Author: Victoria Foyt
Publisher: Harper
Rating: worthy
This is the story of a teenage computer-recluse, Alexia Aurora Diamond, whose mother dies and Lexie finds herself having to actually spend more time irl. This novel was really hard to get into: the author is spewing jargon almost randomly as though she feels a need to establish her geek chops, and it doesn’t work. First of all she simply doesn't know anything about computers (she probably wrote this novel on a typewriter), and secondly, it just makes it that much harder to get into the story. She uses the term "hard frame" when she means "main frame", she thinks 'bytes' are a measure of time when they're actually a measure of capacity, and she tosses in terms like CD-ROM when she means simply a CD. No one uses that term any more, because no one really thinks of CDs as memory, although the term is technically correct. Even in 2007 when this was written, CDs were on their way out.
The author mentions keeping her mother's 'power boost' which plugs into her motherboard, and this in turn speeds-up her surfing? That makes no sense. The flat limit of your surfing speed is the maximum capacity of your connection to the Internet, and that's it (Foyt says it’s a modem which was not likely in 2007, not in a well-off family like Lexie's). You can use compression algorithms to transmit more data at that same rate, but you cannot increase the base speed of your link unless you get a better hook-up, so this was misleading at best.
And why are all these YA novels about girls who are from well-off families? Yeah, once in a while we get one about a girl from an impoverished household, but those are usually about that same state of poverty. We almost never get one where a teen comes from a poor family, but the poverty isn't the focus of the novel. It's a bit snobbish, isn't it?
In terms of writing quality, and other than the geek spiel, the novel is written in a manner that's technically OK, but there's way too much tell as opposed to show. There's also an odd quirk or two here and there - a short-hand which many writers use but which seems really odd if you stop to think about it. For example, on page 13 the author writes, "Her father walked in her room…" when she really means "Her father walked into her room…". There's a difference. What she actually wrote means that her father was already in the room and was walking around inside - pacing while thinking, for example. The other phrasing means exactly what it says: he entered the room.
It's like writing that someone "came in through the door" when only SWAT teams and super heroes actually do that. Most people come in through the doorway. Of course, it's pedantic to spell it out every time, and it doesn’t necessarily fit the kind of story you're trying to tell if you spell it out, but it does seem odd when you stop and think. Since this blog is as much about writing as it is about reading, I think it’s important to point out that you need to know what it is that you're writing, and to be sure that what you want to say is what you do say, no matter how technically correct or incorrect your wording is. Only then can you be sure you’re saying it the right way for what you're trying to convey to your reader.
Foyt stuffs every trope she can dredge up from YA fiction into this novel: the socially disaffected, angst-y teen who considers herself to be a different species to everyone else, and who is missing at least one parent; the trope guy with hair falling into his eyes who is telegraphed from wa-ay off; the trope bitch glam-queen who is her mortal enemy; the trope of having the trope guy and his main squeeze accidentally end up in each other's arms, etc.
It’s truly sad that far too many YA authors can’t think-up more original and inventive characters and situations than these, but there are some saving graces here which kept me reading. The "enemy" seems to want to be a friend, so that's a bit different, and the novel does improve if you stay with it. We get less geek speak (although at the price of more new-age and philosophical stuff, which normally I would rail against, but in this case, it’s actually presented in a way that didn’t make me barf).
Lexie is definitely out there on the shaky edge, seeing her whole life in terms of computer components and Internet interaction, and she definitely has a large dollop of eastern religious philosophy, conspiracy theory, and even alien visitation about her, but the way she tries to rationalize life and fit it into her really quirky computer view of the world is actually quite amusing when it works. Unfortunately, and far too often, she doesn't come off as being the computer whiz she's supposed to be.
For example at one point towards the end of the novel, she's supposed to be teaching her new-found friend about computers in return for the make-over she just got, but the whole thing is so god-awfully clunky that it's embarrassing to read. It simply doesn't work, especially when she likens a hard drive to a brain. No! If you're going to compare computers and people (which doesn't really work), then at least go for the CPU as the brain. The hard drive is not a brain; it's really just memory, which is admittedly part of a brain function, but whereas a CPU can work fine without a hard drive, a hard drive isn't going anywhere without some sort of CPU directing it. The truth is that this whole comparison is wrong because the entire computer is like the hardware of the brain (the grey matter and white matter) and the computer's operating system is like the thoughts that run through it.
Lexie learns from a visiting police detective, who is investigating the accident which killed her mom (who was a practicing psychologist) that the crash was caused by the girlfriend of a man named John Simpson. She took his car, got drunk, drifted into Lexie's mom's lane and that's all she wrecked. This girlfriend killed herself afterwards in remorse, it would seem. I wondered what the odds were that John Simpson was Lexie's trusted (and sole) online "friend", but it soon began to look more like it's her trope "love" interest in disguise with whom she's interacting which was sad. It would have made for a much better novel if her online "love" had been the one who killed her mother.
Lexie's dad, who has been divorced from her mom for a year or so when her mom dies, is soon hanging out with Jane, a new woman in his life, and to whom Lexie takes an immediate and extreme dislike. Lexie imagines that she's in touch with her mom via the Mac computer that's her lifeline to what she views as reality. She's named it Ajna-Mac and feels she has a spiritual relationship with it. I'm surprised she doesn't name her bike "megacycle"... and store her memories in bank 'volts'.... She starts imagining her mother is communicating with her via the Mac, and sees her on the monitor screen, although when she tries to make a video of this visit, her video shows nothing out of the ordinary.
This virtual mom tells her that her death wasn't an accident, and she gives Lexie the password to her computer, where her patient files are kept. Lexie prints out a patient list and urges her dad to get the detective looking into it. Lexie also tells her dad that her mother left her a letter in their safety deposit box, which turns out to be true. Everything else is easily explained away as Lexie's delusions, but this envelope was a lot harder to dismiss!
Eventually, Lexie declines into thinking Jane killed her mom. So is she delusional? Is disaster heading her way? If so, what form will it take? Or is she right in some weird way? You'll have to read this to find out. Despite having multiple problems with this novel, I still found it a worthy read overall. Your bus speed may differ....
