Ellen Emerson White

I was so excited when I discovered that this had been recently released as an ebook, because it’s been out of print and I’ve been looking for it ever since I read White’s Long May She Reign in 2010.

A decade of wanting to read something may be an unfair amount of pressure to put on any book, especially on a teen novel from 1987, but I was not disappointed.

Beverly’s ex-boyfriend has been charged with murder and everyone -- her classmates, her father, even Beverly herself -- blames show more Beverly for not telling anyone sooner what she knew about Tim. She’s trying to keep her head down and get through her final weeks of high school without talking to anyone, not even the psychologist her father insists she sees. Then she meets a boy in the Public Gardens who doesn’t know anything about her past.

White is so good at writing smart, acerbic teenage girls with intense emotions.
Beverly isn’t just dealing with the guilt and grief surrounding the death of a classmate, she also was in what, from my 21st century perspective, was clearly an abusive relationship and she lost her mother in distressing circumstances a few years earlier.

Her backstory is a bit too info-dumpy, but otherwise I liked White’s writing. She’s got a distinctive, unusual style. Beverly’s relationship with Derek is delightful to read about, so believably awkward and tentative and hopeful. Two people with their own flaws and fears who enjoy each other’s company and make the effort -- and sometimes it really is an effort -- to get to know each other. It’s, like, everything I want from teen romance.

I don’t agree with a review that said “the neat resolution of Beverly's problems strains credulity”. In the end, Beverly in a better place, physically, emotionally and in her relationships, but it hasn’t been an easy journey to get there -- and the book left me with the sense that that journey isn’t over.

It’s optimistic, but not implausibly so.

“Like, if you weren’t so totally weird, I’d ask you out.” He frowned. “You’d prob’ly call the cops ‘r something.”
Beverly looked at him slouching against the fence, hair tousled, cigarette hanging.
“Is this your James Dean imitation?”
“Give it more pain,” he said, and slouched lower, demonstrating. He straightened. “So, do I ask you out, or what?”
“Couldn’t we just be -- friends or something?”
“Friends,” he said.
“Well, yeah, I, uh,” she coughed, “don’t have so many right now.” show less

A Season of Daring Greatly is about an 18 year old who is the first girl drafted to play professional baseball. Jill loves pitching but is uncertain about everything else: the media scrutiny, the pressure to be a role model, the antagonism from those who want the sport to remain a boys-only club, and the realities of daily life as a professional ballplayer.

I have no interest in baseball or, for that matter, any professional sport, so in some respects this novel was not a logical choice. show more Especially as it assumes one knows more about baseball than I actually do! However, I picked it up because I enjoyed White’s The President’s Daughter series. I really like the way White captures her protagonist’s smart, acerbic sense of humour and the details of her daily life, and A Season of Daring Greatly explores similar ground to my favourite from that series, Long May She Reign: leaving home, building new friendships and finding one’s place in a new community, and dealing with unwanted media attention.

I read this in an afternoon and would have happily read more. It didn’t make me care about baseball, but it made me care about Jill and about seeing her succeed.
It was also interesting seeing what the rhythms and routines of life as a professional sportsperson can be like.

“I think people have been missing the point for weeks now,” she said. Years, even. “I don’t actually represent all women. I’m one athlete with, you know a certain skill set, and whether I end up succeeding is going to be a combination of all sorts of factors, and gender really doesn’t have anything to do with it. [...] the fact that I was terrible out there tonight has nothing to do with what any other female player might do on some different night.” show less

Fast-paced, compelling and unexpectedly fascinating. Eighteen year old Michael Jennings is conscripted to fight in Vietnam.

When faced with all-male narratives, I am inclined to wonder: “But where are the female characters?” I suspect what I really mean is: “I haven’t found any characters that I relate to yet”. But I didn’t feel that way here. I wasn’t impatiently waiting for the female protagonist to show up. I just wanted to see Michael to find his feet, make friends and show more survive.

I can relate to how much he cares about his dog, and his sense of humour makes him an entertaining character to spend time with, even though he’s been thrown into a terrible, terrifying situation. Even knowing what wars can be like, I was still surprised by some of the conditions the soldiers faced.

I was also surprised by how interesting I found it all. It left me thinking about a lot. Such as how Michael, like most of the people around him, hasn’t chosen to enlist nor has he joined up with all his buddies. He doesn’t believe that he is doing the right thing. In other wars I’ve read about -- the world wars or fictional wars in SFF -- people fighting tend to believe that what they’re doing is noble and heroic and worthwhile. That doesn’t make the hardships any less terrible, but I think sometimes it makes enduring them a bit easier.

This book also left me wanting to immediately embark upon the sequel. I ended up reading all five books in two days.

The guys seem —
Like every guy everywhere, and like no guys he had ever met. What was the word for that? Began with “d”? Oh, hell, he wasn’t a book guy. He should just use a word he knew.
— cool.
Oh, yeah, great word choice. Anyway. They seemed like kids, and they seemed like tired old men. They made jokes, but they were also very serious. show less

I stayed up stupidly late reading this, on a school night too, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve reread parts of it in the last two months. I’ve said this before: White is so good at writing about people dealing with the aftermath of trauma, and about smart, difficult people making an effort to build relationships -- friendships as well as romances.

On Christmas morning, Rebecca lost her moral virginity, her sense of humor — and her two best friends. But, other than show more that, it was a hell of a holiday.

The Road Home is about Rebecca’s final six months serving as a nurse in Vietnam, and then the months which follow. It’s about the things that get her through the war (letters from a certain soldier, friendships, alcohol) and the difficulties of adjusting to life back home, especially when that means facing the circumstances which meant she chose to go to war in the first place (a close friend died fighting in Vietnam, her brother was drafted and she helped him run away to Canada, and her relationship with her parents is complicated by how they’ve responded to her career ambitions).

I love how this book deals realistically but hopefully with so many things. (If I hadn’t already spent so long reviewing this series, I would be inclined to babble even more about this particular book!) I have a lot of feelings and a lot of favourite passages.

There was so much liquor in Vietnam, and it was so unbelievably cheap, that most of the people she knew seemed to be turning into borderline — or even beyond — alcoholics. Certainly, she had never thought that she would gulp the stuff down like there was no tomorrow. Then again, around here, tomorrow was a pretty uncertain commodity.

How well did she actually know him? Sometimes, she worried that they might be figments of each other’s despairing imaginations. show less