I finished Fangirl and…
by mousesinger
It is like the other two Rainbow Rowell novels I’ve read – Attachments and Eleanor and Park – in that it starts a little slowly but before you know it, you’re totally enmeshed in the characters’ worlds.
Like Rowell’s other characters, Cath is an everyday person with her own life issues and everyone’s insecurities. The twist is that she’s nerdy and socially anxious, someone who relied on her relationship with her twin sister and on her life in fandom and is now thrust into the alien environment of college where she gets to experience life without her sister for the first time.
Rowell got so much right about fan culture and as someone who has always had complex inner “OC” worlds that are deeply important to me, I identified so much with Cath. I loved her relationship with Levi – it’s similar to the way Rowell writes other relationships in that she seems to always start off with an emotional connection and mental connection, with the lust being the cherry on the sundae. Her portrayals are so much more like how people fall in love in real life, especially when it is actually going to last. It’s not just about people standing around and looking good. The rocks in one character’s head fit the holes in the other’s and her characters always find the person who actually is emotionally compatible with them. She doesn’t shy away from writing female characters who are tender and vulnerable while still letting them have their self respect, which is very hard to pull off.
Fangirl has a stroke of brilliance in including the story-within-the-story about Simon Snow, then the fanfiction about Simon and Baz. Simon is clearly intended to be a Harry Potter parody but yet… he’s also his own character.
It’s also Rowell’s longest, densest, and most complex work, in that there are layers of symbolism in each of the three stories that refer to various other parts of the book – it’s clear to me that Simon and Baz can be taken as a parallel for Cath and Wren.
The book seems to very much be part of a growing trend I’ve noticed, where authors and filmmakers are aware of fan culture and very much write knowing that the fans are going to create their own works.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/62158223984.
