Icy Sparks, failure to launch (Week 2/52)

Last week you may have read my post about how I am embarking on a year long read-and-blog-a-thon with my partner-in-crime, NerdBoy, and thought, oh man, RamenGirl really had a rough start. Look at her trying to woo us with her stolen MagicEye image. I'm sure she'll settle into a routine now that she's two weeks in and have a plan for what she's going to read so we can have an actual book review about a book she cares about! Well, only part of that is true: I DO have a reading plan now! And I have books to read!! The problem is that because I am trying to be fiscally responsible with all this reading, so I'm taking most of the books on my read list out from the library, and unfortunately, wasn't able to get the book I was planning to read last week. Instead I ended up reading yet another book I found lying around the house, Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio. 

This book was named as an Oprah's Book Club Selection in 2001 and was left in the house by a friend. I read the cover and was encouraged: Icy Sparks is a coming of age story of a young girl with a difference in rural America. Through my year of excessive reading a few years ago, I realized that I liked coming of age stories, and I really liked reading about people overcoming personal adversity, so this book looked like a good fit. 

Unfortunately, it was not. I am trying to pin point why I didn't like it and I think it comes down to a few things (Warning, spoilers ahead!):

1) The book tries to do too much. Coming of age stories must be hard to write...they are about people at some of the most emotionally confusing times of their lives and usually involve a degree of additional drama. Writing about someone you know well, like yourself, is hard enough, writing about some fictional you just invented is like lighting a cigarette with a blowtorch...a little drama impresses people but too much and it ruins everything. 

COOL BEANS.

NOPE. TOO MUCH.

It felt like the author thought to herself, "Gee, what if I took that little blond girl from Forrest Gump that everyone loves, throw her in a different state, give her a fat friend, kill off a main character, add in some hillbilly religious rituals, oh, and let's give her a disability for good measure." While the first chapter held real promise, it just started feeling like the author had a theme for each chapter from there on in, and that overtook the storyline it self. 


One chapter on 'the treatment of individuals with developmental/mental health issues in hospital systems in rural Kentucky in the 50s', another on 'puberty and sexual discovery'....there is so much effort put into making the story feel authentic to the time period and culture - don't forget to mention JFK's presidential campaign! - that it ends up doing just the opposite, making the information feel forceful and distracting from some of the real strengths of the book, which is the genuine likeability of some of the main characters.


2) If you're going to write a book about a person with a disability...make sure spend just as much time talking about the challenges of living with that disability as you do about how you come to own it. If I had to sum up Icy Sparks in a few sentences, it would be something like this:

A little girl grows up in rural Kentucky and starts getting weird uncontrollable impulses that interfere with her life. She's institutionalized but nothing really happens and then somehow she is released with no real plan. Then she turns 13, learns about mensus, is charged up on hormones and gets sexually assaulted all within about 20 pages. Then someone she loves dies, she discovers church, learns to sing, and suddenly she has graduated from university with a Tourette's Syndrome diagnosis and is friends again with everyone. 

I'd draw you a 10 frame comic strip summary if I could draw. But I can't.

The taste that gets left in my mouth is that the author starts off with good solid intentions to write about the challenges of growing up in the 1950s with a mild disability, but then realizes that its hard work to write a book or gets tired writing about the same characters, and then throws together a "happily ever after" ending just to get it done. It's cheap and disrespectful. And from some of the book reviews I've read, those with Tourette's are not thrilled with how their disability is portrayed either.  

 

That being said, there were a few things that the author did well. Characters. Oh man, I wished she had chosen fewer characters and spent more time fostering our relationship with them because she introduced so many interesting and unique personalities that I felt had real potential to drive the story. However, because most were only around for the off chapter or side storyline, her use of them just ended up making the plot feel over crowded and the characters like tea made from overused leaves: weak. Also, food. I have seldom felt as hungry after reading as I did while reading this book. I have been craving fried chicken, dumplings, and other southern treats for a solid week now. God. Bless. American. Southern. Cooking. *drool*...and on that note, I'm off to eat!

GET INTO MY MOUTH! ALL THE CHICKEN! FOREVER!