Title: Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret
Author: Judy Blume
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Rating: WORTHY!
In a continued and disappointing effort to read the classics, I happened upon this, which isn't an old classic but is nonetheless a modern classic, supposedly well-loved and well received, although it's rather dated now (it was published almost half a century ago). It felt like reading a peanuts cartoon to me, which I actually don't do, not being a Peanuts fan, but this is very short (~150 pages) so I figured it was do-able even if I didn't like it. As it happens, I did like it and I recommend it.
Margaret is a middle-grader who is moving to a new home and a new school, of course, but at least it's not your typical middle grade/YA novel where there is a orphan child and an evil clique. Margaret makes friends easily and immediately finds herself part of a secret girls club, where they (Janie, Gretchen, Margaret, and Nancy) meet once a week under fake names at the house of one of the members, and have to wear bras and write lists of boys they like and keep the list in order as these various guys' favor falls or rises. It's all very innocent stuff, part from when Judy Blume writes "Good-by" instead of "Goodbye", but maybe departure wishes were different in the seventies....
Margaret is conflicted about all sorts of things, one of which is her religion or lack of one. Sadly she feels she ought to have one, but one her parents hails from a Judaic background and the other from Christian, so they don't attend organized worship services, which is the smartest thing they can do. There's nothing in either religion which demands its adherents attend any kind of church.
If there were a god (and I don't buy it because there's never been any useful evidence for any gods), then what would he care (it's nearly always a he, isn't it?) if you worship in church or out? Wouldn't he prefer it if you spoke directly to him rather than let some guy do the job for you? In fact, the New Testament has its Messiah (who was a Judaist, not a Christian!) specifically ordering people to worship in private, not in public. So much for that advice! LOL! I don't get this intermediary nonsense where a rabbi or a priest or a mullah takes charge of your worship for you.
But Margaret goes to a synagogue to celebrate the Jewish new year just to comparison shop. The author gets the new year greeting wrong, although she gets Rosh Hashanah in the right part of the year (the fall in the northern hemisphere). The Judaists don't wish each other a happy new year, but a good year. The author has the Rabbi saying "Good Yom Tov" to Margaret, which means "Good day good" which is nonsensical! The actual greeting is far more likely to be "Shanah Tovah" - a good year, or something along those lines. It's not like our western greeting at all and has a different meaning.
Margaret takes to praying from whence the novel's title, but her prayers are never answered. Like most believers, this neither disillusions nor deters her. I promise you that there are far more excuses made up by theists for why prayers are not answered than ever there are prayers answered. For the Christians this is awkward because their Messiah did not equivocate. He promised every prayer wish made in his name would be granted. So much for his credibility! LOL! Instead of answers, we get excuses. If your prayer isn't going to be answered - at least in the way you expect - there ought to be an official communiqué from your god explaining why, so you at least you would know that it had at least been considered!
Margaret also has to face a new teacher - not that she knew the old one, but the new one is male, and he seems wise to the mischievous ways of his students. He assigns them a year-long project, and no one has any idea how to handle this or what to choose, but Margaret, perhaps propelled by a brief chat with her wily new teacher, takes it upon herself to evaluate her parents' religions in an effort to try and decide which one she should adopt. Her father is Jewish, but Margaret is not, since her mother is not. Her mother was raised Presbyterian, but due to the hostility from her and her husband's respective parents, they neither of them pursue any active religious worship.
One thing which bothered me about Margaret was how self-centered she was. All but one of those unanswered prayers was about herself and her needs. The exception was when her dad was clueless in dealing with a lawn mower and cut his finger. She prayed for him then. Other than that, she never did ask for anything for anyone else.
I was intrigued to read about the times when the girls began getting their periods and it became such a awful competitive thing. Being a boy in school (and still am, as it happens!) I was never part of that, so it's a curious thing to me and I wondered how much of this was Judy Blume's own life story, and how much she was making up or filling in from other women's shared recollections. She definitely made a huge fuss about it.
Boys go through their own thing, of course, but it's nothing like girls go through. It's hard to imagine what it's like to endure these things, especially if it's anything like Margaret's adventures in this novel. It's hard to imagine what it does to the psyche to enter such a dangerous, er, period of your life when one false step can spell pregnancy and all it entails. Scary times, bleeding every month! To quote Isidor Isaac Rabi on his hearing of the properties of the newly discovered muon: Who ordered that?!
Margaret's parents were pretty bland parents throughout this novel until there came a point - inevitably it would seem - where her mom's estranged parents came back into her life. This, I felt, was pure evil on her mom's part. She had randomly sent her parents, to whom she had not spoken in fourteen years, a Christmas card, and suddenly they wrote back announcing that they were coming to visit - they wanted to reconnect with their only daughter and granddaughter. They said not a word about their daughter's evidently despised husband.
Of course, they happened to choose to come at the same time as Margaret was scheduled to fly out to visit her paternal grandmother in Florida - the grandmother who had stuck by the family and whom Margaret adored. The ticket was already bought, but Instead of telling her parents that they would have to either miss their granddaughter or reschedule, she chose instead to screw over her husband's mother, and she told Margaret that she could not go. That was unforgivable. If it had been some emergency, or something complete unavoidable, I could have understood it, but it was not. Her mother was just plain selfish and mean over this and that's not appreciated at all. It makes her mom look so awfully bad and there was no reason to write it this way.
This would have actually made a far more interesting story had Margaret run away at that precise time her grandparents show up, or if her dad had taken her to Florida, but instead both Margaret and her dad completely knuckle under and mom's evil plan holds sway even as it goes awry.
Overall, I liked this book. I liked Margaret despite her short-comings because she was actually the only real grown-up amongst the adults in her family. She was interesting and fun, and although some of this book was oddly contrived and no doubt far-fetched, in general it was a fun fictional read even for me, and I think those for whom it was primarily written will like it.
