Feeling Sorry for Celia

I guess I’m not the only one who really enjoys novels that unfold through letters and other personal documents, because Jaclyn Moriarty’s Feeling Sorry for Celia (2001) is still flying off the shelves. Told entirely through letters, post-its, memos, anonymous love notes, faxes, and other bits of written communication to & from 15-year-old Elizabeth Carry, Feeling Sorry for Celia is a wonderful, funny coming-of-age story.

The details about Elizabeth’s life jostle for position like unruly puzzle pieces as we read messages from her Mom (always at work), her Dad (gone since she was a baby, now back in town and wanting way too much attention), her new penpal (Christina, a breath of fresh air from the wrong side of the tracks), her almost-boyfriend (and fellow long distance runner, Saxon), her secret admirer (let’s keep it a secret...), and, of course, her best friend, Celia.

Celia is a fairly unusual girl:

So anyway I really only have one friend here, that's Celia, and I promise you she is most DEFINITELY not a nice private school girl. She's kind of weird actually. She's always getting into trouble because she gets bored really really easily So she always wants to try something new, like shaving her head or chopping down a tree or taking apart the kitchen so she can put it back together (she did that to my kitchen actually, and it took us six months to reconnect the dishwasher).

My mum says it's because Celia has an attention span the size of a sesame seed.

Celia's mum says it's because Celia's identity is unfurling itself slowly, like a tulip bud, and it's a breathtakingly beautiful thing to see.

At the start of the book, Celia has run away to join the circus, where she is training to be a tightrope walker. Elizabeth and Saxon “rescue” her, and before we know it, Celia and Saxon are dating.

Uh oh. With her best friend dating the guy she has a crush on, Elizabeth is ready to branch out. Things happen, lives change, secrets are revealed, and, courtesy of Moriarty’s letter-by-letter style, we have a front row seat to what each character is up to.

My favorite letters are the imaginary ones: the earnest, hilarious exhortations to Elizabeth from Elizabeth, written by the likes of The Cold Hard Truth Association, The Best Friends Club, The Association of Teenagers, The Society of High School Runners Who Aren't Very Good at Long-Distance Running but Would Be if They Just Trained, etc.

Dear Ms. Clarry,

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to join our Society.

We have just found out about your holiday. It's so impressive! You had four assignments, an English essay, and a chapter of math to do. And you didn't do one single piece of homework!

Fabulous!

Also, we have a feeling that you have a history test today. And you're trying to study now? On the bus? With the Brookfield boys climbing onto each other's shoulders to get to the emergency roof exit? And with Celia about to get on the bus at any moment? And you think that's going to make a difference!!!

That's really very amusing, Elizabeth. We like you for it.

You're perfect for our Society and we're very excited about having you join.

The Society of People Who Are Definitely Going to Fail High School

Feeling Sorry for Celia is great stuff. Try it, if you haven’t. Tell us about it, if you have.

P.S. There are a lot of novels written in this format (aka epistolary novels), including Dracula, The Screwtape Letters, The Color Purple, The Boy Next Door, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Age 13 3/4, and among my very faves, The Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Life As We Knew It

Miranda lives in a small Pennsylvania town where potential prom dates rule thoughts of spring. That and the fact that her best friend Megan is undergoing some “born again” alterations in her lifestyle and mindset are enough to occupy Miranda without TV news warnings of a potential asteroid strike.

Heavens above, an asteroid strike on earth?! No, silly, on the moon, no need to worry. Still, a certain frisson of fear ripples through her family as they stand outside one night, awaiting the event that will forever change Life As We Knew It. The asteroid actually knocks the moon a tad off its axis, thereby causing cataclysmic damage to earth: tsunamis destroy coastal areas, and earthquakes and volcanoes inflict damage beyond belief, the worst being clouds of ash which produce the dreaded effects of a nuclear winter.

What’s a girl to do? Susan Beth Pfeffer’s answer is what makes this story so appealing; she focuses on Miranda and her family, giving the Hollywood disaster scenes scant attention. Her quick-thinking mother enlists the aid of the children and their older neighbor, Mrs. Nesbitt, to stock the house with food, batteries, candles and water. Her younger brother is sent home from baseball camp that summer when they run out of food. Other brother, Matt, chops the backyard trees into so much firewood that the family is pushed out of the downstairs living spaces into the sunroom with the wood stove. We watch her father and his new wife bravely drive west after a tearful family reunion. With no school and no transportation, Miranda tries ice skating on the pond until the polluted air forces her inside, ever inside into a tighter and more confining space. A virus strikes the family, already weakened as their food supply dwindles, but the local hospital has become a dead zone. And then, in what seems like the nick of time, Miranda courageously ventures into town through the piles of fallen snow.

Stop. Slow down a minute and follow the domino effect of little sunlight and no power for electricity, water, and heat. No hints here; just think about it, all the way down the food chain….

If you’ve already read this, let me know if you think the story is plausible, and if there truly is a reason to be hopeful. What would YOU do?

(HHSLibrarian also podcasted on this title a while back.)