David Van Etten*’s Likely Story: Book One is the story of Mallory, the teenage daughter of a famous(ly bad) soap opera star. Mallory’s mother is the ultimate drama queen, but her daughter’s talents lie in another direction: Mallory dreams of writing a soap opera about real people and real problems, with absolutely no kidnappings, plane crashes, or clairvoyants allowed. When her mother’s agent unexpectedly embraces her idea, Mallory’s life turns into a sticky mess of hurt feelings, deflated hopes, and screwed-up relationships—a real-life melodrama of her very own.

Likely Story is witty, clever, and stylish, with a lot of delicious soap opera in-jokes. Here’s Mallory’s description of the trials and travails of her mother’s onscreen daughter:

"In the past sixteen years, Diamond has been abducted six times, has died once, has fallen in love twice with people who were later revealed to be her relatives, has had three bouts of amnesia, has been in a coma twice, has eloped once, has broken off two engagements, has had her debutante debut ruined once by an earthquake and once by a dead best friend, has twice fallen into the hands of a coven of witches, has been locked in the trunk of a car six times, has pulled a gun on someone fourteen times, has had a gun pulled on her twenty-two times, and has had near-death experiences eight times (twice from drowning, twice in a car crash, once in a plane crash, once after being stabbed by her lover-slash-long-lost-stepbrother, once in childbirth, and once—I swear to god—from slipping on a patch of black ice, which was later revealed to have been put there by her diabolically scheming half-sister/stepmother.)"

Unfortunately, much like the soap operas it parodies, Likely Story is also totally unsatisfying. It’s too short (a mere 230 pages), none of the half-dozen storylines are resolved, and the story is cut off with a pearl-clutching cliffhanger. There will be a sequel out in October, but teen readers might well object to having to buy two $16 hardbacks in order to read one complete story, even when the books are as sharply funny as this one. If this book had been more affordable, we would have recommended it as a smart and enjoyably nasty alternative to cheeseball teen series like the Sweet Valley High reprints... but as it is, we suggest waiting until the paperback edition comes out.

*"David Van Etten" is the pen name for three authors: YA author David Leviathan, playwright David Ozanich, and soap opera writer Chris Van Etten.

Labels: Book Reviews, David Leviathan

David Levithan writes about teenagers so well that I originally thought he must not be too far divorced from his own teen years. As it turns out, he’s thirty-eight—but his writing does an excellent job of conveying the confidence and self-assurance of kids hovering on the cusp of adulthood, as well as their naïveté.

Extended adolescence is the central motif in both the novel Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List, which was co-written with Cupcake author Rachel Cohn, and the short-story collection How They Met. Leviathan’s characters are mostly above the age of consent, often gay, occasionally drunk, usually big-city kids. They also carry a lot of freight: youth, sexuality, gender roles, parental divorce, starting college. Throughout, Mr. Levithan manages to write their stories in a simple, straight-forward fashion.

Both books are sprints of perspective. I expected this from How They Met, a collection of 18 short stories written over several years, but it is also true of Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List, which channels seven different teenagers over two hundred and twenty pages. Team writing helps here, and not only with the different gender perspectives. Rachel Cohn breathes levity and diversity into Naomi and Ely without seriously changing the tone of How They Met. Despite the authors’ juggling act, each of the characters has a distinct voice and defining symbols. Literally, in Naomi’s case—she thinks in Wingdings. At first this quirk was a little annoying, but it became very effective as the book progressed. More than a simple affectation, it became Naomi. Many of the other characters took such simple, often obvious, starting points and developed into fully dimensional people.

Leviathan and Cohn manage all of these stories and personalities almost without dialogue. Even the small-talk is presented in summarized, recollected form rather than the word-for-word transcripts of other novels. The style allows the characters to develop themselves through rich internal monologues—think Claire Danes’s character in My So-Called Life. Characters burn with self-absorbed curiosity about the minutiae of relationships: What significance a kiss? How many subtleties in a text message?

Eventually, the magic of reliving my teen years wore thin. Writers are like balloon artists: they start with flat, formless items, breathe into them until they become people, and twist them into a variety of (hopefully fascinating and original) shapes. Mr. Levithan has a remarkable gift for breathing life into his teenage creations, but his balloon-twisting skills are limited.

[Review by the noble and selfless Keith]

Labels: Book Reviews, David Leviathan, Rachel Cohn, teen literature