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Rainbow Black - Maggie Thrash
At least I read one book this year that wasn't for book club!
Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash, which is slightly deceptively marketed as "part murder mystery, part gay international fugitive love story." Like: there is a part where someone gets murdered and no one knows who did it. And there is a part where the gay protagonist is in Montreal with her partner, having adopted a new identity and having not quite successfully escaped responsibility for the crimes of her youth. But it's nothing like a genre murder mystery; it's a little like a love story; the tagline makes it seem rather exciting and glamorous, and: no.
Which is not to say it's a bad book. I think it's mostly a very good book. But it's a book that kind of wants to refuse to let even an ounce of glamour or romanticism into a book that's about trauma, and living with trauma, and living with the consequences of your own decisions (which are not necessarily good or bad but maybe a very limited set of choices that you get when you're a traumatized thirteen-year-old.)
Should I do some plot summary? I can't do much plot summary without spoiling it, so: it's a book about a thirteen-year-old girl, Lacey, whose parents, hippieish daycare owners, are accused of being satanic cult child abusers. It's about the trial; it's about how Lacey is left unparented, first with her wild-child older sister and then in an institution. And it's about how Lacey falls in love, and escapes, but not without paying an enormous price.
This is a book, ultimately, about the criminal justice system, and how the criminal justice system is incapable of achieving healing or closure or justice for anyone. Lacey is seen at times by the court and the lawyers as a victim, a witness, and a perpetrator, depending on the agendas of the lawyers involved; but no matter which role she's cast in, it's only because she's useful (or useless) in terms of winning the case for one side or the other. There are very few human beings who have any genuine concern for Lacey's psychological well-being. The lawyers on both sides of the parents' trial are people who decide on their version of the facts right at the beginning and then have no further interest in the truth.
All of this is very real, and believable, and yet...
OK: sometimes when I used to read a lot of YA, I would read a well-meaning book and end up thinking, "I already agree with you about the ideological point that you're making, so I don't need to read 350 awesomely depressing pages about it." And this is a much better book than those books on a prose level, but there are moments when it seems to lean a little too hard on trying to persuade me of things I already believe.
Still, those moments were outweighed by the ones where I was fully engaged in the grim reality of the book and the voices of the characters. This is a book that succeeds because as soon as we meet Lacey, I want to keep spending time with her, even through the darkest plot events. And it is, to some extent, a book that leaves me unsatisfied because Lacey never gets any of what she needs or deserves: healing, closure, justice. But it couldn't be otherwise, right?
Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash, which is slightly deceptively marketed as "part murder mystery, part gay international fugitive love story." Like: there is a part where someone gets murdered and no one knows who did it. And there is a part where the gay protagonist is in Montreal with her partner, having adopted a new identity and having not quite successfully escaped responsibility for the crimes of her youth. But it's nothing like a genre murder mystery; it's a little like a love story; the tagline makes it seem rather exciting and glamorous, and: no.
Which is not to say it's a bad book. I think it's mostly a very good book. But it's a book that kind of wants to refuse to let even an ounce of glamour or romanticism into a book that's about trauma, and living with trauma, and living with the consequences of your own decisions (which are not necessarily good or bad but maybe a very limited set of choices that you get when you're a traumatized thirteen-year-old.)
Should I do some plot summary? I can't do much plot summary without spoiling it, so: it's a book about a thirteen-year-old girl, Lacey, whose parents, hippieish daycare owners, are accused of being satanic cult child abusers. It's about the trial; it's about how Lacey is left unparented, first with her wild-child older sister and then in an institution. And it's about how Lacey falls in love, and escapes, but not without paying an enormous price.
This is a book, ultimately, about the criminal justice system, and how the criminal justice system is incapable of achieving healing or closure or justice for anyone. Lacey is seen at times by the court and the lawyers as a victim, a witness, and a perpetrator, depending on the agendas of the lawyers involved; but no matter which role she's cast in, it's only because she's useful (or useless) in terms of winning the case for one side or the other. There are very few human beings who have any genuine concern for Lacey's psychological well-being. The lawyers on both sides of the parents' trial are people who decide on their version of the facts right at the beginning and then have no further interest in the truth.
All of this is very real, and believable, and yet...
OK: sometimes when I used to read a lot of YA, I would read a well-meaning book and end up thinking, "I already agree with you about the ideological point that you're making, so I don't need to read 350 awesomely depressing pages about it." And this is a much better book than those books on a prose level, but there are moments when it seems to lean a little too hard on trying to persuade me of things I already believe.
Still, those moments were outweighed by the ones where I was fully engaged in the grim reality of the book and the voices of the characters. This is a book that succeeds because as soon as we meet Lacey, I want to keep spending time with her, even through the darkest plot events. And it is, to some extent, a book that leaves me unsatisfied because Lacey never gets any of what she needs or deserves: healing, closure, justice. But it couldn't be otherwise, right?