One Day

It rarely happens that I see a movie trailer and want to buy the book for it, but that's exactly what happened for One Day. I mean, isn't this the cutest trailer? (It might have something to do with the fact that they play my new favorite song, Good Life, in it...) So my friend Lucy bought the book, having had the same reaction as I did to the trailer. And while we were in Boston last week, I read it.

Basically, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew met at university in the 1980s, and the book follows their relationship, for one day each year. You get snapshots of Dexter and Emma through the years, through what they each are going through, how they keep in touch with each other, how they change, where they end up. I expected cute fluff, a sweet friendship and eventual "everyone-but-us-saw-it" romance. But that was not what I got.

I got unlikeable main characters. Emma, until maybe the last 3 chapters, is complaining, bitter, self-pitying, self-concious, and sarcastic. She's clever, certainly, but she spends nearly the whole book unhappy, complaining to herself, and suffering through her boring life. Really, the only interesting thing in her life is Dexter, who, by the way, I don't think was sober in the entire book. He literally spends his life drinking, doing drugs, social climbing, all the while blind to his shallowness and mistakes. He's too cocky, too carefree and childish to ever be likeable. So while these two people have an enduring and close friendship, I really didn't like them enough to want them to be happy.

I also got a long, dragged out friendship, with relatively little change. As I mentioned before, Dexter spends nearly the whole book drunk or high or both, and so his portions of the story are all the same: he feels empty, he's half ashamed, half elated to be living the high life. He misses Emma. And Emma, though she travels around, never really progresses in her character enough to make her story change. Though different events occur, she remains static, giving the impression that no time has passed. Actually, by the end, I felt as if neither person was much different or changed than in the beginning.

I got some clever dialogue- in particular, Emma and Dexter's strict "no Scrabble" rule cracks me up. Their banter is cute and amusing, perhaps the only light part of the book. It's also all we're meant to base their relationship on, so it had better be clever, right? And in the classic When Harry Met Sally way, the flirty dialogue shows that Emma and Dexter are never truly just friends; the pair can't feel platonically towards each other, no matter how hard they try and convince us otherwise. This was slightly frustrating, as the majority of the book neither of them admitted this, insisting they weren't attracted to each other outwardly. That gets a little tiring after a couple hundred pages...

Finally, I got an example of how empty relentless partying and life without purpose is. Though Emma is successful eventually, and Dexter too, they don't ever feel fulfilled. They are continually looking for more in their lives. It's such a telling example of the emptiness of a life without purpose; of the "God shaped hole" in everyone's life. Without any higher calling, Emma and Dexter's lives were empty, each driven to despair in the face of a meaningless existence. In being part of restorative work in God's kingdom, I have a higher purpose and calling for my life. I know that what I do is important to the kingdom work. So I don't have to live my life empty, the way Emma and Dexter do. Because at the mini-twist ending, Emma and Dexter don't seem much happier than they were to begin with, more fulfilled or content. And that leaves the book feeling incomplete.

Divergent

I heard about Divergent through the "blogosphere," seeing it mentioned on a couple blogs, watching the book trailer and looking up reviews on Amazon.com. It's summer, and my list of books to read is growing- why not add one more to the list? So I bought Divergent, and dove into it during a long bus ride. Intrigued and hooked after the first couple chapters, I finished the book that day, and continued to think about it afterwards.

Divergent, by Veronica Roth, follows the recent formula of dystopian fiction: strong female character + controlling gov't and/or complicated system + unexpected romance + difficult situation of rebellion. Where Divergent brings something new to the table is in the setup of the futuristic world- divided into 5 factions: Abnegation, Candor, Dauntless, Amity, and Erudite. Members of the respective factions value their characteristic above all others. At the age of 16, the teenagers choose either to remain in their original faction or to switch factions. This is the situation Beatrice, or Tris, finds herself in at the beginning of the story. When she learns, during the pre-choosing aptitude test, that she doesn't fit into any of the factions, but is in fact "divergent," she must choose a faction to blend into, as being "divergent" is dangerous. What follows after Tris' decision is a roller-coaster of the initiation process, romance, friendship, fights- and a dangerous plot.

Tris is similar to Katniss of The Hunger Games, Yelena of Poison Study, and Attolia of Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen of Attolia. She is stubborn, brave, and adventurous, admirably independent. But, where these other strong female characters are likeable, Tris fails. She seems incapable of mercy or forgiveness, even in extreme situations. Among the friends she finds during faction initiation, she forms quick judgements about their character that are immovable. She hates her enemies without restraint, fighting and ridiculing them almost as much as they ridicule her. Her cruelty and disdain for them is unattractive in a main character. And her most repulsive moment is her inability to forgive a friend who made mistakes, even after he commits suicide. She shows no remorse for her actions throughout the book. Hopefully she will continue to improve during the trilogy.

The plot is interesting, never slow paced. During initiation, Tris is required to face her greatest fears in a simulation, and this portion of the book was to me the most interesting- what would my greatest fears be? How would I react in that situation? The evolution of Tris and her confidence is all done very well. Her relationships, with friends in initiation and romantically, are all well developed and real, especially the romance. *SPOILER* Four is a new kind of hero- sarcastic, not sensitive, brave, challenging. Their relationship is unique and healthy, as they encourage one another and build each other up, pushing each other to try new things. My other complaint, small as it may seem, was the names- Molly? Al? Will? Christina? These names don't fit in a futuristic world, where some names seem, well, futuristic, and others seem right out of today. It ruined the feeling of being in another world.

To me, the most interesting part of the book was the corruption of the morals. At first glance, Tris's world seems like a paradise- each faction's chosen characteristic is honorable and noble. But it soon becomes clear that these morals have been corrupted as time has gone on; each faction has taken their value to the extreme, using their value to ridicule the other factions. Pride gets in the way of harmony; winning takes the place of a society working together. Each faction loses sight of it's original creed. For instance, Dauntless once valued teamwork, and the bravery of going against the crowd to stand up for someone weaker than yourself. But it transformed to value cutting ahead of everyone else, to value the strongest physically, to value cutting others down in order to boost yourself up. Veronica Roth said in an interview that morals without direction can be corrupted; this truth is so intriguing to me. The fact that the factions were formed with the best of intentions and were still corrupted by humanity is so telling of the fallen world we live in. Humanity tried to be good and failed, because it didn't rely on something bigger than itself as a guide. No matter their intentions, they failed alone.

Divergent was excellent, a great read for summer. It's a trilogy, so 2 more volumes will follow, and the movie rights were snapped up before it was even released. I'll look forward to the next books, to see where Tris goes next!