Here’s the last one for tonight. Enjoy and go read!
Fan Girl, by Rainbow Rowell
This book moved me and touched me in so many ways, because at heart, part of me is so much like Cath.
Cath and wren are twin sisters, beginning their first year of college. All their lives, they’ve done everything together. Slept in the same room, gone to the same parties, participated in and written fan fiction for the world of Simon Snow, a series of seven, nearly eight books, featuring a magical boy at a magical school who has a dastardly enemy to defeat. But for the first time, wren wants to branch out on her own and has chosen to live in a different dorm in another part of the college and have a roommate, not her sister.
This is where the story begins, with shy, introverted Cath, settling into her dorm room, stomach in knots, wishing she could crawl into the walls and hide. But she has the comfort of her fictional world, with Simon snow posters on her wall, her commemorative busts of two of the main characters, and her trusty laptop at hand, when she is ready to work on her wildly popular fan fiction story.
The story follows Cath’s first year in college, normally not my kind of thing to read. Though she tries to lose herself in her fantasy world, to hide the hurt of betrayal she feels at Wren pulling away more every day, and her concerns about her dad being left alone, college life, and her entertaining roommate, start to pull Cath out of her shell, in spite of herself. She considers herself the boring twin, the uninteresting, weak, not pretty, but as the story moves along, we come to know that Cath is the strength of her family, is the nice one, the caring one, the one to reach out and help, no matter what. And people are drawn to her. But she never gives up her love of Simon snow.
Anyone who has known me for any amount of time knows I’m involved in fandoms, mostly Harry Potter, twilight and West wing. I discovered fan fiction during the maddening three-year wait between HP4 and HP5, when I was desperate for more. I don’t have or care to have HP or twilight posters on my wall and don’t care for any Edward Cullen commemorative busts! But I enjoy reading fan fiction, particularly the stories that give me things I didn’t get in canon. So when my friend told me about this book, fan Girl, I was intrigued and amused.
The book is about Cath’s college year and beginning to grow into her own person, but it’s also a spoof of or homage to the world of fandom and fan fiction. The Simon snow parts of it are hilarious. Yes, it sounds rather like Harry Potter, but the author is careful to make it different enough so there’s no crossing of lines here. But the book is sprinkled with references to things about fan fiction. At the end of each chapter,there is a brief section with either parts of the Simon snow story, or parts of Cath’s fan fiction story, or funny allusions to highly popular fan fiction sites. There was one section that was so close to things you see on the home page of www.fanfiction.net, that I laughed aloud. There are quick almost missed it sort of jokes relating to other fandoms. Such as one time when Cath asks her boyfriend if he’s going to sit there and watch her sleep, and he says, of course not, your name isn’t Bella, is it? A nod to Twilight there and the way vampire Edward who doesn’t sleep would watch human Bella sleep. Or as all HP fans know, the author, J. K. Rowling is lovingly known as JKR among most Harry Potter fans, and in Fan girl they refer to the author of Simon snow as GTL, her initials. Fan Girl is riddled with such things. And they make the book so funny, lightening it up when it gets sad in places in Cath’s life.
Having said all that, the strength and beauty of this story is Cath’s journey, finding herself, making friends, learning to step beyond her fictional second life into the real world. She deals with her father’s breakdown, her sister’s alcohol poisoning and a classmate stealing her class work, each experience helping her grow and become so much more than the terrified girl she was at the beginning. And so when the time comes that she has to make a decision to set aside Simon snow to do the right thing, the scary thing, you want to cheer her on and counsel her to do what we all know she should do. I’m not giving away spoilers to say that one of the last scenes is Cath and her sister, roommate and boyfriend standing in line at the midnight release of the last Simon Snow book release. Ah, I did that a few times. And for a blind person who had to wait sometimes years to be able to read the books in real time that my friends were reading, being able to stand in line to get my audio book of the last three HP books, right there with sighted folks, that was a special time for me, and so this scene in the book made me smile a lot.
The author of fan Girl obviously did research into the world of fandom, or has been involved in that world. And yet, though the book is a kind of spoof, it is as I said earlier, an homage to the world of fandom as well. People who make fun of Cath for it in the beginning come to understand and respect her for it anyway. Her boyfriend who has trouble reading likes to listen to her read the stories to him. I just don’t know how to express the depth and beauty of this book. People who turn up their noses at fandom and fan fiction may not get it or might laugh at me, thinking, hmmm, 50 something woman still enjoying fan fiction? And if this book was only about being involved in wildly popular fandoms, it wouldn’t be as interesting and wonderful as it is. Cath is someone you sympathize with. If you were ever the scared shy kid at school, or dreaded being out of your comfort zone, avoided parties and large groups of people you don’t know, wanted to cling to the few people you trusted and didn’t know how to cope when they went in different directions, then you can relate to cath. I was all those things. Shy introverted, terrified of groups of people I didn’t know, afraid to speak up lest people think I sounded weird, nervous and withdrawn outside my comfort zone. So Cath’s story touches the depth of my heart, the places where that girl I was still hides away inside the woman I’ve become. I want Cath to succeed in everything, to come out of her shell, to make friends, to be strong, to get the boy, and to finish writing her fan fiction. And by the end, you see the Cath who is emerging, and all you can do is applaud, because she’s come so far. I hope the author might give us more of Cath in the future, but even if she doesn’t, the ending of this book is satisfying and perfect.