Book Reviews: How to Become a Planet, by Nicole Melleby

How to Become a Planet, by Nicole Melleby (Algonquin Young Readers)

Fourteen year old Pluto is an engaging youngster, as passionate about astronomy as she is puzzled by the changes in her life and herself. Within a short period of time, she’d gone from a happy science geek who hangs out with her best friend on the boardwalk where her divorced mother runs the family pizzeria, to a stranger in her own skin. Sometimes she’s paralyzed with the blues, unable to even get out of bed, and the next she’s caught up in senseless fury. It’s as if the mood swings of normally hormonal adolescence have been amped up to pathological proportions. Even with a supportive mother, a psychiatric diagnosis complete with medications and a recommendation for psychotherapy, and a novel way of using astronomical concepts as metaphors for what she’s going through, Pluto is drowning. Not only is she progressively alienating everyone she cares about, she’s stopped caring. Only when her rich city father ramps up the pressure for her to live with him does she formulate a desperate plan: a list of all the things she must do in order to stay at home.

Take medication.

Visit the planetarium with Mom.

Go to Former Best Friend’s Birthday party… and so on.

The list, Pluto believes, will prove that she can return to her old, “true,” “normal” self. But things don’t go as planned. As Pluto embarks upon her tasks, they become even less within her reach. The summer takes one unexpected turn after another.  The tutor whom Pluto was sure she’d hated turns out to be a sympathetic ally, and a new friend with a checklist of their own has a secret Pluto can sympathize with.

Society tends to “other” people with mental illnesses. Historically, they were seen as possessed by devils or cursed by angry gods, as witches, or as eccentric, lazy, or selfish. Treatments ranged from trephination (drilling holes in the patient’s skull), to exorcism to locking the mentally ill in horrific prison-like asylums. Even today, when effective treatments allow many, even those with serious diagnoses, to lead functional lives, the stigma persists. All too often, the person is seen only as their illness, and their insights and contributions therefore dismissed as invalid. Young people are particularly vulnerable to public shaming. It’s hard enough for even “normal” teens to figure out who they are and what they want in life. How to Become a Planet focuses on Pluto as a sympathetic character, a person who is both resourceful and overwhelmed, insightful and confused by changes in herself. Her use of astronomy metaphors is particularly vivid and powerful. Above all, Pluto is a person whose brain chemistry isn’t working quite right, not a diagnosis, and this excellent novel showcases her journey toward a new balance in her life.

As for my personal reaction, I must confess that, although I am an older adult, I gobbled up this book. Pluto’s voice was so compelling, and her struggles so resonant, that the story connected with me on a deep level. Although I did not suffer depression as a teen, I struggled with PTSD as an adult. The times Pluto absolutely cannot motivate herself to engage with her day were chillingly familiar. And, just as Pluto took small steps toward understanding her “new normal,” that’s how it went with me. Besides skillful therapy and appropriate psychiatric medicines, unexpected acts of kindness and new friendships as well as old carried me through the dark times. Pluto comes to accept that she is now and will forever be different from who she was before. I can never go back to the person I was before my own trauma. But I can heal and grow and live a fulfilling life. I wish the same for Pluto. She’s made an excellent start.

Today's Wisdom from Middle Earth

“I will not walk backward in life.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children of Húrin

J. R. R. Tolkien on Fantasy

A lovely quote, worth re-reading over time:

Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear view. I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers, though I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”—as things apart from ourselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness. Of all faces those of our familiares are the ones both most difficult to play fantastic tricks with, and most difficult really to see with fresh attention, perceiving their likeness and unlikeness: that they are faces, and yet unique faces. This triteness is really the penalty of “appropriation”: the things that are trite, or (in a bad sense) familiar, are the things that we have appropriated, legally or mentally. We say we know them. They have become like the things which once attracted us by their glitter, or their colour, or their shape, and we laid hands on them, and then locked them in our hoard, acquired them, and acquiring ceased to look at them.
[…]
Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else (make something new), may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds.

The whole article is here.

Short Book Reviews: Stina Leicht's Persephone Station

Persephone Station, by Stina Leicht (Saga Press)

A very cool premise underlies this novel: A lone corporate town on a planet that appears to be hostile to human life, but it’s all a hoax, a smoke screen designed to protect the native race from the rapacity of the dominant corporation. Throw in a crew of mercenaries, an AI in human guise, local politics, and desperate missions against impossible odds, and the result is a complex and innovative tale. Ambitious as the premise is, it’s also a balancing act for any novel to encompass such a multi-level plot along with character development and backstory. And as much as I wanted to love this book, and as many places as it drew me in, ultimately the proliferation of elements and fragmented pace kept losing my attention. I gave up 2/3 through the book, at a point when the dramatic tension of the oncoming conflict should have kept me glued to my seat but in fact I found myself falling asleep or looking for something else to read.

As both a reader and a fellow writer, I see a number of lessons here. Every piece of this book is well done – the prose is strong, the dialog snappy and true to each character, and those characters interesting and complex, the world itself and its alien inhabitants are well drawn, the mystery and the corporate danger both nicely handled. I’m sure that some readers will dive into the book and find it satisfying. For me, the attention paid to each element – for example, the backstory and relationships of each character – interrupted the forward momentum of the action and my ability to stay engaged with all the different parts that were eventually  to come together. For long stretches, every time I connected with a character or immersed myself in a plot sequence, it was interrupted and I had re-orient myself. I don’t mind multiple POVs but I do mind being frequently catapulted from one focus to another. This is undoubtedly a personal taste, which is why I encourage readers who find the concept behind Persephone Station intriguing to give the book a try.

Today's Wisdom from Middle Earth

“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring