Book Review: Fangirl

[osprey_archer]

I have split feelings about Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl. As a novel about starting college, I think it's excellent. I loved the heroine, Cath, who is anxious, intensely introverted, and rather terrified to be leaving home.

It captures both the promise of college - that this is a new environment with new people, and you don't have to remain trapped in your high school self - but also that this is also incredibly hard. People don't open out like butterflies naturally, they have to put a lot of effort into it, and it sometimes hurts.

I think sometimes people use college as a sort of replacement for high school as "the best years of our lives" - which is a problem for people who don't experience it that way, or at least take a year or two before they settle in and make friends. There seems to be an assumption that things automatically get better when you get older, which I don't think is necessarily true: very often, you have to make them better. But the "best years of our lives" scenario can make it feel like, if you have to work at it, you're doing it wrong.

Fangirl shows that college is hard, if ultimately also rewarding; and I appreciate that.

As a novel about fandom, however, it left something to be desired. I think it does fic-writing well - Cath's reasons for writing are not everybody's, but then, no one writes for the same reason - but there's no sense of fandom community; Cath doesn't even have any fandom friends.

If Cath were a lurker, this would make perfect sense. But she's not: since she was thirteen, she's been posting actively on Simon Snow forums. (Simon Snow is of alternative Harry Potter, if the books had a lot more Harry & Malfoy interaction. IIRC, someone may have nominated Simon Snow for Yuletide. OH FANDOM.) Since she was fourteen, she's been writing fic fairly prolifically and become an incredibly popular author.

I just don't buy that in five years of fandom activity, she hasn't made any online friends. And the lack of community makes the picture of fandom rather hollow.

That being said, I wouldn't know how to approach a story where the main relationships (or at least some of them) were online. The conventions of epistolary novels might be a guide, but online friendships can be so much more diffuse than letters - spread across LJs, forums, emails, chatrooms...

There would inevitably need to be trimming. But novels often trim their characters' social worlds anyway - there are only so many friends-but-only-in-orchestra or cousins-I-see-twice-a-year that you can introduce without making things too complicated...

Still. It would require some innovation to make it work.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

This is very interesting. handful_ofdust reviewed it; she was less interested in the college experience, etc., and more interested in the fandom stuff, which she felt echoed some of her own experience and enlightened her about what fandom was like for the Harry Potter generation. She didn't comment on the fact that the main character doesn't have any fandom friends; I wonder what she'd say about that....

(here (http://handful-ofdust.livejournal.com/510054.html) is one entry where she talked about it)

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

As I just noted on my own LJ, I never assumed that Cath had no fandom friends, simply that because her interactions with them would've been strictly online, we just never heard about them because Rowell seems to have made the decision to exclude all that from the narrative. It makes sense that if a person with an active fandom life was writing the story, they would have noted that Cath opened her chat option while she was writing or checked her email constantly and had various conversations as it was going on, etc.--but I think you're right, Cath's behaviour is more like that of a lurker, which (from her own epilogue) I kind of assume Rowell was, during her "research" period. (I just made the decision to include various online friendships I have in Experimental Film, because it'll make it sound more like my actual life, but I can totally understand why she might assume doing it in Fangirl could alienate the non-fannish portion of the audience.)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

(v. glad you're back to working on Experimental Film, and, though you've probably seen it a million times already, have "Experimental Film" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgK74opJjlI))

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes, I got the same impression from the epilogue, that Rowell was a lurker and didn't see so much of the interaction side of fandom.

I think that if Cath had fandom friends, the narrative would have at least mentioned them occasionally - that, even if she didn't feel comfortable discussing her Wren or Levi problems with her fandom friends, she would have talked to them about something else to distract herself. But she seems incredibly isolated.

Giving Cath strong fandom friendships might have muddied the waters about her difficulty connecting with people for a lot of readers. But I think "good at online interaction, not good at face time" is a fairly easy distinction to make.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I was never part of Harry Potter fandom per se, but then you almost didn't have to be because it was so pervasive; everyone knew Harry Potter. Now that I think about it, it is very different than the fannish experience for most things...

I wonder if the fans growing up now will have a different approach to fandom, given that they don't have a Harry Potter to sort of mainstream fandom for their generation.

[ladyherenya]

I haven't read Fangirl yet, just an extract online, but I wonder if Cath having a twin influenced how she relates to people online. If she already had someone to squee and flail and speculate with, she might have been less likely to develop personal relationships online - particularly if she only posted on forums but never chatted one-on-one with anyone. Or swapped email addresses or added them on social media, etc.

From the tiny bit I've read of Fangirl I could imagine that Cath might be shy about initiating private discussions with people... and not feel a strong need to overcome that, because often it's just easier to go talk to one's sibling.

[anait.livejournal.com]

I just don't buy that in five years of fandom activity, she hasn't made any online friends. And the lack of community makes the picture of fandom rather hollow.

That's sad. Online friends and community are the best of all the wonderful stuff that goes with being in Fandom! A novel about Fandom that leaves out the community feels to me like it misses the centre of it all.

I read a good portrayal of a teenage girl with a Livejournal, an online life and online friends in Robert J Sawyer's Wake. Caitlin wasn't fannish, but all the stuff about posting to Livejournal and interacting online felt right on to me. :)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I know! Doesn't it just seem strange that she hasn't made any friends? Even though she apparently has a beta who reads new chapters of her story almost every night, who is mentioned once and then forgotten? Surely they would talk about non-story things occasionally.

I feel like a fic author as prolific and popular as Cath would have to put more work into not having fandom friends than into making them.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes, I suppose. Still, even just posting on forums, she would develop some sort of relationship to the other posters. Maybe not close personal friends who she shares her intimate feelings with (it is pretty clear that Cath is not into that), but...something.

[anait.livejournal.com]

Very strange!

[artemis_wandering]

The only thing I know about this book is the cover art was done by awesome tumblr artist Gingerhaze. She is kind of my idol.lol

Definitely sounds like the author failed to capture the intended goal. Which is weird. And yeah, that situation doesn't seem realistic at all. I mean, I don't even participate in fandom particularly, but I have lots of online friends and several I've met in "real life".

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

That's pretty awesome! I wonder if the editor (or whoever picked the cover) is involved in fandom, to find a Tumblr artist.

[artemis_wandering]

Actually, if I recall correctly, the author is either friends with Gingerhaze or simply asked to do a collaboration at some point. I forget which. Gingerhaze is currently getting her name out there with a lot of graphic artists and art galleries and then attends conventions, too. She has an adorable webcomic called Nimona if that's your kind of thing.