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Book Review: grl2grl, by Julie Anne Peters

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grl2grl is a collection of short stories about LGBT characters, mostly girls, hence the title, grl2grl. There are ten stories in the collection, and each is very different from the next, dealing with a range of issues, from coming out to being dumped, abuse to abstinence-only education. I often describe short stories as being either complete stories or snapshots from a character’s life, and there are both kinds here. Julie Anne Peters tries to give each character a distinct personality, and I think that she succeeded, although the narrative styles are quite similar in some of the stories.

My favourites were ‘Can’t Stop The Feeling’, which is about a girl who is trying to pluck up the courage to go to a meeting of the Gay/Straight Alliance group at her school, ‘TIAD’, about a girl who has just been dumped and goes online to a chatroom for advice and companionship, a story I really liked as I thought it was quite original – and ‘Two-Part Invention’, about a violinist who’s in love with the cellist she plays with at summer music camp. I just love musician stories.

I don’t think that every story should have had a dramatic impact – the presence of happy endings and sad endings and ambiguous endings makes the collection more interesting – but some of the stories I liked less were a bit too much like a tiny snippet from a life, with nothing really happening in them. Overall, however, the insight into the minds of the characters was compelling and sometimes really affecting.

It’s a very American book, a lot of the things referred to don’t really exist this side of the pond – I have only heard of a couple of schools with Gay/Straight Alliance groups here, and there are only a couple of summer camp organisations. But if you’ve watched American teen movies then this shouldn’t cause much of a problem.

I think that in a perfect world, every library would have a copy of grl2grl. I think it’s one of those books with the power to make troubled teenagers feel as if they’re not alone, and as the stories are indeed short, it would be great for reluctant readers. My only complaint would be that it’s such a skinny little volume, and it left me wanting to read more from the author. But that’s fine, as she’s already written novels!

Book Review: Monsoon Summer, by Mitali Perkins

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The one time Jazz tried to take the initiative and help someone, it went wrong. Since then she’s avoided all acts of charity, taking a back seat, along with her father, as her mother shines in the charitable spotlight. But this summer, the whole family is leaving Berkeley, California, and going to India, so that Jazz’s mum can help out at the new clinic at the orphanage where she spent her first four years. Jazz is convinced that she’s going to hate it, not only because she’s going to feel out of place and useless, but because she’ll be missing working at her business with her best friend Steve, whom she is secretly in love with.

In India, whilst the rest of her family find ways to help at the orphanage, Jazz refuses to set foot in the place until she absolutely has to. But even school is strange and new, and when she’s seeking comfort, it’s hard to resist the delicious tea made by Danita, their fifteen-year-old housekeeper. As Danita prepares their dinners, they get talking, and soon Jazz is finding it more and more difficult to resist the urge to try to help Danita as she struggles with decisions about her future, and that of her sisters, who have grown up in the orphanage together.

Let’s be honest. The plot of Monsoon Summer sounds totally predictable, doesn’t it? And it is. There are no grand surprises, I saw almost every turn coming, but it was still a lot of fun to read. Jazz is a convincing teenage girl, a bit self-centred and opinionated, with wavering self-esteem. I liked the details about the orphanage, the academy where Jazz goes to school, and her relationship with Steve. My favourite character was probably Jazz’s brother, Eric, and his obsessions with bugs and football (I refuse to call it ‘soccer’, because I’m British).

Although I enjoyed reading it, one thing that really bothered me was Jazz’s reaction to being stared at whenever she went out in public. She wondered why she was attracting attention wherever she went for such a long time and it didn’t make much sense, considering that she knew full well that she looked more like her white father than her Indian mother. I think that the author was trying to shoehorn in a point about self-esteem and body image issues that didn’t quite fit, and it seemed especially forced when I thought back to the way questions about cultural standards of beauty were woven so spectacularly into the fabric of Born Confused. I also thought that Danita was a little too perfect, but her relationship with her sisters was great and it brought some serious issues into the book.

Monsoon Summer is quite fast paced, I read it quite quickly and was easily absorbed whenever I picked it up. Although I didn’t love it and probably wouldn’t read it again, I think it’s an easy, accessible read and many readers would enjoy it.