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NOT LIKE YOU: A STORY FOR ALL OF US 
The term "Young Adult Fiction" is usually enough to have me running for the safety of the Grown-Up Bookshelves in my apartment. I gave up reading books written for My Age Group in junior high, sometime shortly after V.C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic had me saying to my older brother, hand on my hip, "Why doesn't she just get over it already?" I gravitated instead toward books designed to "pave the way" toward the ivy walls of graduate school. Books written for the teenaged reader tended to be, in my mind, lesser. Their characters were simple and seemed only able to grapple with one idea or problem at a time. The settings were sparse, with nothing but the character to look at in any particular scene. The storylines were unrelatable—thank God—from when I was in high school ten years ago and, honestly, I had one foot out the door even before graduation. So when I sat down with Deborah Davis' new book, Not Like You—a bowl of popcorn and a glass of orange juice to keep me anchored to my chair—I knew one thing was sure to be true: The characters within these pages would be nothing like me at all. Not Like You blew that expectation out of the air. By the end of the book, I had a completely new idea of what Young Adult Fiction is and a new appreciation for what the book—and Davis—are trying and, for the most part, succeeding to do. Deborah Davis published her first book The Secret of the Seal in 1989, and she describes that publishing process as "a piece of cake." Not Like You, her fourth book and first Young Adult novel, wasn't so easy to publish; five revisions were necessary. The result is a novel that is beautifully written, each word carefully weighed for effect and tone, each scene studied for emotional resonance. The writing is Grown Up. Davis doesn't coddle her reader just because he or she is in the fourteen- to eighteen-age group and has yet to take Intro to Contemporary Literature. Davis has avoided the trend of underestimating her readers' ability to relate to complex characters and given us an interesting, screwed-up narrator whose life involves a lot more than just school and boys. |
| "It was like watching a trapeze artist with a safety net below her..." |
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At the beginning of the book, Kayla, the fifteen-year-old narrator, moves to the New Mexico desert with her alcoholic mother, Marilyn, who is looking for a "whole new start" and a storybook reunion with her estranged mother. Starting the novel with a move to a new place sets the reader up to meet characters as the narrator meets them, allowing Kayla to introduce readers to a variety of less-than-perfect characters: Redbone, the slum landlord and Mom's latest love interest; Shirley and Sherrie, the two women who own a second-hand clothing store and who may or may not be lovers (later, they become Kayla's first Dog Walking Service customers); Remy, the sexy older guitar player who becomes Kayla's love interest. None of these characters resembled the people I knew in high school or the characters I had read in books about high school. I was immediately intrigued.
The move also allows the author to describe the New Mexico setting, with its expansive skies and desert brush and colorful mesas, in rich detail, creating a believable world in which to place these characters. This is the backdrop to a heartwrenching story as Kayla's hopes for an alcohol-free mother, a lucrative job, a dog to call her own, and a boyfriend to match are all dashed in one short-lived summer. With no one to turn to in her new town, Kayla resorts to hitchhiking to Denver where Remy and his band have recently moved. This decision ultimately changes the direction of Kayla's life and her relationship with her mother. Not Like You is a story about the complicated and often painful relationship between a mother and a daughter, but it is also a story about learning to listen to your inner voice and accepting the person you are. As teenagers, we all experience the pain of discovering dreams and paths that diverge from our parents', and Not Like You effectively illustrates Kayla's journey without becoming preachy or judgmental. As an adult (my family is in hysterics at my use of that word), relating to Kayla's journey is easy and satisfying, and I can see parts of myself in her and parts of her character in me, making this a novel that reaches out not only to teenagers, but Grown-Ups, too. The writing itself is beautiful and flawless, but at times it was the flawlessness of the storytelling that grated on me—it felt contrived. I knew that if I was experiencing either a moment of relief from Kayla's disappointment or a slip into her desperation, it was always going to be brief, nothing more than a series of cliffhangers and their resolutions. Because of the plot's rhythm, I never had the opportunity to connect fully with any one event. It was like watching a trapeze artist with a safety net below her—the loops and leaps are beautiful to watch and at times hypnotizing, but somewhat disappointing because there's a net below to catch her. In other words, there's no danger in Davis's writing. My fear going into the book was that the writing would be so simple, I wouldn't be captivated enough to finish the story. Instead, by the novel's end, the pacing was so practiced it took my attention away from the protagonist and her story, which is unfortunate because this is a story Kayla deserved to have readers riveted to, not repelled from its studied quality. The other major weakness of this book is not as easy to define, and perhaps has more to do with personal taste or reader responsibility. It wasn't character development—Kayla's temperament and decisions all seemed interrelated and convincing, and who and where she was at the end of the book was a believable distance from who and where she was at the beginning. And it wasn't the storyline itself, which was conceivable, if not common. There was something working just beneath the surface that had me putting the book down after every chapter, relieved to have a break, sending me in search of popcorn or another glass of orange juice or a trip to the window to watch the rain come down for the third day in a row. I wondered why Davis—not Kayla—had made the decisions she made: Why did she start with Kayla having sex with a boy we never see again when the scene doesn't relate to the rest of the story in any way? Why did she choose to include Kayla's poetry as a device to show her emotional growth? Obviously, the book's spell was broken, and I was aware of the author's pen. It was enough to make me shift uncomfortably in my chair midway through almost every chapter. Ultimately I was won over by the story and the real, unique character who told it to me. Not Like You was published for a Young Adult audience, and I'm confident teenagers in all stages of their own self-discoveries will appreciate and love Kayla's story. But I'm just as confident that adults will identify with Kayla and her struggles and relationships, and appreciate the language and tone Davis used to tell this story. |