Ask the Passengers

There comes a point in every A. S. King book where you want to scream, "MAKE IT STOP!" Not because it's a terrible book, but because she writes her characters so damn well that when something awful happens, it hits you right in the chest. For me during Ask the Passengers, it was when Astrid's mom, who was already hard to stomach, just wouldn't believe Astrid over anyone else in the community. But I couldn't abandon Astrid. Not when I'd come that far and found out how great a kid she is.

And she is great. This is a book all about finding oneself and, I think, makes a pretty good point that your self is always there--you just need recognize it. I was amazed from the get-go that she had the wherewithal to send love to strangers, family, show more friends, peers--a practice of Buddhism that she has nearly mastered if only she'd send that love to herself. I LOVE how we see how it directly impacts the passengers in the planes flying above. She is nearly always honest with herself, even if she doesn't feel comfortable enough to be honest with her loved ones, and any potential after-school special element loses steam with the sheer FIGHT of this novel.

I love how King addresses that intimidation can occur in any romantic relationship. I'm glad that Astrid acknowledges her concern about Dee's forceful advances outright and puts them in context with the notion that sex isn't the only factor in understanding one's sexual identity. Same goes for the big argument after the bust with her parents, and I like that King makes this obvious that it's a misconception people often make regardless of their orientation.

Other small notes include:
-I love Frank Socrates and totally identified with Astrid's passion for her Humanities class as I experienced similar opportunities in high school.
-I still can't totally wrap my head around Ellis. So she's extra sensitive and had to see a psychologist when they moved. I just couldn't understand how awful she was to Astrid when shit hit the fan and how quickly and steadfastly she aligned herself to Claire. I don't know. I'd have to have my little sister read this book and tell me if she'd done the same thing. We were near mortal enemies then, but to go that far?
-CLAIRE IS A HORRIBLE PERSON. HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE. She's the epitome of every horrible person I know who lives in a big city at some point and puts on airs whenever they go anywhere remotely smaller but also tries to leech on folk-y charm. I haven't disliked a character this much in I don't know how long. She may be the worst villain I can think of, not in the way of a fault of King's writing, but in that parents never should have the green light to be that horrible to their children. And it happens all the time. I could never send her my love because she'd figure out how to turn it to poison and then slip it in my coffee. HORRIBLE.
-Kristina isn't much better. I'm glad Astrid gave her hell when she did. None of her excuses were excusable because she absolutely knew what she was doing. She DID NOT have more to lose than Astrid.
-The steamy bits were so great! High five, King!
-And I still kinda liked the dad even though he's mostly spineless. And also I'm glad I never knew if my parents ever did any drugs while I was a teenager.

I don't know how she does it, but King writes these books that I can identify with so closely, it's scary the degree to which I could footnote how exactly it mirrors my teenage life. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this, which is kinda weird, but really a testament to how universal growing up is. I'm going to stop before I write something uber-sentimental and make myself gag. But ASTRID 4EVAH!!!!!!! show less

This is one of the few AS King books I haven’t read and I was excited to finally pick it up to read. It ended up being a very engaging book but didn’t have as much magical realism as King’s other books have had.

I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was very well done. The narrator sounded exactly like I imagined the main character would sound and did a good job of conveying emotion.

Astrid Jones has a secret; she is in love with a girl she works with. They steal secret kisses in the freezer room and secret moments by the lake. Astrid wants to confide in someone; but her mom is too pushy, and her constantly stoned dad isn’t interested. Her best friend, who is also gay, wants to put Astrid in a neatly labeled gay box. show more Astrid doesn’t know if she is gay or if she just happens to be in love with a girl and she is struggling. To cope she goes and lays out on a picnic table in her backyard and sends her love to the passengers that fly over her in airplanes.

This story has a lot of interesting elements to it. Astrid lives in a small town and moved there from New York City. She is adjusting to the small town vibe and with how vicious rumors are in that setting.

Astrid is also really into philosophy and is taking a honors humanities course; to help her cope with all the pain and trouble around her she’s made herself an imaginary friend name Frank Socrates that she can talk to.

When Astrid sends her love to the passengers in the plane we occasionally get a glimpse into one of the passengers lives and what they are dealing with. This was interesting and I was impressed with how quickly I became engaged with these airplane passengers’ stories and wanted to know more about them.

As with other of King’s novels there is a bit of magical realism. When Astrid sends her love to a passenger the passenger actually seems to be affected by her questions/love/concern in some way. Also Astrid seems to see Frank Socrates hanging around sometimes (although she admits he is in her imagination).

Mostly though this story is about society and definition and expectations of society. It’s about how much people need labels and boxes to make themselves feel in control. It’s also about a teenage girl who is struggling to figure out what it means to be gay and what it means to be in love.

Overall this was another incredibly well done AS King novel that breaches a number of societal questions while providing an engaging story with a heroine you really care about. I continue to be impressed with how much King can pack into a story and with how much these books leave me to think about. The story and characters are completely engaging and very hard to put down. I would highly recommend everyone read this book. We can all stand to learn more about tolerance and equality. show less

Astrid Jones doesn't know how to feel about her life, so she sends her love to passengers in the airplanes that fly over her house. They're lucky because they have places to be, while she's stuck in Unity Valley. Her mom is a control freak, her dad is an escapist stoner, her sister inhabits a different sphere of small town girl acceptance. Her social life consists of tagging along with her more popular friends, Kristina and Justin, on their sometimes dates. Oh, and keeping their secret: they're gay, the dating is all an act to fend off the narrow minded views of their peers.

She has a secret of her own. She might be gay too.

What sounds like a standard sexual awakening/coming of age novel is...actually that. But with an A.S. King style show more flair of some supernatural-maybe-infused commentary, scads of familial dysfunctional dynamics! The part that this is a story that's really about Astrid's feelings about herself and the whole gay crisis is just sort of an obvious triggering point. So if you pick this up on a LBGTQ series expecting Annie On My Mind just know that the relationship is prominent, but not the centerpiece of the story. And you know what? I really, really loved that about the book.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a sucker for romances where the teens fall in love against all odds and that becomes their incentive to be true about themselves. But this one has it backwards. Astrid Jones, through the help of an imaginary Socrates and a lot of mistakes, finds the strength to be true about herself and then maybe we can talk on if she gets the girl. She is pressured by her girlfriend, pressured by her friends, pressured by the rumor gossiping in town to come out, to label herself, and she resists (and, yes, denies even when she knows better) it until she can sort the rest of herself out first. That is the story A.S. King tells best, and that is the strongest aspect of the book that practically beans you in the head since the first page has "Know thyself" and "Question everything" on it. And this is really a kind of questioning that teens/adults/children/house plants/aliens need too, because what happens if something about you doesn't fit by preconceived notions? Then how would you be so sure it's just one thing about you and not possibly everything?

Astrid's voice, her authenticity, is the unquestionable draw of this story. She has a wry kind of humor that she usually keeps to herself but readers have the privilege of seeing, and sometimes it's less of a privilege and more of a "oh god why" like her comparison to a hangover with a den of raccoons dysentery all over her head. She's introverted, sometimes painfully aware of it, and also so incredibly lost, which you see in glimpses and her own self-questioning doubts.

"Dee is dancing in place to imaginary music, making a bass sound deep in her throat. I admit I'm excited to go out to Atlantis again. An hour ago, I wasn't going anywhere tonight. I think: Maybe it's okay that people talk you into things. Maybe if they didn't, you'd never go anywhere."

Some people might be turned off with the interludes of the plane passengers, where Astrid sends love and questions about her life to the plane passengers and some of them respond in vignettes about their life, love, disappointments. I'll admit there were a few that were not as stirringly poignant as Astrid's struggles or didn't connect as well to the narrative as I wanted. But while the giving love to strangers in planes sounds a little too twee, almost like you're expecting Haley Williams to start chiming in on the vocals about wishing on airplanes (and please don't tell me I'm not the only one hearing that song throughout the whole novel). You sort of realize as it goes on that it is more for Astrid's sake than the strangers, even though they benefit from this cosmic outpouring of love in weird and indefinite ways. It is less about a girl who just has so much love to give and it's precious, and it's more about a girl who really had no idea what to do about love and felt like the only safe way she could give love was through a silent communication with a few thousand feet between her and the people she was sending her love to. And when I got to the end and read that's exactly what A.S. King had planned, I had a "Eureka!" moment myself. Which, yeah, wrong philosopher but any novel that can punch me simultaneously in the emotional and realizational cortex of my brain deserves ovation.

As for it being an Issues novel, it is and it isn't. It's sad that simply having a character dealing with the confusion over being gay still counts as an Issue now, but it does focus on that. However, it's much stronger simply as a novel that inhabits a time and place with these characters and issues occur. In this way, I believe it. In an issue novel I would question the lack of bisexuality mention, but in this particular one I don't because Astrid seems barely aware of sexuality at first and personally doesn't have enough grounding to claim she likes guys, not enough experience to know for sure if she likes girls at the start, and ergo she works from nothing. As for the surrounding characters? Everyone around her who she talks to about it is either 1. already stunningly ignorant about sexuality anyway, 2. kind of burned by the whole thing Like Dee's dismissive "she picked the wrong side" about an old girlfriend who dated her then another guy, or 3. very stoned. I think it's definitely a conversation that should occur and be more transparent in YA literature, but I'd rather A.S. King just wrote another awesome story where somebody was bisexual then have to fit it in when so many other things were happening.


Conclusion: I loved this story, even though it wasn't perfect. Because it wasn't trying to be, and in fact was telling me that nobody's perfect in bright neon sign letters. In a toga. There really have been few books that so embrace their imperfections that made me love it all the more. You may come out of it thinking it was great, thinking it was nice even though there were some serious moments where you wanted to facepalm (like I did), or simply moments where you felt jostled and confused but kept going to see the end, and even if this book doesn't rock your world there's love in it all the same. show less

It’s difficult to live in a small town when you’ve grown up in the big city. It’s difficult to live in a small town when your mother hides away in her home office and your dad’s a secret stoner. It’s difficult to live in a small town when you’re gay or questioning. So, life for Astrid Jones is difficult.

In addition, her mother doesn’t talk to her, preferring Astrid’s year younger ‘pefect’ sister, and her father’s either not around physically or too stoned to carry on a decent conversation. So, Astrid spends time looking up at the sky, sending her love to passengers on the planes flying overhead.

When Astrid’s catering co-worker, Dee, expresses interest and Astrid’s gay friends, Justin and Kristina, illicitly show more spirit her away to a gay bar on a Satuday night (under the guise of Astrid’s date with a guy), she is faced with a dilemma. What is she? Does she fit into a box?

I had no idea what Ask the Passengers was about when I picked it up. It was recommended by an author whose opinion I value. But, I read Ask the Passengers by A.S. King way into the night, I couldn’t wait to find out what happens. Astrid’s questioning is so real and the pressure she feels as Kristina and Dee push her to come out when she’s not ready is palpable. Her family dynamics, pushy mother/benign father, is true in so many families, I’m betting.

King, every now and then, tells a story about a passenger on one of the planes Astrid sends her love to. If you believe that our thoughts may travel through space and impact some unknown person (and I do because the cosmos is an amazing place and I think things happen way beyond our imagination), then Astrid’s love sending does somehow influence the universe.

And finally, the devil/angel on Astrid’s shoulder in the form of Socrates (she’s studying the philosophers in Humanities class) just adds to the enjoyment. Some people have a knack for telling a good story. It’s evident that A.S. King, indeed, has that gift.

I will tell you that my all time favorite book on this subject is still Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters. That may never change. But, if you want a new version of this story, one that will keep you reading into the night, then Ask the Passengers will fit that bill. show less

Originally posted on A Reader of Fictions.

Okay, it's official. I think A.S. King is one of the very best YA writers out there. Ask the Passengers is only my second experience with King, but I loved it just as much as, perhaps even more than, the first one I read, Everybody Sees the Ants. Even better, King falls into that realm of authors who can do something totally new every time. She has some themes in common, but the books themselves are very different. One has a younger male teen lead, one an older female teen, and both voices come through completely authentic. I am always so incredibly impressed by authors who can vary their subject matter, style and characters so much, sort of reinventing themselves with each book.

I just adore show more King's writing. She is, for me, one of the most quotable authors. Her writing isn't overly complex, but it gets the feelings and the point across so incredibly strongly. There are so many lines that I wanted to read aloud to my friend on vacation with me so that she could appreciate King's brilliance, but I couldn't because I'm so making her read this book next.

Ask the Passengers focuses on the theme of belonging, of identity, of self-discovery, and of peer pressure. Astrid Jones doesn't want to be put into boxes, doesn't want to be forced to be any one thing. She just wants to be Astrid Jones, whoever that is. Why does it have to matter so much whether we're gay or straight, white or brown, religious or agnostic, male or female, wealthy or poor, popular or unpopular? Astrid struggles with everyone's expectations and perceptions, afraid to be who she is but also unwilling to pretend to be something or someone else.

These themes resonated with me, because, really, who the fuck cares about those things? I mean, COME ON, it's the 21st century and we're still so caught up in defining things one way or another and on what's right that gay marriage is legal hardly anywhere. King brings up a lot of powerful issues and looks at the issue of being a girl in love with a girl in a different way than I have yet seen, and really made me consider the issue from a new angle. Plus, I sympathized with her desire to not have anyone know her business, because that's totally how I am. Why does everyone need to know?

Of course, the book also has humor, because the best issues books are imbued with humor, because a spoonful of sugar really does help the medicine go down. The whole opening plot is about how Astrid is weighed down by all of these secrets, those of her friends, her family and herself. Her friends, Justin and Kristina, are a power couple at school, the kind to be nominated for Homecoming King and Queen. Every Friday, they go on double dates with another couple, Donna and Chad. Actually, though, Justin's dating Chad and Kristina's dating Donna. SCANDAL! The only one who knows is Astrid, who's trying to decide whether to confess that she's actually dating a girl too, Dee, who works with her. I thought the whole situation was a hot mess, but I loved how theatrical it was. This would make a fantastic indie film. Just saying.

Another thing that I loved about the book, one which I could definitely see alienating some readers is Astrid's newly developed fascination with philosophy in general and Socrates in particular. I love philosophy myself, but the frequent discussions of it could put off some people. Even more than that, the philosophy takes a weird turn, in that Astrid creates an imaginary friend version of Socrates, who she dubs Frank Socrates; he helps her out along the way, making her question her behavior and what she holds true. I thought this worked, because of how motivated Astrid was by him and just her sheer exuberance about the class in general, but I do think it's interesting that both of her MCs I've read so far have had imaginary friends. Very odd, that.

My very favorite thing, though, was the part that gave the book its title: Astrid's love of planes and their passengers. Astrid does this thing where she will lie on the ground or on picnic tables and stare up at the sky, watching for planes. When she sees planes, she sends the passengers her love, along with her questions and frustrations, in a way of trying to help other people feel more loved and comfortable than she herself does. That was awesome just in and of itself. Better still, though, were the snippets of other people's stories (though a couple were too off the wall for me), showing the effect her little bits of love sent into the universe had on someone or other on the plane. These were all incredibly touching and moving, and I loved this little dose of magical realism.

I do know that everyone probably won't love A.S. King; I suspect her books will just be too weird for a lot of people. I, however, love them and want to strongly urge everyone who liked thought-provoking, quirky, clever books to read them. From what I can tell, A.S. King does not have anywhere near the name recognition and popularity she deserves. show less

Don't worry. I'll keep it safe. Stay strong.

what an amazing story. filled with hope and love, misunderstandings and pain, judgment, assumptions all brewing together with large side of fear and resentment

Astrid is your typical teen except when she's not (Astrid would love the philosophical awfulness of that sentence!ha)
and she is amazing. because she is lost and lonely and confused. but she finds sanity by sending out love. she sends it out to everyone, even strangers flying tens of thousands of feet above her

and she'll never know the difference her gifts of love are to those receiving it until she lets someone in - lets someone love her

I think this is by far the most well done LGBTQ book I've ever read. it takes all your assumptions show more and prejudice and smacks it around. it reminds us we are all human and we all have a story to tell, a path to follow - and no 2 journeys are the same. neither are better, just different - and that's what makes it perfect show less

Easily among the best GLBTQ/coming-out stories I've read, complete with the confusions and angst and worries of everyday life. Sensible conversations about sex before they have it! Awkwardness! Uncertainty about how to talk to people, dealing with pushy family members, friends who are maybe less-stellar friends than you think! There was so much I loved about this book and the way it handled the myriad issues without ever turning into a "GAY BOOK." I mean, that's the main thing going on, but it's far from the defining characteristic and why are you still reading this review instead of this book?