My Book Reviews: The Truth about Forever
I have heard two different children’s book editors from two different publishing houses speaking at two different writing conferences, one in New Hampshire and the other in Utah, tell writers how excited they are by Sarah Dessen’s work. They practically begged conference participants to write something like Sarah Dessen.
‘Sarah Dessen,’ I scribbled in my conference notes the first time I heard her name. ‘Read Sarah Dessen. Write Sarah Dessen. Be Sarah Dessen.’
I didn’t know anything about her at the time. I’m not sure how I could have been so obtuse. Her books are enormously popular. They are among the tiny selection of contemporary YA that get shelved at the giant superstores like Walmart and Target. They even show up at my neighborhood grocery store. So when I finally opened my eyes, here was my brilliant epiphany: “Editors love her because she sells! How mercenary of them.” And though I picked up a copy of The Truth about Forever, I didn’t bother reading it.
Then last summer, one hundred pages into the book I am writing, I realized that the story I had spent months (actually years) working on was just backstory. I needed to delve deeper into my protagonist’s life: her problems, her fears, her failures. And unsure how to do this, I picked up The Truth about Forever, just while I let things percolate.
From the outset, protagonist Macy is struggling to deal with her Dad’s death, although it has been months since his passing. He died unexpectedly of a sudden heart attack during he and Macy’s routine morning run, and she hasn’t run since. But this all happened before the book begins. It is an event that influences Macy, has made her tender, self-aware, angry, and even somewhat fragile. But it is not what the story about. That is clear from the first page, where we see Macy helping her perfect, gifted, overachieving boyfriend, Jason, packing for his annual summer brain camp. This is not a story about Macy’s dad dying. This is a story about Macy, struggling to find her own identity — to know who she is and what she wants to be.
Dessen’s writing is crisp and clean throughout, and her characters incredibly vibrant and authentic. The romance is not overpowering — just important to Macy’s process of self-discovery. The relationship between Macy and her mother is difficult without becoming oppressive.
After reading The Truth about Forever, I found and read an interview Dessen did with Roger Sutton, editor in chief of The Horn Book Magazine, in the May/June 2009 edition of The Horn Book, and this is what she says about her protagonists, and their problems:
“The thing that all my narrators have in common is that they are girls on the verge of a big change. And how they deal with that change is where the story comes from.”
This approach to character and story really helped me re-think what was going on with my own writing. It made me ask where my protagonist’s story is coming from — not the story of everything that is happening around her, in her family and where she lives, but the story that is her very own, independent of everyone else.
And finally, when Sutton asked Dessen about being a writer for girls, she answered with an honesty that is as direct and refreshing as her writing.
“Now anything that isn’t Literature and has women in it is chick lit. It seems like you’re one or the other, you’re “literary” or you’re “chick lit.” And that’s unfortunate, because there are lots of shades in between. But I’m not offended by it, because I am writing books for girls. I like that my covers are kind of pink and cute.”
So I get it now. I understand why Dessen is so popular among editors and readers alike. She is a talented writer, expert at her craft. She knows how to tell a story — the story. The one that matters most. And she knows who her readers are. Knows them as well as she knows the engaging characters that fill the pages of her books.
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