Rainbow Rowell's new book, Fangirl, was highly recommended to me by YA fantasy author Cinda Williams Chima and I owe her a big debt of gratitude because I don't know that I would have found the book (or Eleanor & Park, previously reviewed) otherwise. Fangirl was so original and fun and Rowell has obviously done a LOT of research into the fanfic community. She has created a whole "fake-real" fantasy series (the Simon Snow series) about which her main character (Cath) and occasionally Cath's twin sister (Wren) write fan fiction. Throughout the book, in between the main chapters, Rowell gives us snippets of the Simon Snow "canon " ie the real books in the series as well as snippets of Cath's fanfic about Simon and his roommate at the Watford school for mages, Baz the vampire. The Simon Snow series, to me at least, reads like a combination riff on Harry Potter and Twilight (at least to the extent vampires are hiding in plain sight in a school for wizards).
The real story of this book, however, is Cath coming to terms with being a freshman at a college she didn't want to go to in the first place, but was dragged to by her twin sister who doesn't want to be her roommate and doesn't particularly want to include her in their new college life, despite having done everything together in high school. Cath struggles to find her way, forge new relationships and generally deal with growing up. She also deals with leaving their dad alone at home when she and Wren go to college in circumstances where Wren doesn't want to be much help with him. And he does need some help. The other nice addition to a book about "writing" is that Cath is also in an advanced English class and, in this context, struggles with what it means to be a writer, the difference between "original" writing and borrowing someone else's characters and situations in the fanfic context. There's also a very subtle discussion that comes up in various aspects of the English class about what does and doesn't count as plagiarism in modern fiction. So from that point of view the book is instructive and interesting. I haven't seen anything like this before in the YA genre, although in some ways there are aspects of Tobias Wolff's Old School reflected in the themes Rowell taps here.
I don't know if I'd describe this as YA or new adult, or a combination of both. It deals with a lot of "new adult" themes like college life, but also high school level relationships. As with all of Rowell's writing the romance is cute and sweet, and the characters are somewhat clueless. I couldn't help being sucked up into it and hoping it all worked out in the end. There's nothing overly graphic on the page so the book is suitable for younger and older audiences alike. This is such a great book I'm sure I'll read it more than once, and that's saying a lot for me. Get your geek on and pick up a copy!
The real story of this book, however, is Cath coming to terms with being a freshman at a college she didn't want to go to in the first place, but was dragged to by her twin sister who doesn't want to be her roommate and doesn't particularly want to include her in their new college life, despite having done everything together in high school. Cath struggles to find her way, forge new relationships and generally deal with growing up. She also deals with leaving their dad alone at home when she and Wren go to college in circumstances where Wren doesn't want to be much help with him. And he does need some help. The other nice addition to a book about "writing" is that Cath is also in an advanced English class and, in this context, struggles with what it means to be a writer, the difference between "original" writing and borrowing someone else's characters and situations in the fanfic context. There's also a very subtle discussion that comes up in various aspects of the English class about what does and doesn't count as plagiarism in modern fiction. So from that point of view the book is instructive and interesting. I haven't seen anything like this before in the YA genre, although in some ways there are aspects of Tobias Wolff's Old School reflected in the themes Rowell taps here.
I don't know if I'd describe this as YA or new adult, or a combination of both. It deals with a lot of "new adult" themes like college life, but also high school level relationships. As with all of Rowell's writing the romance is cute and sweet, and the characters are somewhat clueless. I couldn't help being sucked up into it and hoping it all worked out in the end. There's nothing overly graphic on the page so the book is suitable for younger and older audiences alike. This is such a great book I'm sure I'll read it more than once, and that's saying a lot for me. Get your geek on and pick up a copy!
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