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A review by secre
Tease by Amanda Maciel
2.0
Tease is a young adults novel centered around high school angst and a topic close to many peoples hearts; bullying. But Tease does something different to many books and instead of taking the perspective of the bullied, takes the perspective of the bully. In this case, Sara, who finds herself facing criminal charges after another teenager at her school, Emma commits suicide. There are just grounds for this court case, even though Sara doesn’t seem to see herself at fault, after all, she and her friend have spend the better part of a year making Emma’s life hell.
Split between the past and the present, Tease weaves a complicated and difficult narrative as it flicks between Sara in the present talking to lawyers and therapists about her behaviours and the past where you see in first person glory what her and Brielle did to Emma. It raises a lot of difficult to answer questions like actually, who is to blame? Is it as simple and one-sided as Sara and Brielle being to blame or maybe, perhaps does Emma Putman have to take some share of the blame herself? The sympathy's naturally lie with the girl who's just topped herself, but then at the same time it is easy to see suicide as an extremely selfish choice.
Reading a novel from the perspective of the bully was unnerving and disturbing; there were moments that simply made me feel unclean and in need of a shower. We are more used to reading from the perspective of the victim, where it’s far easier to feel empathy and this book doesn’t allow for that. There is very little judgement of any character, each one is presented on the page with all their flaws and their insecurities and it is up to the reader to make a decision as to which side they are going to weigh in on.
And that decision is hard, because Emma Putman is no more of a likable character than Brielle or Sara. From the first words about her as an adult alarm bells are going off in my head; she’s in therapy, she’s been moved from school to school to school, she sleeps with anything that moves. Including other people’s boyfriends. Like Sara’s. This is a girl who clearly has problems and those problems began long before Brielle or Sara strode onto the scene. That doesn't mean Brielle and Sara are innocent but it does mean there's something bigger and possibly nastier than just schoolgirl bullying here.
It’s also hard because Brielle and Sara are clearly bullies; their actions go well beyond self-defence or annoyance into true harassment and nastiness; they follow her around school, they paint Slut on her locker, they create fake Facebook pages and call her a Fat Byatch or Whore at every possible opportunity. They make Emma Putman’s life hell and Sara is certainly more concerned with how much her life has gone to hell since Emma topped herself than with the fact that she was a pinnacle motive for that decision. It's very much Woe Is Me and My Life Is Ruined, seemingly forgetting that a girl is dead and her parents lives in tatters.
All of the characters are superficial and are written as shallow and one dimensional; yes, most teenagers are shallow but by sixteen, seventeen you do have at least some thoughts that are not about yourself. Sara doesn’t; her thoughts revolve around this trial ruining her life and her (ex) boyfriend never speaking to her again. Brielle is a bitch, pure and simple. There are moments where the author seems to be trying to give her a bit of a sob story but all in all, she’s a rich bitch who always has to be Queen Bee.
Dylan, the boyfriend, never texts and drives, less because he knows it’s dangerous and more because he’ll get kicked off the sports teams if he’s caught. He is a ‘gentleman’ in Sara’s words but to my mind at least spends most of his time trying to get into Sara’s pants regardless of whether she is sober. Our definitions of gentlemen differ somewhat. And Emma. There is clearly a sob story behind her background but if you join a new high school, sleep with nearly every male there is available and steal other people’s boyfriends you are going to get some grief about it, let’s be honest.
And the adults? Well, they’re completely non-existant. The therapist that Emma is seeing is clearly crap and needs firing, the teachers at the school let SLUT be written on a locker along with multiple other examples of harassment and abuse and do nothing. Well, they pull Sara and Brielle in for a ‘talk’ but that doesn’t go further and by the time they look set to pull the parents in, Emma has already topped herself. Brielle’s parents are no shows, Sara’s mother uses her daugher as the babysitter/house keeper whilst her father has swanned off with a new bit of skirt. The adults are utterly useless and there’s no real excuse.
===Do I Recommend?===
I’m stuck because some things the book does well; such as portraying two sides of a story without actually taking sides. It also raises important issues such as bullying and its effects back into the public eye line. It also raises the important issue of how damaging and dangerous social media can be when used to hurt or harm. All of those things are important things for teenagers (and adults) to recognise. For that reason, I probably would recommend it.
But as a decent piece of literature? No. It’s told in a dry, lacklustre way that fails to raise tension, sympathy or emotional response and the characters are impossible to care about. All of them are simply too shallow and one dimensional and all of them are frankly unpleasant. When none of your characters garner sympathy or empathy in the slightest you have a significant problem.
I would instead recommend Thirteen Reasons Why and Hold On if you are interested in Young Adult fiction with suicide, bullying and depression as central themes.
Split between the past and the present, Tease weaves a complicated and difficult narrative as it flicks between Sara in the present talking to lawyers and therapists about her behaviours and the past where you see in first person glory what her and Brielle did to Emma. It raises a lot of difficult to answer questions like actually, who is to blame? Is it as simple and one-sided as Sara and Brielle being to blame or maybe, perhaps does Emma Putman have to take some share of the blame herself? The sympathy's naturally lie with the girl who's just topped herself, but then at the same time it is easy to see suicide as an extremely selfish choice.
Reading a novel from the perspective of the bully was unnerving and disturbing; there were moments that simply made me feel unclean and in need of a shower. We are more used to reading from the perspective of the victim, where it’s far easier to feel empathy and this book doesn’t allow for that. There is very little judgement of any character, each one is presented on the page with all their flaws and their insecurities and it is up to the reader to make a decision as to which side they are going to weigh in on.
And that decision is hard, because Emma Putman is no more of a likable character than Brielle or Sara. From the first words about her as an adult alarm bells are going off in my head; she’s in therapy, she’s been moved from school to school to school, she sleeps with anything that moves. Including other people’s boyfriends. Like Sara’s. This is a girl who clearly has problems and those problems began long before Brielle or Sara strode onto the scene. That doesn't mean Brielle and Sara are innocent but it does mean there's something bigger and possibly nastier than just schoolgirl bullying here.
It’s also hard because Brielle and Sara are clearly bullies; their actions go well beyond self-defence or annoyance into true harassment and nastiness; they follow her around school, they paint Slut on her locker, they create fake Facebook pages and call her a Fat Byatch or Whore at every possible opportunity. They make Emma Putman’s life hell and Sara is certainly more concerned with how much her life has gone to hell since Emma topped herself than with the fact that she was a pinnacle motive for that decision. It's very much Woe Is Me and My Life Is Ruined, seemingly forgetting that a girl is dead and her parents lives in tatters.
All of the characters are superficial and are written as shallow and one dimensional; yes, most teenagers are shallow but by sixteen, seventeen you do have at least some thoughts that are not about yourself. Sara doesn’t; her thoughts revolve around this trial ruining her life and her (ex) boyfriend never speaking to her again. Brielle is a bitch, pure and simple. There are moments where the author seems to be trying to give her a bit of a sob story but all in all, she’s a rich bitch who always has to be Queen Bee.
Dylan, the boyfriend, never texts and drives, less because he knows it’s dangerous and more because he’ll get kicked off the sports teams if he’s caught. He is a ‘gentleman’ in Sara’s words but to my mind at least spends most of his time trying to get into Sara’s pants regardless of whether she is sober. Our definitions of gentlemen differ somewhat. And Emma. There is clearly a sob story behind her background but if you join a new high school, sleep with nearly every male there is available and steal other people’s boyfriends you are going to get some grief about it, let’s be honest.
And the adults? Well, they’re completely non-existant. The therapist that Emma is seeing is clearly crap and needs firing, the teachers at the school let SLUT be written on a locker along with multiple other examples of harassment and abuse and do nothing. Well, they pull Sara and Brielle in for a ‘talk’ but that doesn’t go further and by the time they look set to pull the parents in, Emma has already topped herself. Brielle’s parents are no shows, Sara’s mother uses her daugher as the babysitter/house keeper whilst her father has swanned off with a new bit of skirt. The adults are utterly useless and there’s no real excuse.
===Do I Recommend?===
I’m stuck because some things the book does well; such as portraying two sides of a story without actually taking sides. It also raises important issues such as bullying and its effects back into the public eye line. It also raises the important issue of how damaging and dangerous social media can be when used to hurt or harm. All of those things are important things for teenagers (and adults) to recognise. For that reason, I probably would recommend it.
But as a decent piece of literature? No. It’s told in a dry, lacklustre way that fails to raise tension, sympathy or emotional response and the characters are impossible to care about. All of them are simply too shallow and one dimensional and all of them are frankly unpleasant. When none of your characters garner sympathy or empathy in the slightest you have a significant problem.
I would instead recommend Thirteen Reasons Why and Hold On if you are interested in Young Adult fiction with suicide, bullying and depression as central themes.