Like the Red Panda **
By Andrea Seigel
Protagonist Stella's observations in this book about high school hell and alienation are sharp and on-target. The plot, however, is fraught with almost unbelievable trauma and coincidence.
Like that Stella's parents died from a cocaine OD at her 11th birthday party and her only boyfriend is a sweet dope dealer. And every character is uniformly horrid or weird--usually both. Stella's foster parents never warm to her and eventually turn outright hostile, other students don't take to her, adults at school are completely self-absorbed, and her grandfather is a manipulative son-of-a-bitch.
It's hard to know if people are really this bad or this is only what Stella sees in her detachment. It's an interesting narrative POV, but ultimately fails because it provides no insights into the larger world outside (or even in) Stella's head.
I suppose that we are supposed to feel sorry for Stella in her detachment and numb despair. But I didn't. Neither was I moved by the ending, the irony of which is like a crowbar to the back of your neck.
Ultimately, it's a troubling book, both in its depiction of life and as literature. Not my cuppa.
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