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(Originally posted on 8/12/24).
I have gone through a bunch of books in the last 21 months.
Some have been good, some have been ok, some have been bad in a "so-bad-it's-good" way and some have been downright horrendous. I don't regret reading any of them, though! And some, I have loved so much that I actually went and did the unthinkable: I read them again! Yes, cover-to-cover, the whole way through... you know how hard it is to get me to do that? Even some of my all-time favorite books never received such treatment, but these random entries from a silly challenge that I did because there was literally nothing better to do got me to do that TWICE. And guess what? Neither of those books took the coveted number 1 spot for the challenge! Madness!
Now, I have actually gone back and re-read particularly memorable chapters of a BUNCH of different books, but only two I had actually sat down and re-read: "Before, After & Somebody In Between" and "Runaway".
It is funny because they are kinda similar: both feature a girl lost in the world and trying her best to just survive in a series of unfamiliar, challenging and scary situations. Both feature a junkie mother. And both have an abusive POS stepfather/dude-in-mom's-life that makes life hell for the protagonist. The difference is that the former book takes quite a serious approach, whilst the later tries to keep things light without downplaying the seriousness of the whole situation. But you know what the funniest thing is? I didn't want to re-read "Runaway" because I thought that my first impression would be completely destroyed if I did so. I thought I would see the wires this time around and that I would end up hating one of my favorite books by going through it again... but the thing is that I had re-read more than 200 pages before I realized what I was doing, and I found that I was enjoying it even more this time around. I love literature.
The first thing I'm gonna do in this review is praise author Wendelin van Draanen because of the way she handled the story she was writing: she made Holly, our protagonist, adventurous, but she never once made her journey through homelessness, hunger, cold and fear an adventure. We are never once made to believe that she's enjoying herself out there, and most of the time she just seems to catch a (small) break in-between periods of great peril. I think that's important, because the book's portrayal of homelessness wouldn't have reached its heart-breaking rawness without this layer of ice-cold reality thrown on top.
And really, the first words we read out of Holly's mouth (or, more accurately, journal) set the stage perfectly: she's afraid, exhausted, and (above all else), furious. She hates being forced to live in a foster home, she hates that they treat her like garbage and get away with it because of her long history of behavioral problems make her an unreliable witness. She hates having to go to school because her file is huge in there, too, and no-one seems to care that she's the victim of some severe bullying, only noticing when she gets back at those who bully her. And she hates that her teacher might actually be trying to reach her and have a positive impact on her life -- she's just been betrayed by way too many people to fail for it again.
Holly's journal starts just before she runs away from her latest (and worst) foster placement and ends at the exact point in which she was originally introduced in "Sammy Keyes and The Sisters of Mercy". That's about seven months of life on the streets, and quite a sizable journey from her (unnamed) home state to California. During that time we get to follow Holly through the streets and back alleys of a couple of locations, including a small town called Aaronville, the outskirts of Beverly Hills and even Los Angeles. And in every single one of those places Holly learns that she's not welcomed because of her homeless status, which never fails to amaze me -- here we have a tween orphan just trying to survive on her own, and yet the world is relentlessly cruel to her and fights her every step of the way. She gets robbed, chased, smacked, kicked out and many other things while eating out of trash cans and stealing just to get by. It all feels so... unfair, but unfortunately it is just the way things are. You'd hope that the hardships Holly goes through as she tries to make it on her own would be greatly exaggerated for the sake of an engaging read, but they are truly not. Homelessness is just that cold and brutal.
One thing I love is that, despite the circumstances and all she does for survival, Holly is still 12-years-old, and she acts like it throughout the book. Very early on she decides that she ain't orphan or homeless, but a gypsy. And not just a regular old, gypsy, but a sea gypsy at that. And that's how she decides to go near the sea, jumping onto a freaking moving train and stowing away on the cargo hold of a bus, relieving herself on her own depleted Gatorade bottle and stealing an ice pack just to keep herself from boiling over as the bus travels incredibly slowly through the desert. Stuff like that is why I love this book so much, because it's both far-fetched and grounded in reality all at once... like, of course sneaking onto that luggage hold would be hell, and she doesn't get spared one thing for making that decision.
Holly's backstory reveals itself slowly throughout the book, and we get answers to a lot of our questions through piecemeal entries on her journal (which get more brutal and honest as her situation deteriorates). We get to know how she became an orphan, how she became homeless, what happened on her earliest foster placements, what happened at her school, how she became so good at shoplifting and how she's come to turn her character around by finally confessing to all of these things. We also get to see her address her teacher in more and more favorable terms as the story unfolds, going from number one enemy to an invisible friend, which I thought was really sweet.
The thing I didn't expect to see here (but was glad was included) was that quite a few older men check this 12-year-old out, and at least a couple of them make moves on her, both directly and indirectly. I fully commend the author for going there, because of course that's going to happen to a homeless tween with no-one to watch over her. It's disgusting, but that doesn't make it any less true.
The fact that Holly's shoplifting fails more and more as hunger, cold and desperation set in was also a wonderful touch for me. I can't explain why, but I thought that was a fitting detail to add... the stakes are higher by the hour, and so it is only natural that she'd drop her guard and become less effective as her needs to land items increase. The failure rate is never higher than the success rate, however, but those moments when you think that someone is gonna call the cops on this girl (reported as "missing", not less) are quite tense and very well written.
I wanted to keep this review spoiler-free, but I realized that I wouldn't be able to show exactly why I love this book so much without telling you about my favorite part. If you don't want it spoiled for you, please jump to the next paragraph... anyway, my favorite part is also probably the saddest: early on Holly's mind is still set on survival and little else, and so she attaches herself to a demented homeless woman named Louise K Palmer (whom she finds wandering aimlessly near the bus station) and basically users her as her entry ticket to the local homeless shelter (kids aren't allowed in without an adult, weirdly enough). During this time, Holly feeds and takes care of Louisa, bathing her, brushing her hair and doing all her required tasks for her... and then, Louise just dies after Holly leaves the shelter because the cops are looking for her there due to her runaway status. This is the second "mother" Holly loses and it hits hard, even though she really didn't know Louise at all. And then, all of the sudden, a comforting thought materializes in her mind: whatever else had happened, she had made sure that Louise's last moments on earth were spent clean, brushed, fed and happy. It's a very sweet thought, because none of that had applied to her real-life mother, and she feels some sort of vindication for it.
There are a million other things I could mention... but I won't. I will only give this book the highest recommendation I have ever given to a written work and leave you to hunt it down. You won't be disappointed, I can guarantee that much.
I have gone through a bunch of books in the last 21 months.
Some have been good, some have been ok, some have been bad in a "so-bad-it's-good" way and some have been downright horrendous. I don't regret reading any of them, though! And some, I have loved so much that I actually went and did the unthinkable: I read them again! Yes, cover-to-cover, the whole way through... you know how hard it is to get me to do that? Even some of my all-time favorite books never received such treatment, but these random entries from a silly challenge that I did because there was literally nothing better to do got me to do that TWICE. And guess what? Neither of those books took the coveted number 1 spot for the challenge! Madness!
Now, I have actually gone back and re-read particularly memorable chapters of a BUNCH of different books, but only two I had actually sat down and re-read: "Before, After & Somebody In Between" and "Runaway".
It is funny because they are kinda similar: both feature a girl lost in the world and trying her best to just survive in a series of unfamiliar, challenging and scary situations. Both feature a junkie mother. And both have an abusive POS stepfather/dude-in-mom's-life that makes life hell for the protagonist. The difference is that the former book takes quite a serious approach, whilst the later tries to keep things light without downplaying the seriousness of the whole situation. But you know what the funniest thing is? I didn't want to re-read "Runaway" because I thought that my first impression would be completely destroyed if I did so. I thought I would see the wires this time around and that I would end up hating one of my favorite books by going through it again... but the thing is that I had re-read more than 200 pages before I realized what I was doing, and I found that I was enjoying it even more this time around. I love literature.
The first thing I'm gonna do in this review is praise author Wendelin van Draanen because of the way she handled the story she was writing: she made Holly, our protagonist, adventurous, but she never once made her journey through homelessness, hunger, cold and fear an adventure. We are never once made to believe that she's enjoying herself out there, and most of the time she just seems to catch a (small) break in-between periods of great peril. I think that's important, because the book's portrayal of homelessness wouldn't have reached its heart-breaking rawness without this layer of ice-cold reality thrown on top.
And really, the first words we read out of Holly's mouth (or, more accurately, journal) set the stage perfectly: she's afraid, exhausted, and (above all else), furious. She hates being forced to live in a foster home, she hates that they treat her like garbage and get away with it because of her long history of behavioral problems make her an unreliable witness. She hates having to go to school because her file is huge in there, too, and no-one seems to care that she's the victim of some severe bullying, only noticing when she gets back at those who bully her. And she hates that her teacher might actually be trying to reach her and have a positive impact on her life -- she's just been betrayed by way too many people to fail for it again.
Holly's journal starts just before she runs away from her latest (and worst) foster placement and ends at the exact point in which she was originally introduced in "Sammy Keyes and The Sisters of Mercy". That's about seven months of life on the streets, and quite a sizable journey from her (unnamed) home state to California. During that time we get to follow Holly through the streets and back alleys of a couple of locations, including a small town called Aaronville, the outskirts of Beverly Hills and even Los Angeles. And in every single one of those places Holly learns that she's not welcomed because of her homeless status, which never fails to amaze me -- here we have a tween orphan just trying to survive on her own, and yet the world is relentlessly cruel to her and fights her every step of the way. She gets robbed, chased, smacked, kicked out and many other things while eating out of trash cans and stealing just to get by. It all feels so... unfair, but unfortunately it is just the way things are. You'd hope that the hardships Holly goes through as she tries to make it on her own would be greatly exaggerated for the sake of an engaging read, but they are truly not. Homelessness is just that cold and brutal.
One thing I love is that, despite the circumstances and all she does for survival, Holly is still 12-years-old, and she acts like it throughout the book. Very early on she decides that she ain't orphan or homeless, but a gypsy. And not just a regular old, gypsy, but a sea gypsy at that. And that's how she decides to go near the sea, jumping onto a freaking moving train and stowing away on the cargo hold of a bus, relieving herself on her own depleted Gatorade bottle and stealing an ice pack just to keep herself from boiling over as the bus travels incredibly slowly through the desert. Stuff like that is why I love this book so much, because it's both far-fetched and grounded in reality all at once... like, of course sneaking onto that luggage hold would be hell, and she doesn't get spared one thing for making that decision.
Holly's backstory reveals itself slowly throughout the book, and we get answers to a lot of our questions through piecemeal entries on her journal (which get more brutal and honest as her situation deteriorates). We get to know how she became an orphan, how she became homeless, what happened on her earliest foster placements, what happened at her school, how she became so good at shoplifting and how she's come to turn her character around by finally confessing to all of these things. We also get to see her address her teacher in more and more favorable terms as the story unfolds, going from number one enemy to an invisible friend, which I thought was really sweet.
The thing I didn't expect to see here (but was glad was included) was that quite a few older men check this 12-year-old out, and at least a couple of them make moves on her, both directly and indirectly. I fully commend the author for going there, because of course that's going to happen to a homeless tween with no-one to watch over her. It's disgusting, but that doesn't make it any less true.
The fact that Holly's shoplifting fails more and more as hunger, cold and desperation set in was also a wonderful touch for me. I can't explain why, but I thought that was a fitting detail to add... the stakes are higher by the hour, and so it is only natural that she'd drop her guard and become less effective as her needs to land items increase. The failure rate is never higher than the success rate, however, but those moments when you think that someone is gonna call the cops on this girl (reported as "missing", not less) are quite tense and very well written.
I wanted to keep this review spoiler-free, but I realized that I wouldn't be able to show exactly why I love this book so much without telling you about my favorite part. If you don't want it spoiled for you, please jump to the next paragraph... anyway, my favorite part is also probably the saddest: early on Holly's mind is still set on survival and little else, and so she attaches herself to a demented homeless woman named Louise K Palmer (whom she finds wandering aimlessly near the bus station) and basically users her as her entry ticket to the local homeless shelter (kids aren't allowed in without an adult, weirdly enough). During this time, Holly feeds and takes care of Louisa, bathing her, brushing her hair and doing all her required tasks for her... and then, Louise just dies after Holly leaves the shelter because the cops are looking for her there due to her runaway status. This is the second "mother" Holly loses and it hits hard, even though she really didn't know Louise at all. And then, all of the sudden, a comforting thought materializes in her mind: whatever else had happened, she had made sure that Louise's last moments on earth were spent clean, brushed, fed and happy. It's a very sweet thought, because none of that had applied to her real-life mother, and she feels some sort of vindication for it.
There are a million other things I could mention... but I won't. I will only give this book the highest recommendation I have ever given to a written work and leave you to hunt it down. You won't be disappointed, I can guarantee that much.
