Young Jane Young By: Gabrielle Zevin Read: December 31, 2018 Pages: 294 Publisher: Algonquin Books What’s Good: Brilliant narrative structure, characters with depth, thought-provoking. What’s Not So Good: Nada. This novel is a win. Rating: 4 out of 5. Summary from Goodreads: This is the story of five women . . . Meet Rachel Grossman. She’ll stop at nothing to protect her daughter, Aviva, even if it ends up costing her everything. Meet Jane Young. She’s disrupting a quiet life with her daughter, Ruby, to seek political office for the first time. Meet Ruby Young. She thinks her mom has a secret. She’s right. Meet Embeth Levin. She’s made a career of cleaning up her congressman husband’s messes. Meet Aviva Grossman. The Internet won’t let her or anyone else forget her past transgressions. This is the story of five women . . . . . . and the sex sexist scandal that binds them together. From Gabrielle Zevin, the bestselling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, comes another story with unforgettable characters that is particularly suited to the times we live in now . . . My Review:
The structure of the narrative is highly entertaining. If the plot were expressed in a typical fashion, it is strong enough to stand as a great read. It is essentially a take on the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal in the 90’s. However, because this straightforward narrative is told in such an atypical fashion, it hooks the reader into the narrative. This isn’t a quick and easy read because of lack of substance. This is a brilliantly engaging read that readers want to fly through, driven by the desire to flesh out every angle of the narrative. While three of the five sections are presented in normal narrative, Ruby’s narrative is presented in a series of email correspondence with her pen pal from Indonesia. The final section exhibits Aviva’s point of view, giving nod to the Choose Your Own Adventure books where the narrative offers options for choices that Aviva could have made but did not. The novel structure also symbolizes the nature of Aviva’s situation itself. A scandal is in fact a scandal because of society’s comprehension of it, not simply because of the involved parties. Highlighting how the scandal affects the other characters symbolizes that a scandal is given power by the number of parties impacted. Like Zevin’s other work, she provides complex characters with depth and endearment. The reader wants to get to know these flawed individuals. We sympathize with their predicaments, we cringe at their mistakes, we triumph in their victories. Though this book appeals to all genders (my husband enjoyed it as much as I did), it strikes a chord with women. Zevin pulls away the blinders of the patriarchy to show the age-old prejudices and biases of society towards women. It calls us to examine how power factors into relationships with two people and whether or not the older, more experienced individual should have more responsibility. It calls us to examine the inequal treatment of women, showing the reality that the fallout is always greater for the woman; she is given none of the power and all of the blame in scandals like this. Take a look at Monica Lewinksy. How did society’s response to her differ than the response to Bill Clinton? Tracy Everbach discusses this in depth in her article “Monica Lewinsky and Shame: 1998 Newspaper Framing of ‘That Woman.’” She states that media “…reflected stereotypical shaming narratives about sexualized women who do not conform to the traditional, passive role prescribed by the dominant patriarchal ideology.” In Young Jane Young, Zevin showcases that slut-shaming is real, while manwhore-shaming is a novelty. Rarely does a book balance thought-provoking societal examination with an easy-to-read narrative structure, but Gabrielle Zevin’s Young Jane Young has knocked it out of the park. This is a book for those who love to read and for those who don’t read enough.
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