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FindingJane
Jul 11, 2016FindingJane rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
Hayley is one of those literary teenagers you love to hate. She’s rude, hostile, standoffish, deceitful, insufferably outspoken and sees the world as populated by zombies (fellow alumnae) and tyrants (faculty). But she has cause for her jaundiced view of the world. She’s skirting the border of irreversible poverty, flunking her classes and desperate to save her father, a Veteran spiraling down into a morass of alcoholism, drug use and PTSD. In this biting novel about a girl trying to maintain the illusion of normalcy when everything in her world is on the verge of collapse, Ms. Anderson exposes the painful underbelly of adolescence. The language is unsparing of people’s foibles, even when Hayley is lying to others and herself. There are bursts of humor scattered here and there; the novel isn’t relentlessly grim. But Hayley’s desolate plight—a girl too smart for her surroundings yet on the verge of descending into the life of trailer trash—takes you by the throat and doesn’t let go. Interspersed with Hayley’s viewpoint are strange interludes that reveal themselves to be harrowing memories of warfare. We can only assume they come from Hayley’s father, a man haunted by real-life demons. In his own way, he’s as anxious to escape his past as Hayley is, even though he’s jeopardizing her future. It makes this novel three dimensional in scope, as well as the growing understanding that other people have their own problems and no one’s life is shiny or perfect. This is one of those edgy YA novels you can’t put down until you come to the sobering conclusion. Ms. Anderson proves once again that she understands the downside of being a teenager.