Book Review: Dramarama
Apr. 26th, 2014 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI finally got over The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks enough to read E. Lockhart’s earlier novel, Dramarama, which I enjoyed, although it was a very different book than I expected. Whoever wrote the flap description is simultaneously a genius - who wouldn’t want to read a book about
...a season of hormones,
gold lame,
hissy fits,
jazz hands,
song and dance,
true love,
and unitards
that will determine their future
--and test their friendship?
- and also kind of a terrible summary writer, because that description is going to sucker in a lot of people who want to read about a girl (and her gay best friend, which I realize sounds like a recipe for stereotype-ville, but actually Demi the gay BFF is quite well-developed beyond his surface fabulosity) finding their true home and heart family in the theater. Kind of like Menolly in the Harper Hall trilogy, but without fire lizards.
Dramarama is not that book. It’s so emphatically not that book that it’s practically a deconstruction of the trope.
The narrator, Sadye (which is pronounced Sadie, and yes I stumbled over the spelling for the entire book), is a fish out of water in her hometown: too intense, too interested in musical theater, entirely too much. She and her BFF Demi make their way to summer drama camp, where they intends to find their people and embark on a fabulous new life.
At first it seems like Sadye’s having typical protagonist struggles (she doesn’t get the part she wants any of the musicals, the boy she likes doesn’t notice her, the play director is totally incompetent…). The normal difficulties that make triumph all the sweeter when it arrives.
Only it never arrives. Sadye becomes increasingly aware that she’s a fish out of water at drama camp, too: only here it’s because she’s less talented, less intense, less special than everyone else. As she grows more aware of her own shortcomings, she becomes less cooperative with her teachers and more critical of what she sees as the cult-leader status of the director. The director of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is clearly leading them toward a performance as disastrous as the previous summer’s legendarily terrible production of Oedipus Rex. All the actors know it, so why should they stay silent?
(The book doesn’t spell this out - I'm not even sure it meant to imply the possibility - but if Sadye overcomes her disenchantment with the theater, I think she might consider becoming a director herself. She certainly has strong enough feelings about staging.)
I don’t often read YA books and wonder what I would have thought of them when I was a teenager, but I really did with this book. Reading it at 25, I found it thought-provoking; I’ve spent a certain amount of time since I read it wondering about Sadye’s future. Will she conclude that musical theater is simply not her metier and recover her self-confidence? Or will she decide that her bad experience at theater camp proves she’s simply not special?
But if I had read Dramarama for the first time as a high schooler, I wonder if I would have felt betrayed. It does feel kind of like a slap at the face to all those ugly duckling stories, where the Menollys of the world leave home and find a place where their talents are appreciated and they themselves are loved.
...a season of hormones,
gold lame,
hissy fits,
jazz hands,
song and dance,
true love,
and unitards
that will determine their future
--and test their friendship?
- and also kind of a terrible summary writer, because that description is going to sucker in a lot of people who want to read about a girl (and her gay best friend, which I realize sounds like a recipe for stereotype-ville, but actually Demi the gay BFF is quite well-developed beyond his surface fabulosity) finding their true home and heart family in the theater. Kind of like Menolly in the Harper Hall trilogy, but without fire lizards.
Dramarama is not that book. It’s so emphatically not that book that it’s practically a deconstruction of the trope.
The narrator, Sadye (which is pronounced Sadie, and yes I stumbled over the spelling for the entire book), is a fish out of water in her hometown: too intense, too interested in musical theater, entirely too much. She and her BFF Demi make their way to summer drama camp, where they intends to find their people and embark on a fabulous new life.
At first it seems like Sadye’s having typical protagonist struggles (she doesn’t get the part she wants any of the musicals, the boy she likes doesn’t notice her, the play director is totally incompetent…). The normal difficulties that make triumph all the sweeter when it arrives.
Only it never arrives. Sadye becomes increasingly aware that she’s a fish out of water at drama camp, too: only here it’s because she’s less talented, less intense, less special than everyone else. As she grows more aware of her own shortcomings, she becomes less cooperative with her teachers and more critical of what she sees as the cult-leader status of the director. The director of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is clearly leading them toward a performance as disastrous as the previous summer’s legendarily terrible production of Oedipus Rex. All the actors know it, so why should they stay silent?
(The book doesn’t spell this out - I'm not even sure it meant to imply the possibility - but if Sadye overcomes her disenchantment with the theater, I think she might consider becoming a director herself. She certainly has strong enough feelings about staging.)
I don’t often read YA books and wonder what I would have thought of them when I was a teenager, but I really did with this book. Reading it at 25, I found it thought-provoking; I’ve spent a certain amount of time since I read it wondering about Sadye’s future. Will she conclude that musical theater is simply not her metier and recover her self-confidence? Or will she decide that her bad experience at theater camp proves she’s simply not special?
But if I had read Dramarama for the first time as a high schooler, I wonder if I would have felt betrayed. It does feel kind of like a slap at the face to all those ugly duckling stories, where the Menollys of the world leave home and find a place where their talents are appreciated and they themselves are loved.
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no subject
Date: 2014-04-26 09:26 pm (UTC)As she grows more aware of her own shortcomings, she becomes less cooperative with her teachers and more critical of what she sees as the cult-leader status of the director. The director of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is clearly leading them toward a performance as disastrous as the previous summer’s legendarily terrible production of Oedipus Rex. All the actors know it, so why should they stay silent?
I was involved in several productions like that as an undergraduate, except that I was part of the cult so I went the entire way through thinking it was actually brilliant, and it was only several years later that I wondered what we'd all been smoking.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-27 02:03 pm (UTC)But it's a bit hard to tell what moral the book is going for, because the ending is pretty rushed.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-28 06:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-04-29 12:31 pm (UTC)Also, on a completely different note. I'll be in England from August 5 to August 22 this year. I don't know precisely which parts of England I'll be in when, but I'll probably be in London for the first few days, so if it's convenient for you it might be fun to meet up for lunch or tea at some point.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-29 09:03 pm (UTC)