People are strange. (You said it, Thomas Lynn.)

[lady_schrapnell]

Not referring to the 'No' vote Thursday, which I consider quite un-strange, actually, despite its leaving me in bed (purely figuratively speaking) with some very strange company.  No, this post is in the 'but most of it's all about me'* class, and I'm referring to my neighbours and in particular, the one in the house next to me in the terrace, and her response to the news (discovered at the cost of many hundreds of Euro, three more days of blocked sewer hell, headaches, tears, and more headaches) that the broken pipe was actually in her back garden, which is the only place it can be fixed, though she has never experienced any problems and probably never would.  She couldn't have been nicer AND said she refused to worry about it because we'd sort it out between us and she doesn't worry anymore. The neighbour who'd always been easy-going and friendly, on the other hand, had earlier been quite horrible.

So, despite the relief headache's expected appearance, I've started my catch-up on all matters bloggey by reading all missed flist posts, and am determined to get the last book of the 48 Hour Challenge done so I can finally do the 'Why I read YA' ramble I've been thinking about for a bit.  The book is Sarah Dessen's The Truth about Forever, and the post is 'most of it's all about me' because I got hit hard enough by the 'gotcha' of recognition that I'm not all that able to be terribly objective about the book itself.

The only other book I've ever read which gave me that same grab of startled self-recognition was another Sarah Dessen, Just Listen, and in neither case was it the circumstances, though those were far closer in The Truth about Forever than in Just Listen, but something about the description of the exact way in which the character responded which did it.  It was certainly more than the 'Oh, that character takes out as many library books as she's allowed each visit? Just like me' type of similarity. And somehow it also went beyond the psychology text-book level of cause-and-effect (girl has sudden death of a parent  => tries to control everything by being perfect) to feel really right to me.  There was a fair amount that I thought was good about the different responses to loss (Macy's father had a heart attack, Bert's & Wes's mother/Delia's sister, died of breast cancer) throughout. But the line that really got to me was Macy's saying - in response to being told not to be afraid but to be alive - "it's the same thing". Being afraid and being alive are the same thing.  It took years after my father's death for me even to be able to understand the extent to which I felt that way, but I'd been living it all the same.

Few basics: the story opens the summer before Macy's last year of school, as she's seeing her perfect boyfriend Jason off on his way to Brain Camp for 8 weeks.  (It is worth noting the fact that Jason's not her 'perfect boyfriend' but her boyfriend, who is perfect.  There's a hell of a difference.) Macy lives with her mother, who runs a property-development company alone since the death of Macy's father a year and a half ago.  He had a sudden heart attack while out running, and Macy, also a runner, had found him lying on the road with a stranger performing CPR on him.  Since his death Macy has been very carefully showing the world only small bits and pieces of herself - never showing her mother that she's scared, angry and miserable, leaving the open display of grief to her older sister, never asking Jason for anything more than the measured dose he gives her, doing her part to keep the house absolutely tidy, and even trading her comfortable 'track-rat' style for a neater, never-a-hair-out-of-place one.  Yup, trying to be perfect.  When she stumbles into the disorganized catering company run by Delia, with Bert and Wes, and two girls around Macy's age helping her, she takes on the odd job with them  As Jason sends her the coldest email imaginable saying he wants to take a break, and Wes turns out to be nice, sensitive, artistic and not at all interested in perfection, it's not going to surprise anyone - or at least any reader, as Macy's a bit slow in this regard - that their friendship has the potential to be a lot more. 

It's all pretty standard-sounding stuff written out like that, but like all the other Dessen books, it's got likable characters with some emotional depth, and is intelligent about real life, real people stuff.  I think Macy could be less engaging than some of Dessen's protagonists, perhaps, because of that tightly controlled, shut-down response to the shock of her father's death, but her mother's so dreadful, in a well-meaning kind of way, that she might get more reader sympathy for that reason alone.  As I said above, I could relate all too easily.

I relate not because of the mother's awful behaviour - not the outward signs of perfectionism - and certainly, definitely, absolutely not the ability to shut down any kind of show of grief.  Nope.  I was 7 when my father died of a heart attack, not in my teens, thousands of miles away, rather than right there and in the ambulance with him, and to this day I've a terrible tendency to cry in public no matter how much I want not to.  I wasn't at my father's funeral, but nobody in the family stopped talking about him or hustled his things away in a flash.  These are all the details of the story which aren't in common, but they're not as important as Macy's response.

Criticisms I might have include the plot and some characters being too similar to some other Dessen books and Jason's being - oh please, l hope I'm right about this one! - too awful to be quite credible, but I think Dessen fans will like this anyway, as I did, and someone new to her wouldn't be bother about the plot/character repetitiveness anyway.  I'm also very much looking forward to Dessen's latest, Lock and Key, as it sounds as if she might be breaking out of her typical family set-ups and doing something different.

* A short poem from the wonderful How To Be Well-Versed in Poetry which delighted me as I encountered it while wading through studying Wordsworth's "The Prelude" (also the title of this poem).

Dear Samuel Taylor C.,
Enclosed is some verse. It could be
     That there's rather too much
     About Nature and such
But most of it's all about me.

Ron Rubin

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Was hoping someone would post more about the no vote, but did not want to touch off anger by asking. Not about the consequences--I understand those for the overall EU plan--but why so many in Ireland preferred no to yes. (My understanding is like 56% to 44 %)

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

There are certainly a range of reasons for the no vote, but one of the main ones is a feeling that the E.U. is becoming increasingly undemocratic in its functioning, and this would be our last chance to influence that (although seeing as the response has seemed to be 'we're going to crack on despite the no vote', even that might be a forlorn hope!) When the French and the Dutch people rejected the Constitution last time, there was a tiny re-jig and it was sent out to all the countries' parliaments to decide this time - we had to have the referendum because it's in our constitution, otherwise it would have been decided for us (as happened in the UK, despite the original promise of a referendum on the constitution). And it would have been decided for us by politicians who have shown themselves time and again to be totally untrustworthy. An example of that is the line we've been given about the increasingly militaristic ("We're going to band together to fight terrorism the Bush way and you'll have to come on board' style) aspect of the Treaty, which is not to worry our little heads about it, we have the veto so our 'neutrality' isn't threatened in any way. But this comes from the party which allowed US military jets to stop in Shannon and re-fuel on their way to bomb Iraq without giving people the least bit of say in it, so why the hell would I trust that? (Many people in Ireland were furious about that move, and it was a decision taken here in Dublin, not even in Brussels where it's harder to see.)

What's really galling about this (and steepholm and I had a long rant about it yesterday) is the line that Ireland benefited so much from E.U. money that choosing to vote 'no' is ungrateful. I've heard it put as 'turning around and kicking Europe in the balls', in fact. Which makes about as much sense as saying that you (you US citizen, not you sartorias) have children in public schools and use roads and libraries so you'd be appallingly ungrateful to vote anything but Republican. From what I've always heard, the right and responsibility of people in a democracy is to be involved in the choices to be made about the running of that democracy. And a related aspect of this is the criticism that people rejected it 'just' because they couldn't understand it, and that's stupid. I don't want to be shamed into rubber-stamping something that can't be fully understood by the normal, reasonably intelligent person just because that's all that's offered.

(My cranky tone is at the people - many of them Irish - having a go at No voters, NOT at you for asking the question!)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh thank you thank you--that's exactly what I wanted to read. It's so frustrating to be trying to winnow the truth past Repub rhetoric at a distance...that tone of "Naughty Ireland once again torpedoes European Union and support of the US" just sent out all KINDS of warning signals to me. Especially any "In support of US" because too often that means "Toeing the Bush and Gangsters' line."

(I know I could search harder, but every time I sit down to the comp, it's like I have ten tasks, and I always choose the easiest two before I get interrupted and have to put off the other eight.)

Thank you!

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! And I'm also grateful for hearing the spin that was being put on it over there, as my mother was trying to push me to the yes position, saying Bush and Gangsters (which is perfect!) wanted us to vote no. Which never made any sense at all, but the mistake may not have been hers. (I'd been equally meaning to go have a look at some US news on the web and dig a bit, but, as you say... )

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...be interesting to follow your mom's line of thought. At least around here, the neocons seemed to be pushing the old treaty, making me think that the Gangsters were undershoring it in some typically sleazy way. Well, this whole thing of NOT PUTTING IT TO POPULAR VOTE would be a clue.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

lady_schrapnell sums it all up nicely, for my money. What can I add, other than to echo the appallingly undemocratic nature of the whole process? (Btw, while other governments were assuring their voters that the Treaty was almost exactly the same as the Consitution, the UK government - who'd promised a referendum on the Constitution - were wriggling out of it by saying that the Treaty was totally different and that a referendum wouldn't be needed. That is, they knew they would lose.)

Another dose of gall comes from the way that the Irish are being told that they have let the EU down, and that the other 26 countries want to go ahead - even with suggestions that the Irish should be punished for voting the 'wrong' way! But this is not the case: the governments and the EU officials may be in favour, but the general population of the EU clearly is not - which is precisely why they weren't allowed to vote this time around. I suspect most people in the EU are grateful to the Irish for voting as they did, and to de Valera who (as I now learn) set up their constitution so that they would have the chance.

I'm more of a eurosceptic than lady_schrapnell generally speaking, so I'm not sure how far she'd go with me on this, but that particular move - of identifying the feelings of entire populations with those of their governments, even when these are clearly at variance - seems all of a piece to me with the long-standing rhetorical ploy whereby the EU miscalls itself 'Europe', and by implication arrogates to itself the whole of European culture. ("You don't approve of the Common Fisheries Policy? Then clearly you're an insular bigot who hates Beethoven and Socrates.") This, combined with the notorious corruption and inefficiency of its major institutions, and its undisguised contempt for those whom it's nominally meant to serve, makes it very hard to love or to trust it, whatever its virtues (and I'm not denying it has some - or that European states need to act in concert in some areas).

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Excellent, thanks--that adds to a much clearer picture.