OTOH, I do remember the turn around of having Odd’s letter’s at the end, and I thought that was a pretty brilliant trick.

I’ll have to mull over what you’re saying about Polly & perhaps the need to prove her worth about being nice. I mostly saw a single child, getting pretty much what she wants easily, including Bridger and grades and her future. Let me revisit some parts of the book. Keeping in mind, of course, who is telling the story.

But I also don’t think it’s fair to Polly to say she was never tested. Her life hasn’t been anything like the hell of Odd’s — and I think Woolston does a great job of just dropping in the bits that add up, frankly, to a pretty unhappy childhood (with a nice side of abuse). But Polly’s got some serious baggage long before the MRSA — witness the emotional conflict about her birth, the ambivalence about looking like her father, who isn’t actually her biological relative, thanks to her mother’s selection of donor (not to mention the fact that she likes him better and is clearly more like him than she is like her mother), the sense of herself as a murderer because the second egg failed to thrive, and the need, the pathological need, to be nice that has shaped her entire life before MRSA. I actually think she’s been deeply unhappy for a long time, and boxed in tightly, and if she had grown up and married Bridger I think she would have eventually exploded in some way.

The depth of characterization is marvelous and what makes this book a potential shortlist contenda in my eyes; it’s the other bits that surround that central facet of the book that make me doubt. Including the fact that Bridger really is just a vehicle for growth and illumination of Polly, but that’s a nothing issue, really, compared to the structural flaw and my concerns about anvilicious (thanks, Liz!) symbolism.

I don’t think Bridger or his parents are that bad, TBH. I felt they were simply people who were never tested — what Polly would have become had this not happened. Some people seem to lead such charmed lives, and it seems if something doesn’t happen to them by a certain point, they, like his mother, become hardened to those who are no longer so lucky.

Oh, Jasper Jones: the first read I did I put it down. The second read, I ignored the “mystery” b/c I wasn’t a fan (can i just say I’m a bit tired of that story line in books), and concentrated on other elements and fell for it.