I guess I am too late in the game here. I just discovered YA. Before you start babbling on about how either 1. it is the world's most amazing thing, or 2. how it is the worst thing that as ever happened to the world since hipster suspenders. I'll just say that I agree, with both of those opinions. In the last few weeks I've seen and/or read eight YA movies and/or books. Two I liked, a lot. Three were just bad. Four had a brilliant plot point but lost its way in the end. And then there was this one which was so good that let's just say it could easily have been good book regardless of the genre it was associated with.
Most YA stories are basically any Molly Ringwald movie meets noir french depression saga, with a happy ending. There is a group of young people, usually friends or soon to be friends, they do something wacky or adventurous that hardly any high schoolers really get to do. The people doing these stunts are usually the ones that come under the geeks or dorks in the food chain. Yeah right, a geek did a B&E into a house in the middle of the night and shaved an eyebrow off of a jock's while was asleep. Would YOU do that when you were in high school?
Then there is this some sad drama in the middle of the story. Real heart wrenching stuff. Something that would make even the hard boiled bros to go get the tissues. Most of the time those have something to do with cancer. Don't ask me why.
Then after all that, near the end of the story, the protagonist gets a moment of awakening. He learns or discovers something about his past or future or his true self. He unravels the mysteries of life. He (or she, for the PC crowd) realizes how all that has happened or will happen, is for a reason. He goes all Zen on you. This is sort of my most favorite and most hated part of this genre. I love happy endings. I love how people get to figure out things in their lives and get shit sorted out. But I also am a realist enough to know that real life doesn't have these moments of clarity.
Most of us are just specks of dust floating about in the air. Sometimes we are soaring with the wind. Sometimes we are on a pile of crap behind old Mac's backyard. Not a lot of us can tell that we have our lives sorted out, not when we were in age of the YA-target-demographic. We barely got enough hair in our armpits or enough courage to talk to the opposite sex, whichever comes first.
That is why I guess we need these stories, I guess. That is why we need any stories, really. They help transport us into a world that is more magical than our own. There is no pessimistic, nihilistic outlook on life in that world. Everything is sweet, and young, and beautiful. Sometimes that is enough.
(Plus, it gets a few young people to read a book for a change.)
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