people are not treated as equally as the constitution plainly requires.
The girls are friendly with Mr Richards, the aging ex-bartender who is the apartment caretaker, and when he learns of their problem with shop, he offers to teach them how to make bookshelves, which they do. Al is (unwillingly) alienated from her father, and Mr Richards is alienated from his daughter and grandchildren, so they become his default grandchildren and the relationship is wonderful. The stories of his spotlessly gleaming kitchen floor are hilarious.
With this novel being a generation old, it has had several covers, and the one I illustrate on my blog (of the girl's face), is perfect. There's another cover which I've seen floating around and which shows a blonde girl shellacking a bookshelf. This girl bears absolutely no relationship whatsoever to the character Al. My advice, for what it's worth, is to boycott that version and buy this one!
