The Girl Who Could Fly  by Victoria Forester
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008
Category: YA/Juvenile
UNFINISHED

This one looked very promising at first.  I like stories about kids with psychic powers working together, enough so that I’m willing to overlook a certain amount of cheese.  While The Girl Who Could Fly doesn’t exactly tip the cheese-o-meter, it’s definitely a kid’s book–probably not something that will appeal to adults the way many juvenile and YA novels do.  The style is average; the description of how Piper McCloud, the titular protagonist, learns to develop her talents is well done.  The author is a first-time novelist (though a long-time screenwriter) and that fact is obvious in some of her narrative choices, primarily in how she attempts to use a self-aware third-person narrator a la Roald Dahl, but doesn’t sustain that POV throughout. Readers in the eight- to twelve-year-old group will probably not notice the flaws, and the idea and descriptions are very interesting.

What is not so forgivable–and the reason I stopped reading–was a major plot twist that depended on reversing the stated meaning of earlier events.  At a key point in the story, Piper learns that Conrad, a fellow gifted student, actually knows the truth about their "school" (basically, it’s EEEEvil) and has been trying to fight against it.  This would have been an excellent plot twist, because Conrad has been nasty and antagonistic to her, and it turns out that his actions were to keep her from being lulled into somnolence and thus losing her powers.  Except for one thing.  The reason we know about how nasty Conrad was is that those scenes were told from his point of view–including his thoughts about how much he loved hurting people and how he would get so angry he needed to hurt others.  This includes, by the way, the time he plotted to kill Piper herself.  The author’s own explanation didn’t suggest that Conrad needed to control his thoughts so the bad guys wouldn’t find out, or fake thinking about being a bad guy.  Forester apparently thought it would be more dramatic and compelling if we heard Conrad plotting to hurt others, but didn’t carry this thought through to its logical conclusion.  Is this the sort of thing young readers notice?  Maybe not.  I doubt it, though.

So now I’ve reached the first book on my list that I choose not to finish.  I reached a point, years ago, where I decided that I was never going to make myself read a book that I didn’t enjoy.  I believe this for the same reason that I don’t believe in "must-read" books; that’s usually shorthand for "I liked it a lot and I think everyone is Just Like Me and should read it and if you don’t like it then you suck."  There’s no book offers such a unique experience that you can’t get that experience from some other book.  Even the books I love, and rave about, and think are amazing–some of you reading this won’t like them.  You’ll think they’re boring, or pretentious, or you can’t accept the underlying premise, or you just don’t read X genre.  And except for that last one (you may have certain genres you won’t read, and I won’t push it, but don’t expect me to be sympathetic to that excuse) you’re probably right–for you, that’s a pointless book.  If you can’t do it yet, learn to put down a book you dislike.  It’s one of the nicest gifts you can give yourself.