Warning:
there may be some minor spoilers but 99% of this review is Kalinda’s perceptions
of the book rather than rehashing of the story
The
opening paragraph:
There were only two kinds of people in our town. “The
stupid and the stuck,” my father had affectionately clarified our numbers. “The
ones who are bound to stay or too dumb to go. Everyone else finds a way out.”
There was no question which one he was, but I’d never had the courage to ask
why.
Setting:
Gatlin (fictional town in South
Carolina), modern day USA
Key
themes: Boy likes Girl (but Girl has a secret), aggressive
small-mindedness and (in)tolerance of difference; Good and Evil and the grey
spectrum in-between; fate vs free will; superpowered teens; sins of our parents;
falling in love with mysterious strangers; aesthetic of the forbidden
Kalinda’s
Review
Protagonist
and narration
This is the second book Kalinda’s recently read with
a male protagonist – the other one is ‘Anna Dressed in Blood’ by Kendare Blake
– and while Cas in ‘Anna…’ somehow manages to sound distinctively non-female to
Kalinda’s ears (eyes), Ethan of Beautiful Creatures doesn’t exactly come off any
different from a usual to YA female narrator. Should narration differ between female
and male protagonists? Kalinda thinks yes, absolutely. How? That’s something for
an author to convey and for a reader to judge.
Aside from the gender-related narration issues, the telling
of this story was something Kalinda had troubles with throughout the book, and
what a long book it was... And it’s not that Ethan was a bad narrator. He
wasn’t. Yet, somehow he managed to be overtly descriptive whilst bland and, at
times… boring. In the monotony that was Ethan there was no anxiety of (self)-discovery,
no drama of falling in love for the first time, not much of an introspective
contemplation… It was all too balanced to Kalinda’s liking. Ethan was perfect:
he explained everything, dissected every single moment of his life (and the
lives of others) to the bone… Maybe a third person’s POV would be better and
added a bit of a mystery to the well-explained-world of Gatlin?
The
characters
Aside from Ethan’s overbearing narration, the rest
of characters weren’t particularly intriguing. Having seen the movie adaption
of Beautiful Creatures now, Kalinda found that characters’ quirks and troubles
were much better channeled on the big screen. Yes, while watching the movie she
could totally see why Lena was going from
cautiously excited to passive aggressive to outright aggressive in one agonising
moment. She could see the reasons behind all the whining and the brooding. Unlike
the movie which was surprisingly well done, the book didn’t really portray the
characters’ woes and feelings that well.
Another issue Kalinda found with the characters was the
lack of romantic chemistry between Ethan and Lena.
The question Kalinda couldn’t help asking herself as she read Beautiful Creatures was why drag/force
romance if it feels unnatural? Why push it? Perhaps, it would work better if the
characters were just friends – wouldn’t it be interesting to explore the
dynamics of male/female friendship in YA? It’s so very rare! Actually, come to
think of it Kalinda can’t recall a single YA title lately where Girl and Boy
are friends and nothing more. If you know of one, can you recommend it?
Major
Motifs
The themes explored in Beautiful Creatures are among
the best aspects of this book. The Us vs Them dichotomy, old as dirt but
nonetheless interesting to ponder, is the backbone of this story and the
authors return to it over and over again, sometimes elevating it to all sorts
of extremes.
The small town setting in the Deep
South where intellectual progress apparently is stunted still
comes off fresh and peculiar enough to be intriguing. Although, while the numerous thick
descriptions of Gatlin (architecture, atmosphere, small-minded ways of its
inhabitants…) were well written and meticulously researched, Ethan’s looking-down
gaze at his fellow Gatlinites was rather disconcerting. Such generalizations
coming from Ethan made him look snobbish and a bit unlikable.
Among the themes of this novel were also Palahniuk-esque
explorations of one’s motifs for staying versus leaving, contemplating one’s desires
to go away, (re)imagining your life and post-home future… It was all poetic and
touching, beautifully done.
When The Mysterious Stranger comes to town, the
atmosphere thickens with the fears of outsiders woven to shadow the excitement
of something (or someone) new that Ethan feels, and deepened with self-discovery
thrown into the mix.
Kalinda found this book binary at its core – light
vs dark, xenophobia vs acceptance, staying vs leaving – the story kept going
from one extreme to another. And then there were isolation and marginalisation
of strangers and strangeness: the physical, social and emotional othering. It
was all well done but the issue was that only the hero in his uniqueness alone appeared
to be immune to the town’s growing hysteria born out of mistrust to strangers,
only Ethan stood in between the bullying crowd and The Mysterious New Girl.
The
clichés
There was a haunted house on the hill, at times inhabited
by Adams-esque characters; there were a storm-a-brewing and skies-are-churning;
there was Birthright and of course there was someone who’s got way too much
power for their own good that it would/should definitely blow up in their face
(only it doesn’t).
Towards the end of the book Kalinda felt that only
an amazingly twisted, earth-shattering ending could bring this book over from the
realm of ‘It was Ok’ to stratosphere of ‘Wow’. Did the novel redeem itself with
its ending? Unfortunately not. Maybe having just finished reading the first
installment of Jenny Pox before starting Beautiful Creatures, Kalinda was
expecting the ending a la Jenny (and
not completely unfounded so – it certainly felt it was all building up towards
something like that). But no, Beautiful Creatures is not that sort of book.
There were constant references to the greater
literature and allusions to To Kill a Mockingbird; there was an abundance of
tingling skin and brushing hands typical of YA lit but that could certainly be
avoided as it has become a rather clichéd way to describe falling in love. In
some way Beautiful Creatures felt like a YA ‘write–by-numbers’ with only a
minimal tweaking, like gender role reversal. Ridley was the only character that
intrigued Kalinda but since Ridley only appeared two or three times through the
entire novel (the 500 pages of it), it wasn’t enough to redeem the book
completely.
Kalinda’s
Verdict:
3-3.5
stars for decent writing and post-gothic feel. Read the book before watching
the movie and compare the different endings.
Part of the reason (aside from all the movie buzz
and the amazing Florence
+ the Machine song in the preview) Kalinda picked up this book was its enticing
cover. Though upon reading Beautiful Creatures Kalinda can tell you that (and
this is not a spoiler) the cover has nothing to do with the story – the dark
and mysterious woods do not figure in it in any important shape or form.
The story attempts at magic realism (the characters
take magical and strange things happening around them at its face value and nothing
freaks them out. At all) but acquires unnaturally forced feel instead. Is it because
we are all so desensitized by the abundance of paranormal in YA and non-YA
books and movies that we are just expected to swallow up the characters of
Beautiful Creatures behaving like they’ve seen it all when faced with paranormal in real life? If yes,
an author has to show it not tell it.