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A review by bookph1le
Conversion by Katherine Howe
4.0
Nice break from the YA I've been reading lately as this one is more literary and less angsty romancey. More complete review to come.
Full review:
The more I think about Conversion, the more I like it. Since I'm an adult reader who reads YA almost exclusively, I have a lot of exposure to the different types and sci-fi/fantasy/paranormal YA tends to be more commercial and less literary, which I think is to its detriment. I really enjoyed reading something with a paranormal flavor that was also quite literary and that avoided a lot of the cliches and pitfalls that seem to be plaguing YA lit lately. Some spoilers to follow.
I think the thing I admired most about Conversion was its ambiguity. Set in an exclusive girls' private school, a series of strange events earns the school the limelight as everyone tries to figure out just what's wrong with the girls. Complicating things, none of them are manifesting the same symptoms, so it's unclear what the nature of the illness is and what's causing it. It's possible to draw several conclusions from the evidence given, and I really enjoyed that about this novel. Most of the YA books I read that have similar themes tend to want to wrap things up in a neat bow, which sometimes happens to the detriment of the narrative.
The other thing I very much liked about this novel was the characterization of the main character, Colleen. She felt very authentic to me. Gradually the book peels back the complicated layers of her life. She's driven and hard-working, which seems like good traits, but Howe does an excellent job of pointing out how stressful and just plain awful Colleen's high stress environment can be. Friendships are necessarily complicated by the fact that Colleen's peers are also her competition, and I found it very realistic how she uses this lens to view just about everything that happens, even her relationship with Spence. Colleen doesn't want to do this, but because she has devoted so much of her time and sweat to her achievements, she has little choice in the matter. I admired the honesty of this aspect of the narrative. I think a lot of books pay lip service to how difficult it can be to be a teenager, but I think the actual toll it takes it one that adults don't always appreciate. I felt sorry for Colleen. Her ability to trust and just be herself with her friends was no better than if she had been a character in some oppressive dystopian regime.
Interspersed with Colleen's story is that of Ann Putnam, set in 1706 after the Salem Witch Trials. Ann goes to see the local reverend to lay her confession at his feet: she and her friends were lying about the extraordinary illness they suffered and that led to the condemnation and death of several supposed witches. Howe does an excellent job of weaving these two narratives together, exploring the concept of hysteria and questioning what it means to truly have a voice. Though things have certainly changed with regard to technology and the social status of women, the books still finds a lot of similarity between the plights of the 17th and 18th century girls and that of girls today.
This aspect of the book leads to its underlying theme that sometimes things are more than they seem. The Salem Witch Trials can be dismissed as the cruel actions of a set of thoughtless girls, but that doesn't fully explore what was going on with those girls' lives and why they chose to do what they did. Similarly, the modern setting of this novel explores a lot of the pressures facing the girls. They are expected to be exemplary models of teenaged girlhood, with all its attendant pressures and expectations about their sexual activities, their achievements, etc.
And this is what I think sets this book apart from a lot of the YA fiction I've been reading lately. There's nothing wrong with books that exist for sheer entertainment value, but I've been longing for some of the meatier subjects that drew me into YA lit in the first place, and this book fit the bill. I also very much liked the fact that, while Colleen does angst some over the boy she likes, this book didn't follow the route of the soapy romance in which a gifted girl seemingly forgets everything that was important to her because of a cute boy. It was nice to read about a girl who compulsively checks her phone looking for texts from the boy she likes, yet still has her eye on the ultimate prize: her future.
Full review:
The more I think about Conversion, the more I like it. Since I'm an adult reader who reads YA almost exclusively, I have a lot of exposure to the different types and sci-fi/fantasy/paranormal YA tends to be more commercial and less literary, which I think is to its detriment. I really enjoyed reading something with a paranormal flavor that was also quite literary and that avoided a lot of the cliches and pitfalls that seem to be plaguing YA lit lately. Some spoilers to follow.
I think the thing I admired most about Conversion was its ambiguity. Set in an exclusive girls' private school, a series of strange events earns the school the limelight as everyone tries to figure out just what's wrong with the girls. Complicating things, none of them are manifesting the same symptoms, so it's unclear what the nature of the illness is and what's causing it. It's possible to draw several conclusions from the evidence given, and I really enjoyed that about this novel. Most of the YA books I read that have similar themes tend to want to wrap things up in a neat bow, which sometimes happens to the detriment of the narrative.
The other thing I very much liked about this novel was the characterization of the main character, Colleen. She felt very authentic to me. Gradually the book peels back the complicated layers of her life. She's driven and hard-working, which seems like good traits, but Howe does an excellent job of pointing out how stressful and just plain awful Colleen's high stress environment can be. Friendships are necessarily complicated by the fact that Colleen's peers are also her competition, and I found it very realistic how she uses this lens to view just about everything that happens, even her relationship with Spence. Colleen doesn't want to do this, but because she has devoted so much of her time and sweat to her achievements, she has little choice in the matter. I admired the honesty of this aspect of the narrative. I think a lot of books pay lip service to how difficult it can be to be a teenager, but I think the actual toll it takes it one that adults don't always appreciate. I felt sorry for Colleen. Her ability to trust and just be herself with her friends was no better than if she had been a character in some oppressive dystopian regime.
Interspersed with Colleen's story is that of Ann Putnam, set in 1706 after the Salem Witch Trials. Ann goes to see the local reverend to lay her confession at his feet: she and her friends were lying about the extraordinary illness they suffered and that led to the condemnation and death of several supposed witches. Howe does an excellent job of weaving these two narratives together, exploring the concept of hysteria and questioning what it means to truly have a voice. Though things have certainly changed with regard to technology and the social status of women, the books still finds a lot of similarity between the plights of the 17th and 18th century girls and that of girls today.
This aspect of the book leads to its underlying theme that sometimes things are more than they seem. The Salem Witch Trials can be dismissed as the cruel actions of a set of thoughtless girls, but that doesn't fully explore what was going on with those girls' lives and why they chose to do what they did. Similarly, the modern setting of this novel explores a lot of the pressures facing the girls. They are expected to be exemplary models of teenaged girlhood, with all its attendant pressures and expectations about their sexual activities, their achievements, etc.
And this is what I think sets this book apart from a lot of the YA fiction I've been reading lately. There's nothing wrong with books that exist for sheer entertainment value, but I've been longing for some of the meatier subjects that drew me into YA lit in the first place, and this book fit the bill. I also very much liked the fact that, while Colleen does angst some over the boy she likes, this book didn't follow the route of the soapy romance in which a gifted girl seemingly forgets everything that was important to her because of a cute boy. It was nice to read about a girl who compulsively checks her phone looking for texts from the boy she likes, yet still has her eye on the ultimate prize: her future.