I’ve gotten lost in books for as long as I can remember, from the shifting staircases in J.K. Rowling’s Hogwarts to the breathtaking scenery of Spain in Beth Kephart’s Small Damages. Hovering above these worlds like an addicted reality-show viewer, I was invested but always remained an observer. These fictional people were interesting, and I could learn from them, but I couldn’t compare my life to theirs as effortlessly. In Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, Cath Avery’s transition from high school senior to college freshman reminded me of my own post-secondary journey so much so that I felt like I was this character. I kept asking myself questions throughout this book: “Has Rainbow Rowell been stalking me?” and “Why haven’t I read more novels like this?”
Some context: like everyone, I wasn’t popular in high school. Popularity wasn’t some objective concept held by a few (attractive and athletic) individuals everyone knew automatically, as though stepping into the school’s halls would have had their names encoded in us. We did have our politician students who treated us like they were trying to secure a vote for something that never existed, or the kids whose names we couldn’t shake because they were involved in public activities such as musicals and wrestling (our football team was always in a “re-building year”). Mostly we were just kids in the same place for four years who hung out with people we liked.
I had a great group of friends and countless Facebook acquaintances, thanks to the ridiculous number of clubs I joined. I was the good kid, who played the role of older sibling well, and preferred a good book to a party any day. I had my crushes (some lasting a whole 75 minutes of class time) but boys had always been in the periphery, with University slowly coming into sight, bringing the promise of the “real world” along with it. Soon the fall of Grade 12 morphed into the autumn of freshman year of York University. I was determined to make my mark but just as scared to start somewhere new.
It was a difficult change.
Academically, I was doing well. Emotionally, I felt isolated, anxious and confused. I made lecture-hall friends who would become one of the sea of faces once time was up but genuine friendships were difficult to replicate the way I had in high school. I didn’t join clubs because I was obsessed with doing well and making sure that the grants and loans that were given to me weren’t done so in vain. I tried looking for a job so I could help relieve the pressure of having to depend on my parents, who I lived with and who still had three younger children to take care of. My parents believed in family helping out family so I recognize the privileged I held, knowing that I really didn’t need a job, but I was the eldest. We were first-generation Canadian, so the guilt of taking so much from people who sacrificed everything for me was an added stress.
I made up a routine for myself where I would go to my classes and hurry back home once they were finished to get schoolwork or reading done. I became a hermit and fell into the commuter trap that everyone warned me about at orientation. I didn’t feel like the adult I was told I was but was well past the point of returning to my safe and comfortable teenage years.
That first year finally ended and I got a summer job. I still felt like I did before but I tried putting myself out there. I got a job in the winter term on campus, volunteered to help scan old literary journals into PDFs, and started a book blog. I still had my lecture-hall friends but I made sure to hang out with my high school ones whenever I could, because they were going through the same struggles. I became genuine friends with some writers in the city.
Forward to another year later where I’d get an advanced reader’s copy of Fangirl from the BookExpo of America in New York City. While others gushed over the fan fiction portion starring Simon and Baz, I was fascinated by the pages where Cath dealt with her struggles in college. I could relate to the closeness she had with her family as well as the way she worried about her twin sister, Wren, and her father. Her relationship with Levi and Reagan reminded me of the college friends I had made.
Most importantly, Cath’s discussions with her professor over fan fiction and writing mirrored my own. In Introduction to Creative Writing, I had to prove to my professor every week that I could cut it by writing literary fiction. I had to write stories that were about everyday life because that was what he was interested in and not the fantastical things that I enjoyed sinking into. Those red marks all over my page felt like paper cuts to my self-esteem.
My hands quiver, my heart pounds and I start to tear up while recalling my first year in University. My personal life and this book are fused on a molecular level, so separating the two feels not only difficult on my part, but impossible. I enjoyed the dystopic world of The Hunger Games and the fairytale retelling of Cinder but I have never read a book that had caught the sound of my own gasps and wrote into the story.
Tags: ardo omer, books, fangirl, rainbow rowell, rainbow rowell is probably not stalking you, that quiet moment of shock followed by recognition
HI ARDO!!!
OK, going to read now.
Hello! *waves*
I was just scanning my feedly headlines and I saw the word “fangirl” and was like I HOPE THIS IS ABOUT THE BOOK and I was not disappointed when I clicked through.
Reading Fangirl made me hyper-aware of how few books there are about college. I think that was a part of my drastic decrease in reading during college, since I’ve always been most drawn to books about people my age or a little older. And as a kid who learned about most situations in life through fiction, I would’ve really appreciated more books about college students for me to read in high school. Now I’m a few years out of college and I was struck by how Fangirl got some aspects of college so absolutely right. I keep thinking about Levi’s line about how months in freshman year are like dog months. I’m definitely giving this book to my sister (a senior in high school) for Christmas this year in the hope that she’ll feel more prepared for what college life is like than I did.
TAM LIN TAM LIN EVERYONE GO READ TAM LIN
YESSS! TAM LIN is the BEST!!
I agree. There needs to be more books about college. I actually think this book is a perfect example of what I expected the New Adult books to look like.
Yes! This pretty much exactly mirrors my experience of reading the books. Another remarkable thing about it is what a clear-eyed, judgment-free portrait of mental illness and anxiety it is, in a way I pretty much haven’t found in any other book.
Also, the kissing scenes were sexy! No kissing scenes are EVER sexy, but these were!
Yes. There are so many things that the author did brilliantly and it felt authentic.
Rainbow Rowell can write unbelievably sexy scenes about just about anything. See also: hand-holding in Eleanor & Park.
HI ARDO. 😀
Yes, my feelings about Fangirl ended up being very strong. Superficially, Cath and I don’t have too much in common beyond both residing in the general nerd world, but her overall freshman experience and particularly the progression of her relationship with Levi were Too Real.
YES. It’s hard to make me believe in a book romance in Young Adult books because it’s basically, “They looked at each other and were instantly IN LOVE”.
I remember taking a class in Russian Lit in English my first quarter of college, along with a Freshman writing class packaged as Science Fiction. In the latter, I read Ursula LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness, which I found to be amazing.
When I mentioned it to someone in the Russian Lit class, they kind of sniffed at it and said something about it being “good for genre fiction”. I have a chip on my shoulder about “literary” fiction to this day. Well, let me clarify. I love me some of the “literary” fiction as written. I can’t put down Jane Austen. I love me some Shakespeare. I both like and abhor Hemingway.
But I’m happy to ignore the sniffers. I have no pretensions to literary sophistication. I don’t care whether I have impressed the right people by having read the right books. If the New York Book Review isn’t interested in Terry Pratchett or Lois Bujold, I’m not interested in them.
Fangirl sounds great.
Yeah, when you end up (accidentally) surrounded by people who think “genre” is a dirty word frequently enough, you end up maybe becoming a little belligerent about it. And you mock literary fiction for not having the guts to have all the things litfic has PLUS spaceships/dragons/ghosts/sorcery/etc.
In my own way I have pretensions to literary sophistication but I’m ornery enough to insist on my own definition, I guess. Which it sounds like you have, too!
I can’t wait to read Fangirl.
I think both literary fiction and genre fiction are both great and value can’t be placed on one over the other. I was judgmental and snobby towards lit fic because I was “defending” genre fic. I think there’s a place for both and there are authors who do so well in blending the two like Angela Carter. Also, a Canadian author (Emily Schultz) does it wonderfully in her book, The Blondes, by giving it a sci-fi twist.
EVERYONE. GO READ “THE BLONDES” BY EMILY SCHULTZ
Haven’t read this, but it’s definitely going on the list. Has anyone else read Among Others, by Jo Walton? It’s another book that captures that feeling of being a girl who loves books, and finding a community. I can’t talk about it without going starry-eyed and incoherent, so I’ll just stop here.