14 March 2014

Book Review: Tease by Amanda Maciel


Holy cow. We all know that there are a lot of YA books out there that deal with teen suicide, and for good reason.  Amanda Maciel has done something a little bit different with her debut novel, Tease. In fact, she has done something daring: she's written a teen suicide book told from the point of view of one of the bullies, not the victim.  What kicks it up a notch is the fact that Sara, our narrator, is not all that sorry about what she did. Whoa. The fact that Maciel also manages to make Sara seem occasionally sympathetic? Double whoa.

In other words, there were times that this book made me feel uncomfortable. Deeply uncomfortable. Since I don't believe that a novel about the bullying and resulting suicide of a sixteen year old girl should be comfortable, I say brava to Ms. Maciel.

The story, told in a call-and-response style, is all told from Sara's first person, present tense POV. I tend to dislike first person narratives, and I actively loathe present tense ones, and while it constantly chafed me while reading Tease, I do acknowledge that they serve the story fairly well. The chapters alternate regularly between January-March (when her bullying of Emma escalates) and July-November (when Sara is dealing with the legal aftermath of Emma's suicide), and each timeline progresses chronologically. The dialogue reads very true-to-life, with lots of "She was all, like, whatevs" and "beyotch" and "OMG" or "what a lame effing party"on every page.  I salute the author for capturing realistic teenspeak, but it drove me nuts.  I will never complain again about reading too-clever-to-be-believed teen dialogue from the likes of John Green again.

It's hard to pin down the real Emma, as we see her exclusively through Sara's eyes, but what we can conclude is that she's a transfer student who is very pretty. Sara is almost as hard to pin down, as she hides as much from the reader as she does from herself, but it's clear that she's troubled, generally unhappy, and completely in thrall to her alleged best friend, Brielle. I say alleged best friend because Brielle is a real piece of work, nasty and popular and beautiful and rich (of course), and they're together all the time, but it's apparent to the reader that there's not actually much love lost between them, even if it's not apparent to Sara just yet.

What's most maddening about Sara is her insistence that Emma's suicide is not her fault, and her resentment towards the dead girl is palpable.  What's more, for most of the novel, Sara seems to believe that she herself is the wronged party: Emma stole her boyfriend, Emma couldn't handle Sara's retaliation, Emma was too weak to understand high school is hard for everybody, and now everybody is blaming Sara for Emma's suicide.

It's a bold stance for the author to take, and as far as I know, an unprecedented one, but in the end it does seem to pay off. Every other book I've read that deals with teen suicide seems a bit too "pat" in comparison to this one. What it does make clear is that bullying is both pervasive and corrosive, and that there's no happy ending for anybody involved, on either side.

NB: This book will be published in May 2014 by Balzer & Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins.  It also happens to be loosely based on an actual instance of bullying and suicide in 2010 in the small town where my bookshop is located, and the whole time I was reading it, I kept imagining what the parents of the girl who killed herself must think after reading this book.  It was one of the many reasons I was deeply uncomfortable during the course of this book. 

7 comments:

  1. Wow. So yeah, this sounds intense. And I keep wavering on "I really want to read this" and "..uuugggh I don't know if I want to go through that."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I hear you on that. Most of the time I wanted to shake some sense into Sara. Gah, teens are so damned myopic.

      Delete
  2. I do believe I am going to pre-order. It sounds well done and I love your comment about too-clever-to-be-believed teen dialogue. Hello, Jodi Picoult! The too-clever makes me crazy. We'll see what the opposite does to me now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know you'll let me know about the dialogue issue once you've read it. I like your new profile pic.

      Delete
  3. Sounds like a page turner for sure. I don't read YA ever, do you think someone that normally doesn't get into that genre might like it?

    Kayo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmmm...I'm not sure I'd recommend this one if you never read YA. The teen-speak in this one was a little hard to take, so if you're not used to being around teens OR if you're not used to reading about them, better skip it.

      Delete
  4. Wow. This one certainly sounds like it is going to stir up some controversy in May. I have to commend the author for looking at things from a different angle and perhaps getting some readers to realize that the character of the bully sounds terrifyingly like their own lives.

    ReplyDelete

Please, sir, may I have some more? (Comments, that is!)