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.

Uglies

Tally Youngblood, at 15 and 3/4 still one of the Uglies, is desperate for escape from the drudgery of waiting for that magic 16th birthday when she can redesign herself in the process of surgically becoming one of the Pretties. She'll be granted a whole new lease on life with a body of choice, including fresh, unblemished skin and re-ground bones, and the big move across the river to New Pretty Town, a city dedicated to the mindless pursuits of pleasure and decadence. How “bubbly!” What?! Yes, it’s true, it’s too true, but is it too good to be true? Only Scott Westerfeld knows for sure.

Tally’s new friend, Shay, who teaches her the thrills and chills of hover-boarding in their last days of ugliness, heads off to join the Smokies, who occupy land out west somewhere in a communal effort to remain true to themselves and live as nature intended. Tally is horrified but intrigued until the Department of Special Circumstances (yes, the Specials!) offers her a deal she can’t refuse: help them locate Shay and the other Smokies, or die trying. Well, it’s not that drastic, but if she refuses, she’ll remain an Ugly forever.

Talk about an adventure! Tally almost dies trying, having made the "big mistake" and slept among the white tiger orchids, but once she’s discovered Smoke, she doesn’t want to leave. One takes the rebels at face value, so to speak, no alterations necessary. David, who was born there (oh yes, she must meet his parents,) introduces her to a non-engineered society, that is, one built upon the tragic lessons of the Rusties but stopped well short of the plastic conformity of the Pretties, a place where work gloves and warm sweaters are worth a fortune in “SpagBol.”

And then, and then… as I said earlier, only Westerfeld knows for sure whether Tally will betray her new friends to the Department as promised. She does, after all, discover from David’s parents the secret of the lesions, and David’s kisses are quite warm, hmmm, yes. So…. what’s next? Some pretty special adventures hover just around the corner, if you know what I mean. Do you?

Big Mouth and Ugly Girl

Wow, all he did was say he could set off a bomb or kill someone, and that was only because he was ticked off about his play and the spring competition. It was just a little artistic frustration, really. But "Big Mouth" Matt spoke a little too loudly in the school cafeteria and someone heard him, and before he knew it, Matt was pulled out of class by the police, no less. Sure doesn't pay to make enemies, does it?

"Ugly Girl" Ursula, of the fiery red moods and superstar athletic status, heard him, too, and tried to explain everything to Mr. Parrish, but he was only the principal. Although Matt was cleared and sent back to school, the whole community knew, and the rumors flew. It was all over for Matt except that Ursula caught him at the ravine edge after those jerks had beaten him up, and, well, they started this thing. You know, first it was just the telephone, and then it was going out. They got coffee, they went hiking, they went to the Museum of Arts and Design. All that was cool, but his parents had already sued the school, and Ursula, pressed for the truth by Matt, admitted to him that the suit was just plain wrong.

Joyce Carol Oates wrote her first young adult novel about some pretty hot topics. Sign on and answer the question truthfully: what would YOU have done?

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

There may be a few teenage girls in the USA who haven’t read Ann Brashares' 2001 novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, in which case, I’d better plug it now. Happy readers have worn out several copies from our library; the net is thoroughly populated with Sisterhood sites (including the Wikipedia article, Sisterhood Central, and a great author Q&A from Random House); and there was even a movie back in 2005.

The recap: four 15 year old best friends (Carmen, Lena, Bridget & Tibby) prepare to spend a first-ever summer apart. They’ve been together forever, and while they mostly look forward to spending time in South Carolina, Greece, Baja California, or (poor Tibby) right at home in Bethesda, Maryland, they also know how terribly they will miss each other.

These are no cookie-cutter friends: they have wildly different interests, personalities, backgrounds and body types. So it’s pretty weird when a pair of $3.49 thrift shop jeans fits all of them perfectly, making each one feel confident, sexy, and powerful . “These are magic pants!” And magic pants must be shared so that each girl will have the pants for one week, and then send them on in rotation, giving everyone two weeks of the magic by summer’s end.

Each girl’s summer story then unfolds, intertwined with the schedule of the traveling pants. Fear, happiness, anger, love, jealousy, suspense, grief -- it’s all there, and then some, as we experience not one, but four summertime comings-of-age.

Ann Brashares’ captivating first novel has something to offer almost any girl on the planet. The writing is witty and true to life; the characters are so well drawn you feel like you’ve known them for years; and each girl’s summer story is a page-turner in its own right. Like the movie trailer says, “Laugh. Cry. Share the pants.”

If you liked The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants as much as I did -- or if you really didn’t -- please say so. (My favorite character was Tibby; who was yours?)