Comments on: Nostalgia

By: Mahnaz Dar

Mahnaz Dar — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 16:14:57 +0000

@Karyn, I haven’t read Kings of Colorado yet, but as soon as I saw the title, my first thought was Sittenfeld’s Prep. On the surface, it sounds so perfectly YA–girl going to boarding school, dealing with feelings of alienation, etc.–but the book is really more about capturing the awkwardness and pain of youth that I don’t think most young people are really aware of, because they’re so in the moment. Teens often feel lonely/depressed/unhappy but I don’t think they always know exactly why. Sittenfeld lays it out so perfectly through her character Lee Fiora but I think she does so in a way that will resonate more with adults than with adolescents.

By: Mark Flowers

Mark Flowers — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:58:14 +0000

@Karyn – um, oh yeah, I guess I did. I think the difference for me was that even though the narrator of DTKY was nostalgic for his own youth, Karl and Fiorella existed in real time, not as memories for the narrator. So even though he wanted to compare himself to Karl, Karl was his own person. In the type of story I’m talking about here, the narrator is narrating his own life and therefore is able to imbue his own actions with the weight of what came later. Or something. Nostalgia is deadly, but it comes in at different levels. Also note that I still recommended CANADA and supported KINGS OF COLORADO for this blog, so I didn’t think it was enough to sink them, just to make my personal nostalgia meter run high. YMMV.

By: Karyn Silverman

Karyn Silverman — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:48:41 +0000

Wait, but didn’t you defend the YA published Dying to Know You by Aidan Chambers when I complained about the entirely too adult perspective over at Someday? That book is laced with nostalgia, which I agree is too often deadly, although I think there are some books — like Kate Morton’s neo-Gothic cozies — that use the nostalgia in order to transport readers and that do have teen appeal. (Then again, the places where the perspective is more teen are also the places where it’s more flashback than nostalgic, so maybe nostagia IS always bad.)
What did you think of Prep? I usually point to that as a prime example of the looking back voice that can make a novel about a teen not a teen novel.