An authentic new voice bursts on to the Young Adult scene in Solitaire by Alice Oseman.
Tori Spring likes to blog and she likes to sleep. In her final year of school, Tori is supposed to be preparing for university, but her grades have dropped, and her friends hardly speak to her anymore.
That is when Solitaire and Michael Holden arrive – separately, and yet somehow inextricably linked. No one thinks that the mysterious group Solitaire are up to much outside of pulling harmless pranks at Tori’s school, but could there be more to them than that? And why is Michael Holden so intent on being Tori’s friend; why does he care so much?
On top of everything, there is the reappearance of a childhood friend, the betrayal by a current friend, and more than one near-death experience. Who said high school was boring?
Review: ‘Solitaire’
What were you like in high school? The lens of nostalgia might give us a tendency to imagine ourselves as the kind of likable teenagers we often read about – clever, nerdy, popular, unique. But how accurate is that?
In Solitaire, we are forced to consider an alternative; that perhaps we were not quite the perfect teens that we imagined. Protagonist Tori Spring sympathises with Mr. Darcy instead of Elizabeth Bennet and would rather scroll through her friend’s blogs than post anything on her own; Tori is a pessimist, she is alone, and she is lonely.
If it sounds depressing, it isn’t; it is authentic. Oseman manages to truly capture what life as a teenager is like. In many ways, Solitaire is a modern day Catcher in the Rye – interesting, when the characters in Solitaire wonder if anyone actually reads that book anymore. That self awareness is prevalent throughout Solitaire, and indeed, the shining moment of the book occurs toward the end when one of the characters (not Tori) points out to everyone else just how overly dramatic they are being. As Oseman so clearly understands, everything seems dramatic when you are a teenager.
To call a book authentic seems trite. After all, aren’t all books? But here it is intended in the true sense of the word: this book is genuine. It honestly depicts a character who we probably would not like in real life, and who is occasionally (and, it must be assumed, intentionally) very difficult to read about. Tori is at times so bleak that a character like Michael Holden is a much needed balance.
But Michael Holden (whimsical, attractive and intelligent as he is) will find no shortage of fans when Solitaire is published, while Tori might struggle. We all want to believe that we were the Michael Holdens of the world, when we might have been the Toris. And there is a lot more going on in Solitaire than just Tori’s experiences – the mystery aspect of the plot is well constructed, and Oseman carefully and successfully deals with issues such as depression, eating disorders, and homophobia to name but a few.
But Tori’s voice is what makes this book so special. Solitaire brings an authenticity and honesty to Young Adult fiction that is remarkable because of its rarity. Oseman does not condescend to her characters or her readers, but rather she simply presents things as they are. In doing so, she challenges us to do the same. So, what were you like in high school?
Solitaire by Alice Oseman will be released July 31, 2014 through HarperCollins.
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