Schoooool's In For Autumn
Reliving high school trauma through literature and a tribute to a real one.
I went to a high school that served a tiny conglomerate of towns in Northeastern Pennsylvania, and I often explain it to my friends as a colder, less attractive Friday Night Lights situation. I was just visiting home last weekend, and like always, whenever I go there, the memories come flooding back and make me wonder why this period of life has such a hold on us in adulthood. What makes it so memorable and meaningful? And relative to this newsletter’s interests, why do authors so often make a pilgrimage back there for the settings of their stories?
High school memories - for those of us that haven’t blocked them - are probably so indelible because we’re such heightened versions of ourselves when we experience them. For many of us, it’s an emotional mixture of longing, regret, joy and embarrassment. For some of us there’s sexual awakening and exploration. For others, due to late puberty and exquisite nerddom, all of that was put on hold indefinitely…
Anyway, there’s something about all the unrequited romantic crushes, deep embarrassment, chronic struggles for popularity, blooming sexuality, desperate seeking for approval, and the competitive urge to outdo everyone around you that makes high school a compelling place to set a novel. Like an AP English exam, I cite specific examples below.
THE LIBRARY IS OPEN
Cyclorama
by Adam Langer (2022)
In theater, a cyclorama is a cloth stretched tight in an arc around the back of a stage set, often used to depict the sky. The title is a hint that this novel brings the reader into the belly of the beast, the most overwrought and melodramatic part of any high school setting - the always aptly named drama department. This book posits the question: If you had the world’s worst person as your drama teacher, would you survive high school and become a normal, productive adult? And the answer is an overwhelming “probably not!” (Note: Can’t relate. My senior year drama director for our production of Guys and Dolls was incredibly fun, super hot, and ended up being a contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race.)
We go back to 1982 when a Chicagoland suburban high school has decided to put on a production of The Diary of Anne Frank. The aforementioned worst teacher of the year has traditionally used his bully pulpit to terrorize and manipulate his students, breaking them down so he can build them up. Rumors swirls about his sexual proclivities and political leanings. He casts to create drama off the stage. He is awful, but he’s a character you can’t look away from for a second. His casting of kid outside the tight circle of the drama department sets in motion a series of events that affect the cast for the rest of their lives and sets up a series of darkly comic reunions years later.
The first half of the book which takes us up through the wrap party for the production leads to the second half of the book, which begins in November 2016. And you know what that means. (Nazis are a thematic through-line, for better or worse.) I had a hard time putting the book down, and you need not have a thorough understanding of the adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank to enjoy where the story goes (though I’m sure the text is must richer with that knowledge.) High school leaves a mark on all of us, and the characters of this novel mostly find themselves unable to leave it behind in both sad and hilarious ways.
Read it if you like: Election 2020, large ensembles, d-r-a-m-a, high school terror, revenge, clever adaptations.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler
by Casey McQuinston (2022)
We go back to school for this selection, as well. This time in False Beach, Alabama, where our heroine, a proudly out and queer California transplant in her ultraconservative high school struggles to get her bearings after the principal’s daughter and prom queen hottie Shara Wheeler kisses her and disappears. Like, really disappears. And she kissed a host of other folks on her way out the door, too. Our protagonist has to team up with Shara’s surly skate rat neighbor and her all-American high school quarterback boyfriend to track her down. Shara leaves perfumed notes in pink envelopes to offer some hints on where she is, and disappearance affects everyone close to her in wildly unforeseeable ways.
Problems: this disappearance is such a distraction for our protagonist who’s the presumptive valedictorian of her class and is drawing her attention away from her friend group, a quietly closeted cohort who rely on her support to get through the school year. Plus, who wants to spend time with two guys who are at each other’s throughs? And she doesn’t even have any feelings for Shara anyway. Right? Right?!
What I loved about this YA book is that it rolled out in so many unpredictable ways. Just when you thought you were zigging into a cliche, the author would zag and zag again. (You’ll be in good hands. Her wildly popular Red, White, & Royal Blue was a hit, and the movie adaptation will be out soon.) Lessons are learned, feelings are felt, but nothing seems pat or simple. It’s also a lovely portrait of how queer kids survive in the areas where they are least welcome and why we must always support them however we can.
Read this if you like: Gay YA, scavenger hunts, The Breakfast Club, enemies to lovers tropes, Southern not-so gothic.
Bring Up the Bodies
by Hilary Mantel (2012)
Hilary Mantel died last week and left behind a legacy in words. The second of her two Booker Prize wins was for Bring Up the Bodies, the second book in her historical fiction trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the man behind Henry VIII’s legendary reign in England. While the reimagined Cromwell is the star of the trilogy, the scene stealer in Bring Up the Bodies is Anne Boleyn. Over the years, so much has been projected onto Anne - schemer, seductress, home-wrecker, blamed, pitied - and Mantel brings her to life and leads her to death which such deftness that you wish she kept her head about her for another few installments of the story. Cromwell says: "She does not look like a powerful enemy of England, but looks can deceive … If her sway had continued, the child Mary might have stood here; and he himself … waiting for the coarse English axe."
Mantel’s books (including a book of her essays brilliantly titled Mantel Pieces) are not books one can skim over and pay half attention. Every word is placed with precision. She starts Bodies with an all-timer opening line, “His children are falling from the sky,” and takes off from there. She makes you work. The work is worth it. She’ll be missed. I thought of the way she described how the sword sliced through the air to behead poor Anne when I last visited the Tower of London and strolled past the bench where it happened.
I’d also recommend her excellent piece on making sense of the life and death of Princess Diana, which refracts the light from the People’s Princess into a spectrum of colors I’d never considered. And her piece on Royal Bodies, where she perfectly describes the Royal Family as such:
I used to think that the interesting issue was whether we should have a monarchy or not. But now I think that question is rather like, should we have pandas or not? Our current royal family doesn’t have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment. But aren’t they interesting? Aren’t they nice to look at? Some people find them endearing; some pity them for their precarious situation; everybody stares at them, and however airy the enclosure they inhabit, it’s still a cage.
SO good! Poignantly, she sends us off from Bodies with advice one might give to someone in mourning for a life lost. "There are no endings," says Mantel. "If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. This is one."
Read it if you like: Historical fiction, Best Supporting Actresses, royal nonsense, queens, a master at work.
LIGHTNING ROUND
Might you be hungry for a cute little graphic novel about a wayward baking apprentice who falls for a hot chef?
I’m kind of obsessed with the title of this (quite good!) debut story collection: I’m Not Hungry, But I Could Eat.
If you’re as nervous as I am about the Phillies blowing a playoff berth opportunity, check out this lovely novella about baseball, dads, and memory.
Until next time…Happy reading!