Triangles

When I received this ARC in the mail, and realized it was written in poetic verse, my first thought was "Ugh, I really do NOT like poetry. I'm probably not going to read this." I had never read any of Ellen Hopkins YA novels.

So I was a more than a little shocked when I picked the book up around 11pm to just read the first few pages, and found myself completely sucked into the story of these 3 middle-aged women and the intersecting twists and turns of their relationships. 5 hours later, it was 4am, and I had just finished this 500+ page novel. As a full-time working mom of three school-age boys, it has been a VERY LONG time since I've stayed up all night to read a book all in one sitting.

I identified with some parts of each of these show more women, which kept me interested in the story way beyond when I should have gone to bed. And while nothing was really much of a surprise (it was easy to see things coming, and the ending, while somewhat sad, was inevitable), the style and ease of the author's prose propels you along. A highly recommended read.

For some reason, the cover of the book made me think it was another "vampire/Twilight" story. I could not have been more wrong. Just goes to prove you shouldn't judge a book by its cover!

And finally, a word of warning: This is definitely an adult novel, with detailed descriptions of graphic sexual situations - the author's YA fans should NOT read this novel. show less

Have you ever heard about high school kids moan about having to read poetry? I'm about one step up from that. And by that, I mean I don't moan about it out loud but it's rarely something I have rarely chosen to do since graduating from school. About the only poetry reading I do voluntarily these days is reading through the elementary school kid's poetry packet when he brings it home after the unit is finished every year. For my money, he writes some highly entertaining poetry (not that that was his intention, mind you). So it was almost completely out of character for me to choose to read a novel in verse. **I only qualified the above statement because Sharon Creech's Love That Dog for the elementary school set is written in verse and show more is bloody brilliant. In any case, had I been paying close enough attention, I'd have known up front that Ellen Hopkins' Triangles was a novel in verse and it would likely not have hit my plate thanks to my long time avoidance of most poetry.

Narrated in verse and in turn by all three of the main characters, this is a novel of mid-life crises, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and infidelity. It calls into question what we can legitimately expect from our lives, the meaning of loyalty, love, and friendship, and how marriages can wither away or crumble from lack of effort. Holly is newly thin and looking for excitement which she finds in multiple affairs. Andrea is a single mom who tries to shepherd friend Holly away from temptation but when Holly succumbs, she has few compunctions about trying Holly's settled and comfortable life, including Holly's husband, on for size. Andrea's sister Marissa is stultifyingly trapped. Her daughter has a terminal disease and she has subsumed her whole being into caring for Shelby for as long as Shelby has to live. That her son Shane is newly out of the closet and constantly sparring with his dad, Marissa's distant and work-absorbed husband, doesn't ease her burden any. As the stories twine together, each of the women is brought to the crisis point, forced to examine her life, and to determine what she wants from it and who she ultimately wants to be.

While the poetry is an innovative way to tell the story, it was confusing with three narrators. Holly, Andrea, and Marissa all sounded exactly alike in their sections because of the spareness of the verse, making it difficult to retain which woman's story the plot thread was following at any given moment. They came to seem rather interchangeable. And somehow the poetry was less evocative and more devoid of detail and symbol than it should have been, leaving the tale feeling thin and underdeveloped. Each of the women's self-realization does in fact include her sexuality but there was an awful lot of very descriptive scenes that really did nothing in the service of the plot or in building the characters. None of the characters was all that sympathetic or likeable over all and they didn't seem to grow or change in any perceptible way either. The about face at the end of the book on some characters' parts was too easy and unearned to be believable. Although this is a book written for adults with middle aged characters, the feel is still very emotionally puerile and teenaged immature. Telling the tale in poetic form was interesting and could have worked but it needed to plumb deeper than it did and to be used for a reason. Ultimately I found the book unsatisfying and grateful that it was a quick read. show less

"Damaged love is like injured skin, I guess. Sometimes a wound will heal completely. Other times, it leaves a scar."

This book hit me at a weird time. I typically don't like adult books like this. And I REALLY dislike reading about spouses that cheat. And this whole freaking book is all about it.

But, then again, it's not.

This is a REALLY in-depth look at relationships - about love and marriage and the idea of commitment. Why people do commit and why it doesn't work. What makes one person leave may make another stay, and what drives one away may propel another to someone.

And it's all told through powerful words of poetry.

It's the story of a few families. It concerns adults but also the kids - first loves, old loves and whether they are show more all glad they are in their marriage or if they are single. And at first you start with just seeing who each family is like a summary. The one the world sees. It isn't until you start to get behind their closed doors that you see what is really going on.

It was a hard read, at times, because I wanted to judge the characters. I had to keep reminding myself to read the story and follow their tale. It was worth it. show less

This book is not what I thought it would be. It wasn't even a shadow of what I thought it would be. I thought the storyline had great potential to be a touching story about female relationships with friends and family. However that aspect of the story was greatly overshadowed by numerous raunchy sex scenes that got really boring and silly after awhile. I also found 2 of the 3 main characters so immature that you just couldn't take them seriously. This would be considered good chick lit but nothing more substantial than that. I gave it three stars because the audio production was fairly well done. I'm not saying it was a terrible book, just a big dissapointment to me because I was hoping for something more substantial.

Ellen Hopkins has a way of connecting with her readers in a way that seems almost intimate and a little voyeuristic. Her novels are written in poetic verse - some more artistic than my non-artistic mind can wrap around - but the story is always touching on some level.

Be forewarned Hopkins is not a tiptoeing author. Her previous novels, written for young adults, tackles difficult subjects head on. This one is much more graphic than her previous books. Hopkins tackles the difficult stage of the middle age woman, using three women whose lives constantly intersect, like a triangle.

Marissa is stretching towards her mid-forties. She is a stay-at-home mother who is bitter with the cards she has been dealt. Marrying later in life than her show more contemporaries, she was a stewardess who fell for a passenger, married him, and settled in Reno, Nevada. She is the mother of two children; Shane, her 16 year old gay son and Shelby who is terminally ill and expected to live only months into her fourth year. Christian, her husband, is often absent and Marissa is filled with resentment as her life is completely engulfed in caring for Shelby and dealing with her gay son on her own. When her husband makes an appearance, he is usually drunk.

Andrea is a divorced mother of a 14 year old daughter, Harley. Her specialty is dead-end relationships. Although she craves companionship she knows her tastes tend toward the unavailable - her last relationship being with Geoff, a man who forgot to tell her he was still married. He was also an ugly drunk. Andrea is also the younger sister of Marissa. Both girls are the result of a marriage born of free love hippies. One of the girls may not be the daughter of her identified father. Andrea is a passive player who lacks backbone, at least in the beginning of the book. Andrea covets what Holly has.

Holly is a friend of Andrea's. She is the discontented housewife hiding behind the perfect, successful husband and three lovely children. Adopted as a baby, Holly sought security early in her college career which she cut short. Holly and Jace have the suburban dream. Now Holly is reaching her fortieth birthday and she wonders how life would look if she was not married or a mother. Holly begins a hedonistic second adolescence beginning with innocent flirting at a bar and littered with lies and ideas for her writing career in Erotica.

Although the story is about sex and love, it is also about commitment, friendship and acceptance. It's a difficult book to read for so many reasons. There is loss, betrayal, one character who pursues hedonistic sex. There are also subjects that the middle age woman doesn't want to admit - different figure, lines and sags, existential questions, life defining moments of, "So this is it?" Redefinition of love and marriage, reasons for staying, choices of leaving and all of fascinating in a sociological way at a distance, a personal way closer to the age of forty or so.

If I were to be perfectly honest, I would admit that I identified with each of the characters at least to some extent. Questioning the social mores, religious morality, purpose of life, home, God's will and chance are all part of adult stages of life. Some of these issues were definitely taken to the extreme by some of the characters in the book. And yet I am glad Hopkins went that direction for the reader's benefit. It was a strangely discomfiting yet satisfying read. show less

Getting older causes people to question if the life they have lived for the past forty years is the one they want to be stuck in forever. Marissa, Holly, and Andrea are no different than most America's either struggling to keep a marriage together, or struggling to cope with being a single mother, eventually everyone starts questioning the choices they made when they were younger. It is called a midlife crisis. Triangles tells the tale of three woman, and the struggles they face in the lives they have chosen to live.

I was a huge fan of Ellen Hopkins when she first came out with Crank, and Glass. The story of her daughter’s struggle with drugs captivated me so much I would read her books in one sitting. Once she started coming out with show more the other books such as Burned, Impulse, Tricks and more, I started to read them but slowly just stopped buying her books at the bookstore. I am an adult and I didn't relate to the novels anymore, because her novels talk about a ton of serious teen issues. I did however miss her incredible poetic writing style, and would constantly wish she would write an adult novel. Triangles was my wish come true, a novel for adults.

As soon as I picked up Triangles I was sucked back into the world of Ellen Hopkins beautiful tragic poetry that I missed so much. This novel reminded me why I was a huge fan of Ellen Hopkins to start with; she has this ability to capture me as a reader with her writing style, and her talent for storytelling. The tale of these three ladies is so incredible I could not put this novel down no matter how hard I tried. When I wasn't reading Triangles I couldn't wait to dive back into the novel at my next free moment.

Triangles is about three different woman but they are all tied together. The show stealer for me was Marissa a mother of a disabled daughter, a gay son, and an active member in a failing marriage. Marissa's story is tragic she takes hit after hit throughout the entire book. Marissa's entire life is dedicated to her disabled daughter to a point she is almost a prisoner in her own house. Marissa's friends don't come see her anymore, her sister avoids her, and her husband is either not around or drowning himself in booze. Marissa's story had me in tears, and I love when a book can bring real emotions out of me.

Now for my recommendation, of course I would love to say this book is incredible and everyone would love it, but I just don't think that is the case. Most people read to escape real life problems, but Ellen Hopkins novels take real life problems and multiply them by a thousand. Also Ellen Hopkins creates villains not heroes, and her stories don't end with a resolution, they end with a consequence. So if this sounds like something you might be interested in grab yourself a copy, but keep an open mind. This novel is for adult readers only due to sexual content. show less

Very clever writing of Hopkins in this book. Her experiment with the poetry format, the three different perspectives, the different fonts all make for a perspective on the lives of three women that has more dimensions than an ordinary novel. The characters of the three women are well defined, broad and deep, and give an insight in the lives of women who we would call 'ordinary', but turn out to have deep motives for what they do or not do. The story keeps a tension, problems are solved at some point, yet the lives of the three characters will go on when the book is finished, the book is a glimpse in three lives, unfinished and satisfactory at the same time.