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Musings: Girls As Protagonists in their Own Stories in YA Fiction

I know we just visited the topic of “where did all the boys as protagonists go”  not that long ago but a piece I just read in The Mary Sue made me want to come back and look at it from another angle. The article, which is totally not about YA horror fiction, talks about three female protagonists of vampire media franchises from the 2000s, all of which are grounded in horror fiction tropes: Elena Gilbert of The Vampire Diaries  (based on the YA series by L.J. Smith), Sookie Stackhouse of True Blood (based in the Southern Vampire Series by Charlaine Harris), and Bella Swan (from the YA series Twilight) 

So you don’t have to read the entire thing, the essence of the article was that the author saw in all three of these characters that they were defined by their romantic relationships– that their stories wouldn’t have existed without their love interests. All three of these characters are caught up in  (straight) romantic triangles (which I guess makes them more of romantic V’s)– and their role in triangles end up, for the most part, erasing the rest of their character, even though they are supposedly the protagonists,

The 2000s and early 2010s were a pretty good time for YA horror with boys as protagonists, though. Cirque du Freak by Darren Shan was very popular, and I know that here at Monster Librarian we read a lot of books where boys were, at the very least, point of view characters. Harry Potter drew a lot of those kids into a darker fantasy as well– the last book came out in 2007, just before my cousin turned eighteen. And in Harry Potter, there is a spark for change, because smart girls and passionate women save the day over and over, waiting for doofus teenage boys to get a clue about saving the world.  And girls who  grew up with Harry Potter noticed, and wanted the girls in their books to be the heroes (and villains) of their own stories.  And thus we get Jane McKeene from Dread Nation, who is strong, smart, and commonsensical; murderous Nita from Only Ashes Remain; the troubled girls of Sawkill Girls who alternate between being victims, villains, and survivors.

I don’t know why so many men turned away from writing books with boys as protagonists. But what we’re seeing now is, I think, the product of women seeing themselves erased from the types of stories they grew up loving, and wanting to see not just themselves but also a growing diversity in the kinds of protagonists we see in YA novels (or any novels, or any writing). They are hashtagging #WeNeedDiverseBooks and #OwnVoices because additional voices, their voices, need to be heard. Fear is just part of girls and women’s daily lives, and I don’t think enough people realize quite how scary it can be.

But there’s a lot of fear to face in today’s world that is not exclusive to women and girls  (hello, climate change, genocidal dictators, twisted social media policies, hate crimes, cyberbullying, school shootings). Who is writing the stories that resonate with boys today? Somebody needs to open their eyes past what they’ve seen of themselves so far. Yes, male characters have taken center stage for many years, but do we really want stories written in the past that make us cringe today to be the models we give those kids?

Let’s move forward with authors coming up with great stories that will showcase original characters and engage all kinds of readers. That’s our goal in libraries, right? It’s my goal, anyway. There are so many good books coming up, and I can’t wait to see what kids of vibrant writing lies ahead.

Book Links: Stoker Awards 2018 Final Ballot for Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel

In our continuing effort to review as many of the books on the final ballot for the Stoker Award, Monster Librarian has hit another landmark we have now reviewed all five of the novels on the final ballot for the 2018 Stoker Award in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel. Want to know what we think? Here are links to the reviews. There are many fine books that did not make the final ballot, but of those that did, I think the standout is clear.

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

Broken Lands by Jonathan Maberry

The Night Weaver by Monique Snyman

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

 

Book Review: Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

Katherine Tegen Books, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-0062696601

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, MP3 CD

 

My previous experience with Claire Legrand’s work was with her extremely creepy middle-grade book The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls. I could see just from the cover and inside flap of this book that her YA work would be completely different, so I started it without any expectations except for great writing (it is, after all, on the final ballot for the 2018 Stoker Award). The story’s bones quickly took on a predictable shape: strangers move to an isolated community where someone (usually a woman) has made a deal with an evil supernatural creature to provide human sacrifices in exchange for power, beauty, and prosperity.  The three primary characters are described on the inside cover flap in stereotypical phrases: Marion is the “new girl; Zoey is the “pariah”; and Val is the “queen bee”.  The girls as portrayed by Legrand, however, can’t be summed up so easily.

Marion’s family is moving to Sawkill Island, an exclusive community of wealthy people uninterested in anything that doesn’t directly affect them, and where her mother has taken a job as full-time housekeeper to the prominent Mortimer family. She has put her grief for her father’s sudden death on hold so she can protect her risk-taking older sister Charlotte and her suicidally depressed mother.  I must say I was impressed with how, in a few brief pages, Legrand distills the essence of what it’s like to wade through that first year after the death of a loved one. Legrand describes her as plain and awkward, in contrast to her sister, who is extroverted and social.

Shortly after she arrives, Marion starts feeling strange. She is thrown from a skittish horse and hurt badly enough that she ends up in the hospital (I was really unhappy with this part of the book, because her behavior afterwards is characterized as a “freakish” seizure, and the police chief reacts by pushing her down, straddling her, and pinning her hands to the ground. He should know better. DON’T DO THIS. Overall, I was not happy with the portrayal of seizures in this story, but this actually has the possibility of leading to real physical harm). Zoey, the police chief’s daughter, our “pariah”, is first on the scene. She’s biracial, geeky, a lower socioeconomic bracket than most of the other kids at her school, and her recent breakup with her boyfriend Grayson is the cause of much rumor and speculation (It’s an interesting reversal to have an African-American police chief, even if he is characterized by some members of the community as lazy and incompetent). Zoey is grieving the loss of her best friend, Thora, the most recent in a long string of girls who have mysteriously disappeared on Sawkill Island. The disappearances area are attributed to a local legend, a supernatural monster called the Collector. Zoey suspects that Val Mortimer, the island’s “queen bee” is behind the disappearances, but can’t prove it. We as readers know pretty quickly, though, because Val shows up at the scene after the monster that pulls her strings pushes her to make  Charlotte the next victim. Val, beautiful and charismatic, quickly claims Charlotte as a friend. I thought that Zoey and Marion would end up teaming up to protect Charlotte and take down Val and the Collector, but that’s not what happens at all.  Instead, the gruesome “deal with the devil” plot takes a left turn, and the story becomes more about relationships than fighting a “big bad”.

In an interview, Claire Legrand described Sawkill Girls as her “angry, queer, feminist novel”, and a response to slasher movie tropes like the “final girl”. I think that summary doesn’t really do the book justice. One thing that’s really great about this book is how smoothly it integrates relationships and examines the way teens navigate identities that aren’t often represented. Both Val and Marion have either had relationships or fantasies with people of both sexes, and Legrand writes them into a beautiful lesbian love story(I loathed the fact that Val and Marion specifically were in a relationship, but it was very well done). Zoey is trying to deal with the discover that she is asexual, and what that means about her relationship with her former boyfriend/best friend, Grayson, a great example of healthy masculinity.  Legrand blows up the stereotypes she assigned her primary characters by making them into prickly, angry, grieving, loving, lonely, confused girls determined to keep each other alive and save the world.  They fight, they say and do terrible and sometimes unforgivable things, but when it comes down to it they do not allow themselves to be turned against one another. This is especially clear with Zoey and Val, who have a long and difficult history. It’s a really complicated, messy way to look at girls’ relationships, and I think the horror genre gave Legrand space to work with some of these difficult and intense feelings at a heightened level.

Legrand’s challenge to the “final girls” trope is less obvious, because the initial plot doesn’t follow the pattern of a typical slasher film. The characters are better developed, and the killer isn’t a maniac in a mask. Among the three girls, none of them fits the type exactly– Zoey probably comes closest, but she isn’t conventionally attractive– and none of them dies. The plot of the book is a mess, and the relatively simple plot structure of a slasher film gets buried with the addition of patriarchal cults, tessering (a la A Wrinkle in Time), doppelgangers, a sentient island, and nightmare alternate worlds. While Legrand does a great job establishing setting and atmosphere and creating her primary characters, she has simply too much going on. There is no doubt that she can write creepy, compelling, and horrific scenes, but the pieces don’t all hang together.

While Sawkill Girls is being marketed as a YA book, and is under consideration for the Stoker Award in the Young Adult category,  I’m not sure if the audience that will appreciate it is actually a teen audience, although there are few well-written asexual or bisexual characters in the YA genre, so it’s worth reading. “New adult” readers, with enough experience to recognize and critique the tropes, will really enjoy the characters and the challenge to genre norms about girls and women. I found many parts compelling or enjoyable, but in the end, I was frustrated because the story failed to hold together. However, despite its flaws, there is much to like, or even love, in Sawkill Girls. Recommended.

Contains: body horror, murder, gore, violent and abusive behavior, gaslighting, sexual situations.

Editor’s note: Sawkill Girls is on the final ballot for the 2018 Stoker Awards in the category of Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel.