Rating: WARTY!
If I'd known beforehand that this was a Full Fathom Five product, I would never have picked it off the library shelf, but I didn't learn this until later. I expected better from someone of Alex Morgan's Stature.
Anyway, after enjoying this year's women's world cup I discovered that one of the US team's leading scorers, Alex Morgan, had written a middle-grade series about girls' soccer. At least I can only assume she wrote it. It is Full Fathom Five after all, so who knows? Since I'd written my own YA novel about a girl who gets to play soccer in the English men's professional league, I was curious as to how a professional player would write a soccer story, so I checked this out of the library.
I have to say I was disappointed in it in several ways, not just in the story telling. I can't speak for middle-grade girls, but this wasn't quite what I was expecting and the story was a bit too black and white, traditional, and safe for my taste: the inattentive adults, the evil bully girl, the oh-so-wonderful instant friends, the 'problems' that are not really problems. To me it felt a bit young and simplistic for today's middle graders.
The basic plot is that Devin moves from the west coast to the east coast meaning it's the trope 'new girl in school' garbage that's already been done to death. Could Morgan not have added a bit of an original twist here? Aren't strikers supposed to be inventive? I guess she really wasn't very inventive in the world cup. Yes, she admirably took the goals as the chances presented themselves, scoring five of hers in that first easy game, but she really didn't have to work for any of them, did she? She certainly didn't make them with inventive and incisive runs through the defense; for the most part she simply stood there and then took advantage of the opening when the ball came right to her. She's no Marta Vieira da Silva, that's for sure.
You know there's a lot been said about the US behavior in that first game - about scoring so many goals against Thailand, but I never had a problem with that. You get the chance, you score. It's almost a knee-jerk reaction, and no one can complain about the confidence-building and experience credits it brings to a player, especially in an opening game. No, my problem was that the US's extravagant celebration of each goal was way out of proportion to the effort it took to get it. They were humiliating poor Thailand and reveling in it. That's cold. That's callous. I expect better of a women's team. Morgan herself writes on p85 of this very novel, "There's a mercy rule in soccer, right?" as Devin's team is being roundly beaten. How hypocritical that was.
If they'd faced a tough, seasoned, team (as they did each game once they were into the knock-out rounds where their scoring dropped precipitously from that first game and came to rely more than once on penalty goals), then celebrating like that after a score is entirely appropriate, because it's hard work scoring against a team like those, and players deserve that kind of celebratory release, but shaming a poorer team which doesn't have the resources the US team had and which isn't going to get paid the third of a million dollars that each of the US players will end up with (and that excludes any endorsements they may get) is disgraceful in my opinion and far beneath the conduct I'd expect of a team which has the status and power that the US team enjoys. It was white players beating down the brown players and loving it, and that's never a good thing.
Equality isn't only about pay (which the US women's team definitely deserves having earned actually more than the US men's team has over the last few years). It's about everyone having an equal chance. The Thai team is new to the cup and had nowhere near the experience and resources the US team had. The Argentinian team had to fight bigotry and prejudice and a complete lack of support in their struggle to have a national women's team. The US deserves equal pay and no one in their right mind would argue otherwise, but that said, the US also enjoys privilege and status which many other women's teams are still fighting desperately for. We'd be fools to forget that this is bigger than the US team. Much bigger.
But I digress! As usual! So what's with this Alex Morgan obsession with California - like it's some exotic foreign country that Devin can't get over? Could it be that Morgan herself is from California and perhaps now has a thoroughly warped view about how super-human the soccer players are and how they dress far in advance of the rest of the country? Yeah, five of the US 23-member team were native Californians, but three hailed from Georgia and two each from Arizona, New Jersey, and New York state, so whence this outlandish praise for California soccer? Bias - again! Remember this is where players were born, not necessarily where they blossomed and learned how to became the world-class players they are today.
It's nice that the cover of this novel depicted such a diversity of people: Asian, Black, and white, but if you look at photos of the USWNT, it's almost entirely white. There were only three black players on the team of 23 - and not a single Asian or Latinx player. Yes, of course they have to pick the best players, but what does it say about us if we can find the best only among white players? Whence equality there? Where is our melting pot of diversity and opportunity?
That said, the book cover doesn't remotely reflect the characters in the novel - and pink boots? Really? And the art is by a female artist who once again evidently never read the novel. The only pink mentioned in the novel is of a headband and a top. Never boots. How about a picture of real live girls - real soccer players on the cover - not models, not cartoon characters? Is that too much to ask? I guess it is from what's been roundly touted as a book mill, but more on that later.
Morgan has Devin stupidly following along with these Californians like a bleating lamb. "Mom, I must have flip-flops!" (or words to that effect) she cries after their team tryout! (Disclosure - I am biased against flip-flops. I think they're stupid, cheap, and nasty, but then I'm not the one writing a novel advocating about them! Although now, I think maybe I'll put in a couple of words about them in this novel I'm currently working on! LOL!). My point here is that once again Morgan could have made Devin stand out by making her an individual instead of a lamb, but no. She doesn't want that. Maybe she thinks individuals have no place in team sports, but if that's so I'd have to ask her "Did Megan Rapinoe get to be the figure she is today by blending in?" Hell no! Learn something from your teammates, Morgan!
There was at least one grammar issue that I recall, where Morgan apparently doesn't understand the difference between criteria and criterion (p8). The former is plural, the latter singular, and Morgan uses the wrong one. Now you can argue that this was written in first person by a twelve-year-old, so maybe it was the youngster who got it wrong and not the university-educated author who is more than twice her age, but this comes back to how you want your main character to appear, doesn't it?
Do do you want her to sound illiterate and dumb? I guess that's the choice the author of this novel leaned into. It's one of many problems with first person voice stories which is why I rail against them. Do you really want to write the novel in a way that makes it as dumb as your character might be? Because that doesn't make for great reading in my book. On the other hand, if you have a dumb character and write her in first person, but write literately, then do you betray that character and your entire story? This is why third person is nearly always the wisest choice. First person doesn't bring immediacy, it brings a complete lack of realism and dearth of suspense which overwhelms your rather desperate substitution of first person for immediacy.
So by now you must know that I did not like this story. It felt wrong, too fluffy, inauthentic, too easy, and far too predictable. Yes, they do beat their bedeviling team at the end, and it's no spoiler to say that, but that victory comes out of nothing - no sweat, no tears and certainly no blood (which is probably a good thing!). Maybe middle-grade girls will like this story, but if they do, I feel sorry for them that they settle for so little when they could have so much more. Surely this, right now, in the midst of the afterglow from the US women's victory on a world stage, is when we ought to be strongly-pushing for more and better for our girls?
All of that aside, the biggest reason for avoiding this series like the plague is that it's copyright not to Alex Morgan, but to Alex Morgan and "Full Fathom Five" which is the book mill run by businessman James Frey, which begs the question as to whether Morgan even wrote it at all. In January 2006, The Smoking Gun published an article online titled: "A Million Little Lies: Exposing James Frey's Fiction Addiction" alleging that James Frey simply made up large parts of his memoirs. The next month, Frey apologized for these fabrications. Full Fathom Five was the subject of an article in New York magazine: "James Frey's Fiction Factory" (November 2010) which is still available online as of this posting date. You should read it: http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/69474/. For me, I would advise avoiding this series like the plague. I feel it does a disservice to women's soccer and women in general for that matter.
