Title:
September Girls
Author:
Bennet Madison
Publisher:
Harper Teen
Rating:
WORTHY!
Once again we have a novel where the author could have made a better choice for the title. There is at least three other novels out there with very similar titles to this one, and this caveat is especially true of a novel which discusses summer girls, not September girls per se. I wanted to read this because I had read of some controversy over it, and I happened upon it in the library, so I snatched it up to see what's it was all about, even though I had sworn I would never read a mermaid novel! So much for that resolution....
This novel is told in the first person (something which normally makes me cringe, but in this case it wasn't too awful) by Sam, who has gone to Nag's Head in North Carolina with his older brother Jeff, and their father for the entire summer. Given that their father walked out on his job, how they're affording this whimsy of a vacation goes in want of a serious explanation, but given how well-versed in walk-outs the family is, you should take pair rather than despair from this.
From almost the first evening they're there, Sam notices that there is a plague of really attractive, blonde, white girls sauntering around the resort, and each of them seems to pay him far more attention than he is both used to and familiar with, but not one of them will approach him to talk unless he initiates the conversation. It's pretty obvious who these girls are once we share Sam and Jeff's encounter with a girl who seems to magically appear in the surf that first evening, and then hurries - on all fours, because she evidently can't walk - over the dunes and into the long grass before Jeff can even catch her to ask if she's okay, let alone inevitably try to take advantage of her! Yes, Jeff is a real college frat boy. Sam isn't, and is mildly disgusted with Jeff's obsession with getting laid. He's also repelled by these strange girls and doesn't want to get involved with any of them. Guess how well that plan was executed?
These girls are mermaids. No mystery about that, although Sam doesn't figure it out because there's no reason for him to imagine that Nag's Head is full of mermaids for the summer, but he refers to them with an initial cap: "Girls" to distinguish them from the regular resort girls who pay him exactly the attention he expects, which is none. Over a short time, both he and Jeff take up with two of the Girls, Jeff with Kristle (pronounced Crystal) and Sam with DeeDee, but there are immediately issues. Kristle keeps hitting on Sam, even as Jeff falls in love with her. Both of these things creep Sam out, especially because falling in love isn't something that's ever been remotely confused with Jeff's college playbook.
Just when Sam is really starting to fall for DeeDee, she cold-shoulders him, and won't tell him why. I can relate to that! I can actually (although seventeen is a ways in the past for me) relate to a lot of what goes through Sam's mind as a seventeen-year-old. Some reviewers, I know, have found Sam and Jeff's attitudes to be genderist and gross, but these are young men, and are a product of their genes and their past. There really are people out there like them, and to suggest no one should write about them is appallingly arrogant of those reviewers. Besides, Sam has redeeming qualities which those reviewers seem to have overlooked. In addition to that, his narrative is as amusing as it is bizarre at times.
Those same reviewers seem also to have overlooked the fact that these mermaids are not "girls", per se. They're aliens, trying to adapt to life in a strange, and even hostile environment, so while they look like, and indeed emulate human females, it's completely absurd to judge them based on the criteria upon which we might measure and judge human girls. It's like bitching at Jane Goodall for not acting more like chimpanzees! There is a mermaid narrative interwoven with Sam's (and a really funny reference to a song from Disney's The Little Mermaid, made by DeeDee when she and Sam were hiding out inside a model pirate ship on a miniature golf course). The story is also really entertaining and kept me reading.
Interspersed almost randomly between the chapters which Sam relates, there is a one or two page break filled by observations made by one of the mermaids. Those are amusing and informative, but we're given no good indication of who it is who writes them. While it's tempting to think DeeDee is the writer, it may be Kristle, or even more than one author, but Whoever it is often speaks in a rather sweeping plural - talking of "we" rather than "I". She's really speaking about mer-kind, rather than herself alone.
What about the writing? I liked it. I enjoyed the way it's written and the humor and the weird observations made by both Sam and the mermaids. I've been to Nag's Head, so I can relate to what Sam is saying in that regard too, and to be frank, while Nag's Head is a lot smaller than its reputation, there is a bit more to do there than Sam indicates, but the writing is good. Having said that, there was one oddball sentence starting at the bottom of p190: "And sitting on the porch watching the fireworks with my drunk, tattooed, chain-smoking mother, her reclined in obvious languor in a half collapsing beach chaise...". Her reclined?! That may be technically correct (I honestly can't say for sure, but it really feels wrong to me!), although I would have written: "...she reclining...".
So I finished this and I have to say I felt let down by the ending, but not so let down that I can't still recommend this as a worthy read. It's tempting to say that this is not your usual mermaid story, but given that I have read none, I can only surmise that this is probably different from the kind of mer-romance you might be used to if you're an aficionado.
