Review by New York Times Review
BET on it: Before he could grow a beard, Sigmund Freud wondered, "What do girls want?" Boys and girls are different, of course, and no more so than in their teens. You can see the distinction clearly in two recent novels that present a stark division between the sexes - or at least between what publishers think teenage boys and girls want to read. On the side of sugar and spice: "Along for the Ride," by Sarah Dessen, who has become a best-seller machine. "Swim the Fly," the first novel for young adults by Don Calame, plays to the snips-and-snails crowd. In both books, the main character makes the passage through angsty teenage emotions to learn the value of honesty, of best friends and quests, and of persevering despite fear and the likelihood of failure. Aside from that, they are as different as Mars and Venus. "Along for the Ride" is the more fully formed novel, a wistful narrative of a young woman's last summer before heading off to college. Auden West's parents are divorced academics who forced their brilliant daughter to grow up fast. Her mother is an expert on women in Renaissance literature, and lives by a kind of humorless feminism that can't understand anything frilly or fun; she is the sort of person who says: "Don't be bitter. It's the first instinct of the weak" - with more than a trace of bitterness. The father is another trope of ivory tower novels, the professor/author who once had a great future ahead of him. These days he is haplessly trying to put together his long-delayed second novel and just as haplessly starting a second family when Auden decides to take up his new wife's invitation to spend the summer with them. Over the summer, girl meets boy: silent Eli, a stunt bike rider extraordinaire who has withdrawn after an accident that had horrible consequences. Auden finds it easy to talk to him, and both are insomniacs. As the weeks pass each begins breaking down the other's shell, and they embark on a series of quests that will give Auden the childhood she missed, including a food fight and a paper route. With the help of new friends, including the bright and girly Maggie, Auden has an epiphany: "Being a girl could be about interest rates and skinny jeans, riding bikes and wearing pink. Not about any one thing, but everything." Until this wallflower blooms, the story feels a bit airless. But the satisfying ending will give many readers a lump in their throat. If "Along for the Ride" is a dreamy chick flick, "Swim the Fly" is a raucous PG-13 comedy. Don Calame, a screenwriter, serves up jokes and gross-outs in the style of filmmakers like Judd Apatow. He tells the story of Matt Gratton and his two best friends, Sean and Coop, who for years have taken on a summertime goal. When they were little, the tasks were uncomplicated, like collecting 1,000 golf balls. But now they are 15, and their hopes and dreams have inevitably come to a single focus: sex. This year's goal is to see a girl naked, and not just the left breast that one of them saw the year before. "How are we supposed to see a live naked girl?" Matt asks. "Maybe we better set a more realistic goal for the summer. Like finding Atlantis." Coop's logic, however, is inexorable, like a textbook image of the ascent of man. He's intent on the project as a necessary first step on the way to possibly someday having actual sex. The Rockville swim team is not very good, but the boys come back every year because they have always come back every year. Now Matt, in a desperate need to impress the swim team's new hottie, volunteers to swim the arduous butterfly stroke in relays for the team's meets over the summer - a task that is clearly beyond his physical gift. The story of Matt's attempts to prepare for the big meet, to see a girl naked and to date the aforementioned hottie is punctuated with all of the predictable gross-out scenes, involving vomiting, flatulence and diarrhea. There is the screen-ready wordplay ("tenting your Speedo"), and capers: the boys cross-dress to sneak into the girls' locker room, and catch a ride to a nude beach. Side characters abound, including a sadistic German swim coach named Ulf, and Matt's scheming Grandpa Arlo, who shows that you're never too old to look for love ineptly. Of course, there's challenge and triumph, and a rousing final race. In the war between the sexes on the young adult bookshelves, "Swim the Fly" occupies the low ground of offensive, knuckleheaded fun. Which is to say, boys will probably love it. This one did. John Schwartz is The Times's national legal correspondent.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Dessen has built a well-deserved reputation for delicately depicting teen girls in turmoil. Her latest title showcases a socially awkward young woman who seeks solace in the comforting rigidity of academic success. Auden is about to start college in the fall, and decides to escape her control-freak professor mom to spend the summer with her novelist father, his new young wife, and their brand-new baby daughter, Thisbe. Over the course of the summer, Auden tackles many new projects: learning to ride a bike, making real connections with peers, facing the emotional fallout of her parents' divorce, distancing herself from her mother, and falling in love with Eli, a fellow insomniac bicyclist recovering from his own traumas. The cover may mislead readers, as despite the body language of the girl in pink and the hunky blue-jeaned boy balanced on a bike, this is no slight romance: there's real substance here. Dessen's many fans will not be deterred by the length or that cover; they expect nuanced, subtle writing, and they won't be disappointed.--Carton, Debbie Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Studious good girl Auden, named for the poet, makes a snap decision to spend her summer before college at her father's beach house rather than with her mother, a professor whose bad habits include male grad students. Auden's parents divorced three years earlier, a split she's not yet over. Her remarried father has already produced another heir, a colicky baby named Thisbe (after a tragic figure from Shakespeare), with his young wife, Heidi, who owns a boutique. Feeling sympathy for stressed-out Heidi, Auden agrees to do the shop's bookkeeping, providing her with an instant social circle-the teenage clerks plus the boys from the neighboring bike rental, including hunky, wounded Eli. Both night owls, Auden and Eli bond when he coaxes her to experience childhood activities-bowling, food fights, learning to ride a bike-that her insufferable parents never bothered to provide. Auden's thoughtful observations make for enjoyable reading-this is solid if not "top shelf" Dessen: another summer of transformation in which the heroine learns that growing up means "propelling yourself forward, into whatever lies ahead, one turn of the wheel at a time." Ages 12-up. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The YA author's ninth book, following Lock and Key (2008); Rachel Botchan reads. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-Studious and successful but socially awkward, 17-year-old Auden has spent her childhood and teenage years acting and being treated like an adult. Planning to relax and get some reading done during the summer before she enters college, Auden instead decides to spend the summer with her dad, his young wife, and their newborn baby in a small, charming costal town, Auden begins to experience some of the things that she missed out on growing up-from bike riding and food fights to friendship and romance. Rachel Botchan perfectly narrates Sarah Dessen's absorbing story (Viking, 2009) of growth and discovery, convincingly voicing the realistic dialogue and the teen characters with all the nuances of their personalities and attitudes. Auden, in particular, is a fully drawn, complex character, and Botchan captures her intelligence and insecurities by highlighting the thoughts and emotions behind Auden's complicated relationships with her parents and her feelings about their divorce, her changing attitude toward the girls she encounters and her stepmother, her feelings about the intriguing young man she meets, and her transforming summer. A solid performance of a realistic and engaging tale.-Amanda Raklovits, Champaign Public Library, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
(High School) Auden, the preternaturally mature daughter of two self-absorbed (and divorced) academics, is quiet, studious, and responsible. She's also never had a real friend, broken a rule, or gone on an adventure. Then, the summer before college, she accepts an invitation to stay with her father, her terminally perky stepmother Heidi, and her newborn half-sister Thisbe. Soon Auden is befriended by a trio of local girls who help her reconcile her mother's strict notions of feminism and intellectualism with her own desires for the future. She also forms a prickly alliance with Heidi, who, not nearly as vapid as Auden thought, shoulders the burdens of motherhood alone, since Auden's father helps out only when his own routine and sleep schedule are in no danger of disruption. Without judgment, Dessen explores the dynamics of an extended family headed by two opposing, flawed personalities, revealing their parental failures with wicked precision yet still managing to create real, even sympathetic characters. Though Auden's repressed upbringing is a less compelling hook than Just Listen's mysterious social shunning or Lock and Key's estranged sisters, Along for the Ride still provides the interpersonal intricacies fans expect from a Dessen plot. Rounding out her latest offering with richly depicted female friendships, Dessen offers up a summertime tale of self-discovery. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Auden missed childhood thanks to her parents' divorce, which she navigated with the gravitas of a 30-year-old. No bike-riding, no giggly sleepovers. Just schoolwork, college ambitions and relentless insomnia. In the summer before college, she spontaneously joins her dad, his 20-something wife and new baby at their oceanfront house, hoping to transform into someone who enjoys normal teenage fun: beach, boardwalk, bonfires and beers. Dessen reworks well-traveled terrain and creates a remarkably original story with realistic teen dialogue, authentic girl friendships and a complex underlying question: Can people really change? Taut, witty first-person narration allows readers to both identify with Auden's insecurities and recognize her unfair, acerbic criticisms of people. It's Eli, a fellow insomniac, with whom she connects, and together they tick off items on her kid to-do list (food fights, bowling, paper-delivery route) while the rest of the town sleeps. The spark between these two sad teens and the joyful examples of girl connectivity deepen this ostensibly lighthearted, summer-fun story, which offers up complex issuesthe residual effects of divorce, acceptance of imperfect parents and lip-gloss feminism. (Fiction. 14 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
