Review: Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven

I'd heard of American author Jennifer Niven, but I'd never had the slightest inclination to pick up one of her books--the two that are currently in print in Australia are both YA titles that fall squarely into the unlikely high school romance category and I've read my fair share of books like that already. I only picked this one up because my local bookstore was having one of those buy two books from this table and you can get a third free promotion. It was one of those deals where the table had two books that I was itching to read, and this one looked nicer than some of the other titles available.

What I got was a YA novel about an unlikely high school romance.

Fortunately, this unlikely romance was written quite well. Jack is one of the popular kids. He can be a bit of a jerk at times, but he's not really a bully like some of the others he hangs around with. He's struggling with a surprising secret though--he cannot recognise other people's faces and this often lands him in trouble and he can sometimes do the wrong thing by someone without intending to. He has a horrible on-off relationship with a mean, manipulative girl from his class which only contributes to his problems.

Libby Stout, who is quite possibly the most unfortunately named character since Dickens, is attending high school for the first time. Three years ago, she was so overweight that she had to be cut out of her house by emergency services and taken to hospital. She's lost half of that weight and she's ready to tackle high school. And she's not going to take any nonsense from bullies--and they certainly try to cause trouble in her first few days at school. This leads to an unpleasant encounter with Jack, and the pair find themselves on a sort-of corrective behaviour programme at their school, which in turn leads the pair to becoming closer than what anyone expected.

This was an interesting take on the genre, which raises questions about identity, bullying and standing up for oneself. Although a little far-fetched in that special way that only American novels can be, this one delivers an interesting enough message to its target audience and to anyone else who cares to join in. I'd never heard of face-blindness, and found it quite interesting to read about Jack's struggles and the lengths that he goes to in order to hide it from his loved ones.

Recommended.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more