Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Three

The last we saw of Buffy Summers was of her taking the bus out of Sunnydale to some unknown destination, after killing her vampire-boyfriend Angel to save the world. As you do. Season three opens showing her working as a waitress under an assumed name. But it's not long before the weirdness follows her and sends her home to face up to the consequences of the season two finale.

Back at Sunnydale, Xander, Willow and the others are trying to fight off the vampires without the leadership of the Slayer. This season addresses the relationship between Willow and Xander. First, Willow fancied the oblivious Xander, and then, once Willow got herself a boyfriend, Xander started to feel jealous. Things have come a long way since we first met these characters, and whereas once I would have been happy to see them get together, now I really didn't like seeing them sneaking smoochies whenever they got the chance. Poor Oz! And poor Cordelia. Still, in one way, I'm glad that the inevitable is out of the way now. Although I don't hate Xander's character, I think Willow deserves so much better. Her relationship with Oz survives their cheating. Xander and Cordelia's does not. (I said before, it was never going to last.)

Some new characters are introduced for season three, most notably Richard Wilkins III, mayor of Sunnydale, an apparently genial, fatherly chap who happens to have some nefarious plans of his own. And Faith, the second slayer (Kendra's replacement) a rebellious, angry young woman who is out of control. Faith is played by Eliza Dushku, who I first encountered in Dollhouse, and I observed at the time that she has a very Buffy-ish look to her. I now think that's no coincidence: they are two sides of the same character, Buffy the light, Faith the dark. Faith is how Buffy could have turned out if she didn't have the support from her friends and her mother to keep her grounded, to give her a strong sense of morality. Buffy's conflict with Faith (which could perhaps be interpreted as a conflict between the different sides of her own nature) and the fight to keep the Mayor from transforming into a giant snake monster, is the main plot arc through season three. Because it concerns new characters, it didn't emotionally hook me so much as the story with Angel in season two, but it was entertaining and satisfying to watch, especially in the finale in which the entire graduating class of Sunnydale High join forces to fight the evil (including flaming arrows, because flaming arrows are always awesome.)

I've always thought of Buffy as a high school series, but as Buffy is sixteen at the start of her story, and each season takes place over the course of a school year (like Harry Potter), the show must grow up and move on, like its characters. Season Three finishes with Buffy and co's graduation from high school, and their preparations for university. I felt sad that Willow, after receiving offers from Harvard and Yale, as well as Oxford, decided to study at the local Sunnydale college, but it makes sense in story terms. How could you have a show where each member of the Scooby gang is in a different state? Not to mention the intricacies of filming the series on location. Better to keep them at a fictional college, and build the set to suit the story's need.

There are some marvellous individual stories within season three. I particularly liked "Band Candy," in which students sell chocolate bars to raise money for the school band, and everyone who eats it acts like an irresponsible teenager again. Principal Snyder was both hilarious and creepy acting like a kid, whereas Giles was hilarious with a tough London accent, in a tight t-shirt instead of his usual tweed. This was surprisingly pleasing - and Buffy's mother Joyce certainly thought so, as we discover later on with much hilarity (although I don't think Buffy would share the amusement.) I loved the moment when she confronted Giles about her mother, and he walked right into a tree with shock.

This season also introduces Sexy Evil Vampire Willow, from a parallel dimension created by Cordelia's wish that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale. Willow has certainly gained a new confidence in this season, with her relationship with Oz, and new-found interest in witchcraft. (I do fear for her in her witchery, however. I've noticed hints that she might be getting in over her head. Foreshadowing for later seasons perhaps?) Alyson Hannigan must have had so much fun playing Willow as a psychotic vampire, with echoes of Drusilla from season two. "Bored now!" She was so entertaining to watch, and as an added bonus, she comes back in another episode to really shine, acting opposite her usual timid, bookish character.

After Giles breaks the Watchers' rules, he is sacked from the Watchers' Council and replaced by Wesley, a younger, Gilesier Giles. It's quite uncanny to watch the two together (simultaneously wiping their glasses with handkerchiefs during an awkward moment.) Wesley is Giles with all the book-knowledge and none of the experience, full of ideas about authority and rules and orders, and not much clue about actually dealing with vampires. Or slayers. Or teenagers in general. All the Watchers seem to be English, all upper-class and probably Oxbridge-educated. Do none of the American universities give a doctorate in Watching? Quite remiss of them, don't you think?

As you could probably predict (considering he has his own TV show) Angel does not stay dead for long, and is the cause of the greatest plot twist yet. After coming back from the dead, his own, good self, and nursed back to health by Buffy, it doesn't take much to turn him evil again: Faith splatters him with blood, and some creepy ninja-dude appears, and boom! Angel is the bad "Angelus" once more. Faith and Angel capture Buffy, chain her up and prepare to torture her. Then we get this marvelous exchange:

Faith: "What can I say? I'm the world's best actor."
Angel: "Second best."

He was acting all along! How's about that for a shocking moment! Wonderful, so unexpected, my favourite moment of the series so far.

I knew Angel wasn't around for all of Buffy, and so many times in season three, it looks as though he and Buffy are going to split up, that he's going to leave town, that they won't see each other again. But it takes the entire season for him to actually get his act together and go! It's not that I dislike them as a couple. I want Buffy to be happy. But if he's going to go, can't he just stop faffing and go? He breaks up with Buffy, finally, a couple of episodes from the end, and this time it actually does seem final, with harsh words spoken and a broken heart, but he sticks around to help defeat the Mayor's evil plan before disappearing into the night at the end of the season finale. I think we've seen the last of him for a while. I believe Angel runs parallel to Buffy from now on, although I don't have the DVDs for that. Is it essential viewing to make sense of Buffy, or can I muddle along without it? I think Angel's an OK character, but it's Buffy, Willow, Giles and the others that I'm really interested in.

Favourite episodes:

6. Band Candy: In which all the adults act like teenagers and Giles gets together with Buffy's mother.
9. The Wish: A very dark It's A Wonderful Life episode, with Xander and Willow as vampires.
13. The Zeppo: In which Xander feels excluded from the vampire slaying, has his own adventures, and we see just snippets of what would ordinarily be the "main" plot.
14-15. Bad Girls/Consequences: In which Faith goes off the rails, and tries to drag Buffy along with her.
16. Doppelgangland: Welcome back Sexy Evil Vampire Willow!
17. Enemies: The one with the big plot twist.
18. Earshot: In which Buffy can hear everyone else's thoughts.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Two

I'm assuming I'm the last person to watch Buffy, but in case I'm not: spoilers.

After the first couple of episodes, I quite enjoyed the first season of Buffy as a series of one-off monster-of-the-week episodes. Season two is where it really kicks off. Its opening wasn't promising: the first episode looked like textbook How Not To Sequel, showing the vampires attempting to bring back the Master from the dead, the villain Buffy defeated at the end of the previous season. I didn't love the Master - he was cheesy and somewhat irritating, certainly not a strong enough villain to be the Big Bad of all of Buffy. I was relieved when this story came to nothing, serving mostly as an excuse for Buffy to find closure (which she did by smashing the Master's skeleton into dust with a hammer.) With the Master out of the way, the obvious next villain must be The Anointed One, a seriously creepy child who is leading the vampires. Or so you'd think.

Enter Spike. From the minute he screeched his car into Sunnydale, I knew that this series was never going to be the same again. I knew who he was immediately - I remembered all my friends loving Spike from the first time around, but didn't see what the appeal was. Of course I didn't. I only saw pictures. But as soon as he struts onto the scene, even with his vampire-face on, and an accent that is supposed to be London, but wobbles, Spike exudes a sort of villainous charm, the Lestat to Angel's Louis. In his first episode, Joss Whedon subverts our expectations in his characteristic way, when Spike effortlessly destroys the Anointed One at the end of his very first episode. This is not someone you want to mess with. Nor is his girlfriend, Drusilla, who is quite mad: part a malevolent River Tam of Firefly, part Helena Bonham Carter as... well, any of her roles, and all very sinister indeed.

Season two is where the main characters start to find success in love. A new character is introduced: Oz, a musician and in the year above them, who upon seeing Willow becomes utterly "Who is that girl?" Likewise, I fell head-over-heels in love with Oz: he's cool and laid-back and utterly adorable, and it made me very happy to see Willow get over her unrequited fancy of Xander and pair up with Oz. They are quite possibly the cutest couple ever. And then Oz becomes a werewolf. I've had a soft spot for decent people who become werewolves ever since Remus Lupin, and so I was utterly thrilled to see that my favourite new character got this plot - even if the werewolf is basically a man in wolf mask and a hairy suit. (It beats most CGI werewolves these days.)
besotted.

Meanwhile, Xander starts sneaking secret smoochies with... Cordelia?!?! The mean-girl queen bee who has nothing but contempt for Buffy and her friends, and particularly Xander? I wouldn't quite say that theirs is a Benedick and Beatrice relationship, but it is certainly a fiery one. (It'll never last.)

But most important is Buffy's relationship with Angel, which is consumated half-way through the season. And then, everything changes, Whedon-style. Buffy's good vampire boyfriend is gone, turned into a sadistic monster, the worst of all the vampires. WHAT? I had absolutely no idea that this was going to happen, and was both upset and awed. The story's not meant to go that way. And I love it when a story doesn't go the way it "should."

I expected Angel to be reformed soon after his tranformation, and spend the rest of the season angsting over what he'd done. His actions in the episode "Passion" proved me wrong: not only does he murder Giles' new girlfriend, Miss Jenny Calendar, but he tucks her body up in Giles' bed, leaving a romantic rose-trail up the stairs. So much crueller to Giles - and agony for the viewers to see Giles look so happy knowing what he is about to find. This is not a little blip on Angel's record, Whedon tells us. Broody good Angel is not in there any more.

Season two introduces Kendra the Vampire Slayer - Buffy's replacement, because she "died" at the end of the season one finale, if only for a minute or two. This poses the question: is this "only-one-slayer" business all messed up forever now? When Kendra dies (she lasted longer than I expected, but not past the season finale) will she be also replaced, in a continual line of two slayers forever (unless another one dies briefly and revives, again, and then there were three?) These things bother me. 

Who would have predicted at the beginning of the season that the Big Bad would not be the Master, nor the Anointed One, or even Spike and Drusilla, but handsome, harmless Angel? Congratulations Angel, you have character! You have depth! Shame Buffy has to kill you because you're about to bring about the end of the world. But wait! Willow may be able to magic Angel's soul back into him. My idea of the series' tragic ending would be that Angel would turn back to good at the exact instant that Buffy staked him. (Yes, I know he gets his own series later down the line, but dead doesn't always mean dead in this 'verse. I mean, c'mon, vampires!) As if that wouldn't be tragic enough, once more, Joss Whedon tweaks the narrative just enough to make it even more devastation. Angel gets his soul back... but Buffy still has to kill him to save the world. Deliberately and in cold blood.

I have said it many times: Joss Whedon feeds on his fans' (and characters') pain and anguish. Season two just confirms this... and I've a horrible feeling that it has only just begun.

Most Memorable Episodes. (I'm not sure "favourite" is the correct word any more.)

4. Inca Mummy Girl: In which Buffy's exchange student turns out to be an Inca Mummy.
6. Halloween: In which halloween costumes change their wearers.
7. Lie To Me: In which Buffy is reunited with an old classmate, who is too interested in the vampires.
11. Ted: In which Buffy's mom gets a new boyfriend, who is not as nice as he seems.
13-14. Surprise/Innocence: In which Buffy turns seventeen and sleeps with Angel, who turns evil.
15. Phases: In which Oz is revealed to be a werewolf.
17. Passion: In which Angel proves what he is capable of.
19. I only have eyes for you: In which an illicit romance with a tragic ending is acted out again and again at Sunnydale High. Points deducted for wasps.
21-22. Becoming: The season finale, in which everything hurts and nothing is OK.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season One

As I've mentioned before, I have spent the last seventeen years inexcusably ignorant of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, despite being a nerdy teenager at the time it was originally aired. I saw a few episodes, and listened to my friends rave about it, but it was never a show I went out of my way to watch. Even when I'd been introduced to Joss Whedon's other work: Firefly, Dollhouse, Doctor Horrible and The Avengers, Buffy didn't really appeal. I've never been a big fan of vampires. Yet slowly I was won over, and eventually borrowed the boxset from my best friend. I wasn't convinced right away, but I've learned from experience that Joss Whedon's series tend to start grabbing my attention from round about the third episode: in this case, the episode with the witch cheerleader, who turns out to be the cheerleader's mother who's done a body-swap with her daughter, trying to relive her glory days. 

I confess, I'm not a huge fan of the "chosen one" trope, and am still a bit confused about how and why Buffy is the designated Slayer: what is so special about her, that no one else can do the job? Several other characters have been able to effectively wield a pointy stick. Is she naturally abnormally strong, abnormally skilled? She is an awesome fighter, sure enough, but it's clear that she does a lot of rigorous physical training to get that way. When we first meet Buffy, new student at a new school, she is already well aware of her destiny before she ever met Giles, or any other "Watcher" to tell her what she needs to be doing. How did she discover this? What would happen if someone else wanted to battle vampires, without being a "chosen one?" Who chose Buffy and how did they let her know? These are the things that irritate my brain, but for the most part I just put this aside and enjoy the show. And by this point, yes I am enjoying it very much. There is an overriding story arc about one particularly powerful vampire known as The Master (no, he is not nor has he ever been  a Time Lord) and among the monster-of-the-week stories, series one builds up towards a prophesied confrontation between the newly-restored Master and the Slayer.

But for me, at least in series one, it's not the vampire-slaying stories that interest me so much as how the 

events affect the characters. Buffy, her classmates Willow and Xander and their school librarian by day, Watcher by night, Rupert Giles, make an excellent team. I like Buffy a lot more than I expected: she is very human, flawed, yet likable, tough but vulnerable. She is, in short, a sixteen-year-old girl, but one with a huge responsibility. Willow is simply adorable, and her unrequited love for Xander is rather heartrending, because he sees her as just a friend, someone who's been there so long he's kind of forgotten she's a girl. I see parallels to Ron and Hermione in their friendship, possibly because I'm reading

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at the same time as watching Buffy. But I think Willow can do much better than Xander.*

Xander is far too interested in Buffy, and at times displays unattractive signs of "nice guy syndrome,"

but Buffy has eyes only for Angel - who, as a vampire, is her sworn enemy. Oh, teenage romance woes, how I don't miss you! I knew about the Buffy/Angel love story from the start, and did not relish it, yet it was well done. Yes, Angel can be a bit brooding and introspective, but at least he doesn't sparkle. This is more than the standard teen romance between a human girl and an Interchangeable Magical Boyfriend Creature, because Buffy's purpose is to destroy ALL the vampires, adding a deeper level of conflict. It's not the greatest love story of all time, but it's moving and handled well.

I often enjoy the stand-alone monster-of-the-week episodes more than the vampires themselves: let's face it, The Master is an incredibly cheesy villain, and I found him rather irritating - an over-acting Voldemort. Still, the final episode's confrontation was very satisfying; it was an emotional roller-coaster of an episode. After spending eleven episodes getting to know Buffy, experiencing her highs and lows, her vampire-slaying and her longing for a normal life, who could fail to be affected by her overhearing the terrible prophesy. "I'm sixteen years old. I don't want to die." 

Favourite episodes:

3. "The Witch" - the one with the body-switching cheerleader mom. Episode 3: the one where I started really getting into the series.

6. "The Pack." - The one where Xander and some school bullies get possessed by hyenas and the bullies eat the school principal. This series suddenly took a very dark turn.

8. "I Robot, You Jane." - The one where Willow uploads a demon onto the internet. Hilariously dated, so bad it's good.

9. "The Puppet Show." ARRGH VENTRILOQUIST DUMMY NO! In which Joss Whedon takes a classic horror trope and turns it on its head, playing with all our expectations. Not for the last time.

10. "Nightmares." In which everyone's worst fears and nightmares come to life. I cried.

11. "Out of Mind, Out of Sight." The one with the invisible girl. 

*Interesting that I'm having these thoughts right now. The internet tells me today that J. K. Rowling now wishes she'd paired Harry and Hermione together, that Ron and Hermione wouldn't actually have been good for each other. Perhaps my comparison is not so mad after all...

Bout of Books 8.0: Tuesday

12.10PM

Yesterday's Bout of Books did not produce amazing results for me, but at least I finally finished that Lovecraft book. I found the stories effective and creepy, once I'd got used to the prose, but this is an author who requires a lot of concentration; something I was lacking this weekend.

Today is another day off work for me, and I've had a lot more success reading Reconstructing Amelia in the garden by Kimberley McCreight. (I keep wanting to call it Finding Amelia for some reason, so if that alternative title turns up on the blog - sorry.) This book shows a mother trying to come to terms with her grief and uncover the mysteries surrounding the death of her teenage daughter. At first, it seems that Amelia committed suicide, a thing that her mother Kate can barely get her head around. And then evidence comes to light to suggest that Amelia was murdered.

McCreight uses a mixture of narrative techniques in the uncovering of the mystery, alternating between traditional third-person, past-tense scenes following Kate in November, snippets of text messages, emails and Facebook updates which are uncovered in the investigation, and flashback chapters from Amelia's point of view, which are told in the first person, as if in a diary. These last seem a bit strange to me, as the most intimate and personal voice is that of someone who is no longer around to have a voice. Still, I guess that's the point of the novel: to get posthumously reacquainted with Amelia as a person, rather than as the daughter Kate thought she was. The novel demonstrates the challenges of bringing up a daughter in the contemporary world, especially as a professional single parent, and showing how even a good mother-daughter relationship can hide secrets. Can a mother really know her daughter?

4:30 PM

Finished Reconstructing Amelia, which turned out to be a satisfying mystery (if some characters' actions were somewhat unlikely. Clues were sprinkled throughout the book like a jigsaw puzzle: you might figure out some answers before being told, but it is not until the end that you find out how they all fit together.

I used to want to have a family of my own, somewhen, but in the last few years I've sadly come to realise that I don't think I could be bear to be responsible for bringing up children with the world as it is today. Reconstructing Amelia reinforces that. The world has always been a horrifying and wild place for teenagers - see Lord of the Flies and Heathers, just as a couple of examples. But in this age of inescapable internet, smartphones, and a somewhat self-obsessed culture that encourages everyone to share everything with the world (says the blogger!) the teen's senses of immortality, independence and indiscretion, combined with perhaps not as much wisdom as one might think, can be explosive. We see the results on the news from time to time, and Reconstructing Amelia gives a fictional, extreme, but far from unprecedented example. (And I apologise if this sounds patronising to teenagers. It's not meant that way. I am just grateful that there was no such thing as Facebook when I was a kid and that my internet activities were limited to fangirling on boybands' forums, printing photos of said boyband members, and writing the occasional terrible fanfiction and angsty poetry. Who knows what might be out there if I'd had a Twitter account at fifteen?)

Katie's Adventures in Storyland

Hi everyone. Once again I must apologise for the lack of proper reviews around here lately. As is evident from the blog, most of my reading energies have been going on the Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R R Martin. I'm currently about halfway through the final volume, and will shortly be joining the impatient masses begging Mr Martin to chain himself to his computer until book 6 is completed.* Oh, well, I suppose I have a year and a half less to wait between volumes than those who read Dance With Dragons when it came out, however long Martin takes.

But Song of Ice and Fire (may I shorten this title?) hasn't been alone occupying my mind. Welcome to the new very occasional series I am renaming Adventures in Storyland. (Is this a really terrible title? Little bit terrible, perhaps?) Here I will chronicle other stories - book, TV, film and Other - that my mind has been visiting, that have not had a whole post to themselves.

May contain spoilers

While waiting for my best friend (who is the other half of my unofficial book club) to catch up with me in the Ice and Fire series, I reread Pratchett's Unseen Academicals. Now, I love Terry Pratchett, and read or reread several of his books each year. I gave this book a glowing review when I read it first time around, but this time I took a while to get into it, even putting it back on the shelf for a while. I was clearly not in the right frame of mind for it at first, and the wizards' stories are my least favourite sub-series. But when I got to Mr Nutt's big secret (which was, of course, no secret on a reread) my heart broke a bit all over again. Dear old Mr Nutt, always striving to achieve "worth." In Nutt, Pratchett deals with a subject that J. R. R. Tolkien himself confessed to having trouble with in his own books - the problem of the orcs and goblins as irredeemable. Nutt is lovely, if burdened with a horrendous inferiority complex that makes you just want to give him a hug. And he has his own moments of Awesome at the end.

After many years of good intentions, I read The Perks of Being A Wallflower, soon to be a film. A year in the life of a geeky, awkward high school student, written as letters to an anonymous recipient. Perhaps it is the combination of Charlie's intensity and introspective character, and the epistolary narration that marks this out as a "literary" novel rather than being filed in the "young adult" bucket with other books with similar settings and themes. Not that I mean to imply that a book can't be both literary and YA, or that YA is inferior. Take a look at the greyscale spreading across the adult bestseller charts in your local bookstores.+ Alternatively, pass that by entirely and buy Perks of Being A Wallflower instead. It's an easy read, but one that lingers on in the mind long after the book is finished. I thought it was a cross between The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and Speak. (Many critics have compared it with Catcher in the Rye, but this is a book that I have never had any desire to read, so I can't say. If anyone wants to try to change my mind on Catcher, I'm willing to be persuaded.)



The last few days I've been hit with a beast of a cold, wrapped up in woolly jumpers and working through many boxes of tissues, watching DVDs. I was rather taken aback to see how many films I have acquired that are based upon comic books, and specifically superhero comics. I've always considered the sort of superheroes with superhero outfits and superhero names too cheesy for words, especially if capes and masks are involved.

Avengers Assemble (as The Avengers is called in the UK) strikes a careful balance, neither hamming up nor downplaying the cheesiness, but embraces the cheese for what it is. The Avengers introduced cult favourite Joss Whedon to a wider audience and is full of excellent performances. For those not in the know, Hollywood has been building up to this film for a long time. The Avengers Initiative comprises all of the Marvel superheroes who have previously starred in their own films: Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Thor, as well as Black Widow and Hawkeye - the ultimate collaboration, based upon the ultimate comic book crossover.

Also in the last week, my sister introduced me to the Batman mythology via Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. A much darker story than your average superhero tale - or, at least, my preconception of your average superhero tale. Christian Bale's Batman is more of a superantihero than simple hero, the late Heath Ledger was exemplary as the terrifyingly psychopathic Joker, and Jenny and I raised a glass each time Morgan Freeman appeared on screen, because of his being Morgan Freeman. Living in comic book ignorance, I may have been the only person to be truly shocked and unspoiled for Harvey Dent's plot. Wow! I thought, I really did not see that coming! What a twist! What storytelling! before I discovered that it was an open secret, and everybody else who ever saw this film was waiting for the twist. Heh. Still, the surprise pleased me, and I ended up buying the double pack with Batman Begins. I'd been warned that Batman Begins was "all right, pretty good, but not up to The Dark Knight," but I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. And looking at the cinema's website, I discover I just missed its last showing of part 3, The Dark Knight Rises, and have to wait for the DVD. Bother.

And of course I have been watching Doctor Who, which is four episodes into the five-part "first half-series." Unlike previous seasons, which each seem to have been aiming to be bigger and more impressive than the last, the episodes have been simple, fun adventures, one story per episode. Instead of a series-long epic tying each episode together, the main story is that of companions Amy and Rory Pond (or Williams) trying to juggle two lives: their everyday life as a married couple, and the Tardis-life. It can't go on forever, and they know they need to make a decision. It looked as though they were going to be sensible and decide to stay home, say "Thank you, Doctor, it's been good," and get on with their lives. And then, at the end of the last episode, they make the opposite decision. They'll travel with the Doctor a little longer. Now, knowing that they have just one more episode to go before they leave the show, ensures that such a decision bodes as ill as saying "We'll stay together forever." And I think that Doctor Who may have run out of non-fatal ways to permanently separate the Doctor from his companions. I've felt that it was time for Amy and Rory to move on, and thought that their decision to "quit" the Doctor was a refreshing, sad but not devastating way to do it. And then they don't make that decision at all! I thought I was ready to say goodbye - and instead the writers caught me off my guard and now I'm very much afraid for the Ponds.




*N.B. I don't literally mean he should be chained up. High output should be rewarded by food and water, fresh air and exercise. Ill-treatment of his characters, on the other hand...

+ I'm sure they're not all crimes against the written word. 

Some Girls Are, Courtney Summers

Regina Afton has worked hard to get to the top of the high school hierarchy. She's sacrificed a lot: her friends, her integrity, her conscience. When an incident at a party sparks off vicious and untrue rumours, she finds herself despised and alone, learning first-hand just what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the bullying she used to help deal out.

The mean-girl drama is nothing new in teen literature. I've reviewed similar books here at the blog: Speak, Before I Fall and Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood - and, of course, the name Regina not-so-subtly recalls Mean Girls. Some Girls Are was a pretty dark version of the story, unflinching in dealing with the inventive cruelty of teenage girls. In many such stories the victim wins out with their goodness, or rise above the pettiness of their peers by discovering their inner depths. But in this novel, the bad guys getting their just desserts would not be satisfying: after all, that is what this story's all about.

Regina's been a mean girl too long. She demonstrates feelings of regret and self-loathing for the popular girl she used to be, but she has faked so much in order to fit into the inner circle that she's lost touch with her inner goodness and decency. It's in there, but buried so deep that no one can see it any more. Regina is a complex narrator, and I wasn't quite sure how to view her. I wanted to sympathise with her, but she'd done some terrible things. Did she deserve all the abuse heaped upon her? "Nobody deserves that," said Michael, the closest thing Regina has to an ally all through her ordeal. We're not shown Regina's former cruelty first-hand, and though we see the results, she holds back from telling too much about what she'd done to make two thirds of her school actively hate her. I felt that Regina was an unreliable narrator, toning down the events of the past, censoring herself so as not to utterly alienate her audience. Something didn't quite ring true between how Regina presented herself on the page, and how her classmates saw her - 300 enemies are a lot. I also wanted to shake Regina at times for walking into the mean girls' traps, and giving them power over her.

Regina is not one to take bullying lying down, and it turns into an ugly war of revenge for revenge, spiraling out of control. For me, like for Regina, it was temporarily satisfying to see the bullies getting a taste of their own medicine, but that satisfaction is quickly replaced with unease and anxiety for what would happen next. I felt sure that the situation would escalate into disaster or tragedy, because I could not see either side backing down. Ultimately, I found the conclusion hugely anticlimactic and boggled at the author's decision to end the book the way that she did. Is that it? I wondered.

It's reading books like this that I feel grateful that I was never popular at school, with fewer expectations to live up to or compromises to make. Not that I was entirely guiltless in these matters, still moderating my Katie-ness (in fact in those days I was Kathy, not Katie, a more significant thing that you might think) in an attempt not to give people within and outside my "friendship" group reasons to pick on me. But the cost of fitting into a clique such as the Fearsome Fivesome is too high to ever be worthwhile.

What Katie Did: a general update

What Katie Read: Skippy Dies by Paul Murray.

See, there's this boy, right.
Called Skippy. He dies.

This crazy, sprawling epic is set in and around a prestigious old boys' school and follows staff, students and other local characters in the events leading up to and following the death of Daniel "Skippy" Juster. Seemingly unconnected characters all had their own stories to tell, and gradually all came to fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw. Murray uses a mixture of unusual narrative techniques: alongside the ordinary third-person narration are chapters written in the second person - "you" - the first book I've read to use this, and stream-of-consciousness. Despite this, Skippy is quite intelligible, although some of the consciousnesses we see into are decidedly disturbing, horrible, twisted places. In the end, though, I couldn't be sure what to make of this book. There was so much going on, and it was so many different things: blackly comic, bleak, tragic, innocent and at the same time as obscene as only fourteen-year-old boys can be. Then, after the tragedy, shocking revelations come to light. Not shocking because of being unexpected - given the setting and date of writing, these secrets were almost inevitable - but due to the way they are handled, and because this didn't come from one man's twisted imagination but based upon reality.

I wouldn't recommend Skippy Dies to everyone, as it is horrible in places, and despite its humour in the first part, I reached the end with an impression of disgust and despair. Still, it is an interesting, sometimes amusing, sometimes tragic interesting, well-written and thought-provoking piece of work.

What Katie Watched: Glee and Doctor Who

Once again, I'm late to the party. I tried to avoid the phenomenon of being the last person to discover a new story/band/TV show, but after watching the first two episodes, predicting an adultery storyline and misinterpreting a throwaway line as being much filthier than it actually was, I wasn't too impressed. Then I tried again for season two and got myself hooked, and ended up renting series 1 from Blockbuster to catch up. I've always had a thing about school stories, and the American High School of TV and film seems such a more glamorous, story-worthy place than the bog-standard 13-18 comprehensive I attended. I guess the grass is always greener. Interesting to notice that the American preppie style of fashion seems to be the in thing at the moment. TopShop, H&M, et al are full of High school style sports jackets, short red cheerleading-type skirts and anything out of Rachel Berry's wardrobe, such as polka-dot blouses with cute little rounded collars.

The latest series of Doctor Who opened with a huge two-part story that is comparable to most seasons' finales. Ten minutes in, spmething unthinkable happened, and I was in denial. But due to the laws of timey-wimey and Steven Moffat's magnificant brain, there are still many, many unanswered questions of "what happens next?" and "what happened to lead up to this point?" Unfortunately, it's hard to follow up on such an opener, and stand-alone episodes that would be great in an ordinary season just seem to fall a bit flat, when what you really care about is the big story arc. However, last week's episode, "The Doctor's Wife" was written by Neil Gaiman, and what a cracking story it was! Full of Gaiman's trademark humour and horror, we get a new point of view on the Doctor's life story. I could tell Gaiman was a fan of both old series and new, and although some people complained that the title was "misleading" (which it was) I thought that it was perfect, its meaning perfect and in fact I had predicted the identity of "The Doctor's Wife" as a "mad crazy theory" the day before, after picking up on a clue from the previous episode.

Fangirl much?

What Katie Listened To: Rumours by Fleetwood Mac

Just before Spotify changed The Rules to limit how often one can listen to music for free, I had this album pretty much on repeat, so I was thrilled to see Glee dedicating an episode to this album, causing me to buy it for myself. The album tells the real-life story of the band's relationship breakdowns - with each other! - but instead of letting their emotions break up the group, they turned them into some amazing music. Go Your Own Way, Second Hand News and Songbird are my favourites at the moment, but the other tracks follow close behind, and I'm sure they are liable to change.

What Katie Planned:

I've got a much-needed week of holiday from work, in which I intend to spend a lot of my time catching up on my reading. Since my Lent book-buying embargo, I've added some half dozen or so books to my collection as well as a few borrowings from libraries and friends.

Contrary to labelling, Catherine
Tate is the redhead and David
Tennant is the furtive-looking one
with facial hair.



Currently I'm reading The Woodcutter, a crime thriller by Reginald Hill who wrote the Dalziel and Pascoe detective novels. So far, it is remarkably different from the run-of-the-mill mystery I was expecting to read, and is the second book in a row to feature at least some second-person narration - unusual. Hodder books sent me Cold Light by Jenn Ashworth to review, so that will appear online in the next week or two, as will part two of Whitney's Tenant of Wildfell Hall read-along.

On Thursday I'm off to the theatre to watch some Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing starring the wonderful pairing of David Tennant and Catherine Tate as Benedick and Beatrice. I absolutely cannot wait.

Liar, Justine Larbalestier

Hi everyone! Sorry about the lack of updates in the last week or so. Life has been so busy in the run-up to Christmas that I haven't even had much time for reading. There have been carol services, Christmas parties, musical rehearsals and a heap of overtime at work that have kept me from my beloved books. But I aten't dead* - although for the second Christmas in a row I've had my worst cold of the year - and hopefully there will be regular updates again from now on. I've also merged this blog with my film and TV review site, because I didn't update that one often enough to justify having a separate blog.

I preordered the paperback of Liar on Amazon a couple of months ago, and it turned up at home on Christmas Eve, by which time I'd all but forgotten about it, so it really was a surprise Christmas present from myself to me.

Micah is a compulsive liar, always has been. When she started high school she passed for a boy for a little while, with a boy's name, short hair and underdeveloped figure. Lies lead to more lies until no one knows what to believe about her. But when her sort-of boyfriend dies suddenly, it is time for her to tell her story. The truth. Or at least her truth.

The clue is there in the title: Liar. Micah vows again and again to tell the truth in her story, and then contradicts herself: okay, that was a lie but everything I say from here on is true. Well... except that bit. Oh, and that.

I wanted to see if you would buy it. And you did.
You buy everything, don't you?
You make it too easy.

You find yourself wondering what, if anything, you have been told is the "truth" - and what, after all is the true version of a work of fiction? The narrator's account, even if she is a pathological liar? After all, Micah is the only narrator we have. Are we supposed to read between the lines to understand what the author wants us to believe really happened? Many works of literature give you clues towards an alternative interpretation, but Larbalestier doesn't give us anything to go by except Micah's words, and as we have established, these can't be trusted. Instead, the reader has to draw their own conclusions, so that the book has as many meanings as it has readers.

It seems straight-forward enough at first, a contemporary crime story set among New York high school students. Halfway through, there is a sudden shift in genre which led me to think, "this is ridiculous! Surely we're not meant to believe that in this story?" It seems clear, at first, when Micah is telling the truth and when she is lying, then everything is shaken up and you're not sure what's what any more. Micah argues that she lies because we wouldn't believe the truth, and "maybe I lie because the world is better the way I tell it." We're left with a choice. We can accept her final version of her story, discard the parts she's confessed to be untrue and accept her story at face value. Or we can wonder, speculate and come to our own conclusions. I think I know my version of events, but to say more would be straying into spoiler territory.

A very intelligent read that will end up asking more questions than it answers.

*Terry Pratchett

Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood, Eileen Cook

When she was in eighth grade, Helen's best friend Lauren humiliated and betrayed her in order to start high school in the popular group. Helen moved away with her family for three years, but now she's back and she wants revenge.

I started reading this book a little bit on my moral high horse: Revenge is bad, forgiveness is good, and at first that interfered a little with my enjoyment of Lauren Wood. On the other hand, there was that little dark side of me that remembered being bullied in school and appreciated seeing the nasty kid getting her comeuppance, quite safely within the pages of a book.

I wasn't quite convinced by the realism of this book. Firstly I debated whether it was believable for a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old girl to still be obsessing over an event that happened when she was fourteen. And it is obsession - in her three years away from her old school she stalks Lauren through her Facebook (that girl seriously needs to sort out her privacy settings on her profile page!) She is unable to put this event behind her and move on. Then again, she was fourteen, a very vulnerable age at which anything that happens is the most important thing in the world, and Lauren had been her best friend for her whole life up to that point. I know from experience that it is harder to get over trust issues caused by a supposed friend than a known enemy, because you've let that person inside the walls that keep others out, making it a more devastating sabotage to your life.

But we are expected to believe that Helen has changed enough over three years to make her unrecogniseable, by losing some weight, cutting her hair and having a nose job, so that she can call herself by her middle name (Claire) and mother's maiden name. I didn't think so, but was quite willing to suspend my disbelief to watch the drama unfold. The plot was fairly predictable, and although Helen-Claire, the boy she liked, and Brenda, the friendly girl who wasn't part of the in-crowd and therefore had to be befriended in secret, were pretty well realised, Lauren could quite easily be Regina George from Mean Girls and her two closest friends, Bailey and Kyla (why are there always two cheerleader/popular girl minions?) looked in my mind like Brittany and Santana from Glee!

All in all, Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood was a trashy but enjoyable guilty-pleasure read. And it has a brilliant cover.

If you enjoyed this, you might like:

Pink - Lili Wilkinson
Just As Long As We're Together - Judy Blume
Film: Mean Girls

Make Lemonade and True Believer, Virginia Euwer Wolff

These two books

make up a story about LaVaughn

LaVaughn is fourteen at the start of Make Lemonade

and turns sixteen at the end of True Believer.

There is a third book out now,
but I haven't read it yet.

She lives with her Mom,

no Dad,

he was killed when she was a little girl.

LaVaughn and her mom live in a rough neighborhood.

The kids have to go through metal detectors to get into school

and six of her classmates have died since she was in fourth grade.

LaVaughn wants to get out of this place.

She's going to college,
which no one else in her apartment ever did before.

It's not easy for LaVaughn.
She has to earn her way through babysitting for Jolly's two kids.
Jolly is even worse off than LaVaughn,
seventeen, two kids and no husband,

no education and now no job.

While she's working hard, LaVaughn can't let her grades slip

or there's no point in getting the college money

if she can't get herself into college.

She needs to save up her money,
she can't afford to work for free,

but she thinks how unfair it is that she's working

for Jolly so she doesn't end up like Jolly.

And Jolly can't afford to pay LaVaughn
she can't manage on her own.
LaVaughn tries to help Jolly to get herself out of this rut,
get herself back to school so she can get a decent job,

and provide for her family

and learn first aid

which saves her littlest baby's life.

Meanwhile LaVaughn's best friends are growing away from her,
and her childhood friend Jody

whose mom moved him away to give him a better life,

is back and beautiful, and he's going to college too, 

and LaVaughn thinks,

wouldn't it be good if Jody likes her like she likes Jody?

I first read True Believer when it was brand new,
several years after its predecessor,

and Make Lemonade wasn't in the shops any more.

It worked on its own and I didn't really need to have read Make Lemonade.

LaVaughn is a bright girl defying her circumstances

trying to understand about life and love, friendship and faith,

a likeable teenager with whom it is easy to identify.
She tells her story in free verse,
with simplicity and at the same time enough colour
that I realise I have a much fuller picture of her world and her life

than the story states in just the words.

The hints in True Believer of her back story,

are not expanded any more, or much

in Make Lemonade, (which came first.)

I like a book that tells you so much more than it seems to,

where a few words make up an entire world,
and the story seems to exist outside and beyond the pages.

True Believer was one of my favourite books

when I was a teenager.

Perhaps I even wrote my name in it.

I'm waiting for the third book,

This Full House

to be published in paperback so it matches the others in the collection.

I have been waiting for this book for nine years,

since I was sixteen.
Back then it said, "coming soon," but it never was published

and I started to think it would never be finished.

I moved on to other books

and sadly I donated True Believer a couple of years later

to a friend or a charity shop.

I regretted it, and got a second copy

and Make Lemonade at last,

(Thank you to Amazon UK, the books cost me a penny each

plus postage and packaging,)

and the books are every bit as good as I can remember.

Pink, Lili Wilkinson

When Ava Simpson transfers to private school, she takes the chance to make a new start, change her image and try to be "normal." She is quickly befriended by popular girl Alexis who persuades her to try out for the school musical. After a disastrous audition, Ava decides to help out behind the scenes and join the stage crew. However, her teammates are a group of quirky misfits who do nothing for her image as one of the popular girls. Who in turn are not the people Chloe, Ava's intellectual and stylish girlfriend, would approve of. Ava finds herself trying to fit in to three different worlds and be three different people, but she can't keep these three lives separate forever.

The title refers, first, to the jumper Ava wears to school, a pink cashmere sweater after years of nothing but black. For Ava, this jumper, and the colour pink represents being an "ordinary" girl, feminine, dressy, interested in gossip and proms and magazines - and boys. Despite her relationship with Chloe, Ava finds herself drawn to one of the boys in the play, Ethan, and as she befriends the stage crew it becomes clear to the experienced YA reader that her friendship with another boy - named Sam, of course! - is something a bit special too.

The plotline was fairly standard modern school-story, and one subplot involving Alexis's former friendship with science fiction nerd Jen was taken straight out of Mean Girls. Just for once, I would like to read a modern school story where the popular kids aren't the evil, manipulative, two-faced queen bee that is so prevalent in the genre! But Alexis has another, secret side to her personality that adds a little characterisation to the stereotype. Certainly, the best-realised characters are the stage crew misfits: Jules, Jacob, Sam, Kobe and Jen, and the book shows the other side of the high school musical. The author shows that she knows her subjects, and I was tickled by some of the references to science fiction geekery - in particular Alexis' use of Battlestar Galactica expletives and Doctor Who's timey-wimey detector. (It goes ding when there's stuff.) I would have loved to have seen the characters go to see Rocky Horror, though.

There are a lot of stories out there that explore the ideas of popularity, identity and being true to yourself in a high school setting, but this one is a bit different in that its overall message is that being you doesn't have to mean categorising yourself and putting yourself in a neat little box.*

*After all, you'll end up in a box given enough time.

Thirteen Reasons Why, Jay Asher

I'll be honest, I didn't want to read this book, but there was something about it that pulled me in against my will. I couldn't tell you what that "something" was. Not the cover in all its greyness, and I felt very uncomfortable about the story premise: a suicide note recorded on thirteen sides of cassette tapes and posted to the people indirectly responsible for the girl's death. It seemed unspeakably cruel. And yet part of me, a morbidly curious twinge in my mind wanted to know. It must have been the cassette idea, the thirteen different sides to the story, that struck me as original and intriguing, but I recoiled somewhat from the subject matter and resisted reading this book.

Obviously, I didn't resist forever, as proven by the existance of this blog post. I was encouraged to read Thirteen Reasons Why after seeing several other reviewers reassuring their readers that this book was worthwhile.

After Hold Still, Thirteen Reasons Why was the second book I read this month that contained a teenage suicide and its effect on those left behind, but this time the book concentrated on the events that drove Hannah to take her life. The events seem small enough at first: a few words, a rumour, and some of the people involved protest, "Surely she didn't do this because of that!" But through her tapes, Hannah demonstrates how small events trigger reactions the instigators couldn't forsee, and how they chip away at her: her trust in people, her sense of security, her self-worth and even her innermost thoughts. By the end of the book, I dare anyone to say that Hannah's reasons are petty and insignificant!

There are two narrators of this book, by necessity: Hannah, in her recorded messages, and her classmate Clay, who hears them and responds to them. At first I found this a little distracting and found it difficult to follow the rapid switching between voices, and for a while I wished that we could just hear Hannah's side of the story (while simultaneously feeling disgusted with myself for being so nosy about such a dark subject. But through Clay, the reader is given someone else to identify with, and we feel an extra layer of suspense, wondering what is coming next and where he fits into this story. As Clay listens to the tapes on a stolen borrowed Walkman, he visits the locations of some of Hannah's traumatic experiences. Seeing the places through two different sets of eyes gives an extra layer of realism to the story. And Hannah's story challenges Clay to think of how he relates to others around him, and how he can learn from his mistakes regarding Hannah.

My first impression of the story was that it was cruel, and at first I could not shake this off. Hannah's voice in the first few tapes has a thin veneer of cheerfulness over a lot of anger and bitterness. The chirpy tones at the beginning are all the harsher due to the knowledge of her intentions at the time of recording. It really feels like this is her revenge: to make her tormentors live forever with the knowledge of what they've done. As the book progresses, and the incidents become not just one-offs but part of a bigger snowball effect, you sense her despair and it seems more like a warning: we can't know how our actions will affect others, what is going on beneath the surface.

Despite in one respect being an easy read, Thirteen Reasons Why is an uncomfortable book, and it took me a while to shake off the feelings of guilt as if I was a voyeur into someone's - even a fictional character' - misery. However, it is extremely thought-provoking and informative. The book demonstrates through an incident in a Peer Communications class that depression and suicide are still taboo subjects, and where a subject is not spoken about, then it cannot be acted upon. Thirteen Reasons Why gives information on the signs to look out for, which tragically went unobserved in Hannah's case.

One of those Really Important Books.

Now for a BBC moment:
If you have been affected by the issues raised in this book, you can contact the Samaritans (UK and Republic of Ireland) details here.
If you live outside the UK and Ireland, you can find details of helplines for your country through the Befrienders' website here.

The Infinite Wisdom of Harriet Rose, Diana Janney

While reading The Infinite Wisdom of Harriet Rose, I realised that I have two different versions of my teenage years in my memory. The first set of memories are those of my everyday experiences: trying to get through school, keep my friends and shake off the attention of the bullies. The second is the world in my head: my daydreams and stories, of romance and popularity and stardom. In Harriet Rose I found myself taken back to that second, kinder world, with the understanding of an adult who sees beneath the glittering surface.

For her fourteenth birthday, Harriet's mother and grandmother self-publish her book of musings, or "Philosophical Meditations" and thanks to their efforts as her publicity team, she becomes a sensation and is voted as the Face of London. But along with admiration, Harriet finds misunderstanding and hostility from those around her, and finds herself more of an outsider than ever.

For all her faults, I liked Harriet immediately. She is different from so many largely interchangeable teen protagonist archetypes: intelligent, confident to the point of arrogance, but good-hearted. She has been indulged by her mother and especially her grandmother - as evident by their birthday present of publishing her book! Yet for all her intellect, Harriet is also naive when it comes to people, and Janney skillfully puts two layers of understanding in her narration: Harriet's interpretation of events and people's meanings, with their real intentions clear underneath. This leads to several hilarious but rather cringy moments, as you wait for Harriet to realise when she's mistaken.

As the story progressed, I found myself getting a little impatient with Harriet. She was a little too confident, and I felt embarrassment on her behalf when she genuinely didn't realise she was being rude. Yet I found myself recognising aspects of myself at fourteen in her - and indeed myself at twenty four! I felt that maybe she wasn't as sure of herself as she would have us believe. Maybe she's even deluding herself, as Harriet Rose is narrated in the first person. I wondered whether she is after all insecure, as the narrative shows that she does not know how to relate to her classmates, teachers and boys. In asserting her superiority, Harriet comes across as arrogant and pretentious, her dialogue stilted and formal, and in setting herself above the "airheads" of her school, she inevitably sets herself apart and betrays her vulnerability.