One of the beauties of fiction is its ability to help us see
into the heart of another person. In the real world, we see
life through our own lenses, never knowing for sure what another
person thinks or feels. In novels, we see what the protagonist
sees and feel what he or she feels, thus broadening our understanding
of the people around us. Graveyard Girl reveals the hearts
and minds of a group of high school students in a small Canadian
town.
On the book's cover, the word, "stories," appears
in parentheses. Not noticing this at first, I began Graveyard
Girl expecting a novel, then reached the second or third
chapter and thought that, in fact, I was reading a short story
collection. Interestingly, by the time I finished the book,
it felt more like a novel. The closest comparison for me is
one of my favorite works of fiction, Amy Tan's The Joy Luck
Club. In both books, different chapters are told
in a different person's voice, but the stories are woven together
in various ways. The characters know each other and have interacted
with each other, sometimes in very intimate ways. This is what
makes both books so appealing--like Kurosawa's classic film,
"Rashomon," you see related events told from different
points of view.
The prologue introduces Ginger, now out of high school and
the mother of a young daughter. She comes across an old photo
of a mock wedding held by her classmates, a re-creation of the
royal wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Always a
bit of an outsider, Ginger's own face is not in the photo--she
was the photographer at the wedding. The stories that follow
portray various events in the lives of the young people who
played a part in the mock wedding.
First we meet Mandy, one of the bridesmaids, whose story is
called "Revelations." One reason I liked this story
is that it deals with a subject not often addressed in modern
fiction, religious faith. The story's title holds a double meaning.
It refers not just to religion and the final book of the New
Testament, but also to how the characters dare to reveal to
each other parts of themselves they had previously kept hidden.
In later stories, we learn about Jewel, the girl who played
Princess Diana, and Derek, the hockey star who stood in for
Prince Charles, as well as the other kids from the photo.
The final chapter, also called "Graveyard Girl,"
is again told from Ginger's viewpoint. In this story, she takes
her daughter, Jo, to the cemetery where so much has happened
in her past. There, she brings the book to a fitting conclusion:
There's something I've come to do today. With a stick,
I dig a hole the size of a hockey puck between the pine
trees. I twist off the ring and drop it into the hole along
with the balled-up clipping and the picture from my yearbook.
I flick some dirt over it and whisper, "Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust." I push the rest of the dirt back in
the hole, stomp it with my foot and scatter pine needles
over top.
Then I holler after Jo, "Look out, baby, here I come!"
and run like stink down the hill with nothing weighing me
down, not the eighteen years or the eighty pounds or even
the throbbing in my pinky finger.
Graveyard Girl is the kind of book I'd like to write:
an honest portrayal of people whose lives intertwine and who
learn and grow in their relationships with each other. It's
not as simple and straightforward as most teen fiction, but
it's well worth the extra effort.
Click here to buy Graveyard
Girl at Amazon.com.
