Having teenage girls in my house has caused my reading choices lately to include books like The Hunger Games, If I Stay, and The Fault in Our Stars. Somehow I have been able to escape reading the Divergent series and have stuck to watching the movie versions, which is fine by me. I had seen commercials for Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and when I read the back of the book, I knew I was going to have to read it. Just add this one to my list of teenagerish reads for 2015.
Truthfully, I don't think my girls should read this book until they are out of high school. Not because of Earl's terrible language and consistent sexual references, but because I don't think they will get it until they have not only experienced high school but have also been removed from the high school dynamic and can look back and see the truth about how kids behave and treat each other in High School.
Greg ("Me" from the title) is a high-school senior who has been perfecting a plan to be friends with everyone and yet with no one that has propelled him through high school with little drama. He does have one friend, Earl, who is probably one of my favorite characters of all-time. Earl is funny, he is sweet, and he gets how hard real life can be. Greg just prefers to be filming life rather than living it. The Dying Girl is Rachel, and while she is important enough to be in the title, she really is a minor character, in my opinion, who we don't get to know very well at all before she dies. But she is important to Greg's evolution and change, so she makes it into the title.
The story really is about the evolution of Greg, a boy who doesn't seem to want to evolve at all. As it turns out, and we don't find out about this until the very end, Greg is writing this book as an explanation to his top-choice college as to why he performed so badly in school during his senior year. Prior to learning this, the reader thinks Greg is just writing a book to tell a story that he really doesn't want to tell (like his mom is making him do it or something). And he also doesn't like writing and he isn't too fond of his readers, either, but it just seems so like him--this guy who doesn't really even want friends, he just doesn't want to be beat-up or bullied by his classmates--you don't really even care. You just keep reading. And laughing. Earl is hilarious and without him this book would be so dull and insulting you'd never get past the first few chapters. Thanks to Earl, I read this book in two days.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is coming to the Big Screen after wining two awards at the Sundance Movie Festival: The Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize. It's no surprise to me that this book/movie won awards. It's clever, it explores the inner workings of the complicated High School dynamic, and it explores how one event can change your life forever. Even the best planned lives.
It's good. I remember now why High School was so hard for me and why the first thing I said to my very best friend on the first day of Senior Year was "179," as in 179 days left until the last day of school and the beginning of your real life.
Happy reading, everyone!
-Dodie
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