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For teenagers, parents and grandparents
Book Review
By Derryll White
Reid, Raziel (2015). When Everything Feels Like the Movies.
I guess I am a fantasy – Marilyn Monroe
I like the way Raziel Reid enters this story. His main character, Jude (Judy) Rothesay, has accepted his alternative world and is not hiding from anybody. He is socially precocious, knows how society works, is media-aware and values his few friends highly.
Reid pushes buttons on current issues, such as where alternative lifestyle students should change for gym class. That one is still making its way through the courts and School Boards.
Jude’s family is more typical than people like to think. His mom is a stripper. The money’s good and a career path doesn’t exist for mom, except for implants. Her live-in, Ray, has issues that are alcohol and drug-induced. The extended Rothesay family accepts the shit that comes down on each individual. Jude’s mom measures Ray’s love by the depth of her bruises. Shocking? Yes – but real.
The magic of this novel to me is that it portrays everyday life for so many of us. Reid takes a run at religion – Jesus as a naked submissive. Almost everyone I know has some issues with organized religion. High school sucks for Jude Rothesay. News flash – high school sucks for most people, and for those who think it was the best time of their life well then, life sucks for them now. Yes! I think a lot of small town teenagers see the world just as Jude and Angela do. They are in rebellion with the present because the future looks hopeless.
The question for me is simply one of choice. Does Jude step outside normal boundaries, or is he forced? Maybe some of both. But everyone struggles to find a place in life – defined by intellectual effort, sports, social prestige or sex. As Rothesay points out, those choices are becoming more precarious as social media makes everything instantaneous and gives bullies access to your private life. This is a hard story but a real one and I liked it a lot.
“When Everything Feels Like the Movies’ is not just a book for teenagers. It should be a compulsory read for parents and grandparents as well. I note that it won a Goveror General’s award and commend the committee for stepping outside the box.
“Only boring people are bored.”
****
Excerpts from the novel:
TODAY – The comment was from Kenny Randal. He wrote “faggot!!!!!” with five exclamation marks. I don’t know why I bothered with my privacy settings when Facebook just went back to default every time a bored Zuckerberg got even more Orwellian.
SCHOOL – My middle school was basically a movie set. No one was real. Especially me. We were all just playing our parts. You might be sort of real when you start school but you’re quickly typecast and learn all your lines by rote – mostly because you’ve written them in detention so many times.
MEMORY – I hated the past, but sometimes I wanted to curl up in it because at least it was familiar and safe.
DESIRE – I wanted to be Madison because I thought it would be glamorous to have a million Twitter followers. I didn’t know that having it all is boring when you have nothing, you have dreams.
OUR DELUSIONAL SELF – Sometimes, though, I couldn’t help myself; I thought about stupid things, crazy stupid things that I knew would never actually happen, but which I thought about anyway because they filled me with hope – or delusion. But is that so bad? Sometimes you just have to keep fooling yourself or you’ll never survive.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
Lotus Books is pleased to sponsor book reviews by Derryll White. If you are interested in a book that Derryll has reviewed you can shop online at http://lotusbooks.ca/, call us at 250-426-3415 or please visit us at 33 10th Ave. S. Cranbrook, and we would be happy to help you find a great read.