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A review by novelinsights
The Other Normals by Ned Vizzini
2.0
This book started off with perhaps the best first line of any book I'd read all year, so I had high hopes going in. It did continue to make me laugh throughout, but it also had a lot of poorly handled moments that needled me as I read, dragging it down to be a fairly average, forgettable read.
I was attracted to this book because it was inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. The protagonist is obsessed with the book's version of the game, Creatures and Caverns, and eventually things from that world start showing up in his actual life. It reminded me a little of Stranger Things in that respect (except this isn't horror and Stranger Things is better written).
Most of what I didn't like about this book centered around gender issues. This was written with the old-fashioned 'girls-don't-like-anything-nerdy' mentality, which frankly, I thought we were starting to grow beyond as a society. Granted, 2012 was a lot longer ago than it sounds, but even so, it's a trope I'm tired of seeing at this point unless it gets proven wrong, which in this case, it doesn't. As an added annoyance, the one girl who is nerdy by being the captain of the math team is described as "so brilliant that she has rendered herself asexual," effectively meaning that smart/nerdy girls exist, but because they are smart/nerdy, the protagonist has no interest in them (yet he still gets immensely frustrated when non-nerdy women view him the same way). This double-standard rendered the character relatively unlikable within the first 25 pages of the book.
Trans issues also cropped up in this book and weren't handled well. For no discernible reason whatsoever, one of the minor characters (introduced as Miss K) had an androgynous appearance, and despite the fact that she was presented as a "Miss," the protagonist just had to stumble over her gender any time he or the narration went to refer to her. She was a completely insignificant character and I have no idea what the point was of including this at all, aside from to annoy me as a reader. There was also a trans character (included only for plot reasons to "trick" the protagonist), and when it was discovered that she was amab, we get the following quote: "I remember the telltale sign you're supposed to look for with men versus women: the Adam's apple," implying that he should be examining strangers' necks to check their gender identity against their birth sex. That character was also referred to later as "transsexual," which may have been in use in 2012 (I genuinely don't know) but certainly isn't appropriate now. I should also mention, while we're on the subject, that homophobic slurs were used in a few places throughout the book as well, though this didn't bother me as much because they were used by bullies and it felt more like a realistic depiction of teen male bullying in the time period than it did any kind of actual commentary on queerness.
I also had an issue with the way that consent was handled in the book. At one point, the protagonist asks a girl if he could kiss her, and she says no, but she also tells him that you're not supposed to ask if you can kiss a girl; you're just supposed to do it. That seemed a little contradictory coming from a woman who wouldn't have wanted him to kiss her, and it also seemed like a weird message to put in a kid's book.
To further the consent conversation and also really cement the protagonist as unlikable, there's a scene at a dance where he does something really weird and unrelatable-- This really put the last nail in the coffin of me not really liking this character that well. Throughout the book, he is presented as a nerdy character who isn't particularly popular or well-liked because of his obsession with Creatures and Caverns, and I was under the impression that was supposed to make him more relatable, at least with the nerdy crowd. It even endeared him to me a little despite his weird, sexist double standards. But when this happened, all that went out the window. There was no good, logical reason for him to think doing this was a good idea, and seeing him do it made me reevaluate him and think, "Hmm, maybe there's a good reason no one wants to talk to him." It put me on the side of everyone else, which is decidedly not what the author wanted to do.
There was also a strange element where the protagonist was, at one point, the racial minority in a situation (the only white kid at camp), and it made him uncomfortable, but wasn't in any way used to teach any kind of lessons about actual racism or the experience of being a racial minority in the wider world, which made me question the point, again.
Now, looking back at everything I've written about this book, it is quite a long list of problematic elements. That said, they only cropped up here and there throughout the book, and there were plenty of spaces in between that were at least entertaining. It did feel as if it were written for the younger side of YA, as certain things that happened felt a little too on-the-nose or unbelievable (such as the camp randomly having a sign out in front of it saying "No lawyers beyond this point" or characters shunning other for deciding to partake in any kind of vice such as drinking or smoking). It also didn't feel like it was written to be problematic on purpose or for any kind of agenda; I think it was just a reflection of how the author actually saw the world and I doubt he ever thought anyone would have issues with it.
Overall, it was an okay book. It gave me some laughs and I did enjoy some parts of it, though I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone. I'm sure this same idea has been done better by someone else somewhere; I'll let you know if I find it!
I was attracted to this book because it was inspired by Dungeons and Dragons. The protagonist is obsessed with the book's version of the game, Creatures and Caverns, and eventually things from that world start showing up in his actual life. It reminded me a little of Stranger Things in that respect (except this isn't horror and Stranger Things is better written).
Most of what I didn't like about this book centered around gender issues. This was written with the old-fashioned 'girls-don't-like-anything-nerdy' mentality, which frankly, I thought we were starting to grow beyond as a society. Granted, 2012 was a lot longer ago than it sounds, but even so, it's a trope I'm tired of seeing at this point unless it gets proven wrong, which in this case, it doesn't. As an added annoyance, the one girl who is nerdy by being the captain of the math team is described as "so brilliant that she has rendered herself asexual," effectively meaning that smart/nerdy girls exist, but because they are smart/nerdy, the protagonist has no interest in them (yet he still gets immensely frustrated when non-nerdy women view him the same way). This double-standard rendered the character relatively unlikable within the first 25 pages of the book.
Trans issues also cropped up in this book and weren't handled well. For no discernible reason whatsoever, one of the minor characters (introduced as Miss K) had an androgynous appearance, and despite the fact that she was presented as a "Miss," the protagonist just had to stumble over her gender any time he or the narration went to refer to her. She was a completely insignificant character and I have no idea what the point was of including this at all, aside from to annoy me as a reader. There was also a trans character (included only for plot reasons to "trick" the protagonist), and when it was discovered that she was amab, we get the following quote: "I remember the telltale sign you're supposed to look for with men versus women: the Adam's apple," implying that he should be examining strangers' necks to check their gender identity against their birth sex. That character was also referred to later as "transsexual," which may have been in use in 2012 (I genuinely don't know) but certainly isn't appropriate now. I should also mention, while we're on the subject, that homophobic slurs were used in a few places throughout the book as well, though this didn't bother me as much because they were used by bullies and it felt more like a realistic depiction of teen male bullying in the time period than it did any kind of actual commentary on queerness.
I also had an issue with the way that consent was handled in the book. At one point, the protagonist asks a girl if he could kiss her, and she says no, but she also tells him that you're not supposed to ask if you can kiss a girl; you're just supposed to do it. That seemed a little contradictory coming from a woman who wouldn't have wanted him to kiss her, and it also seemed like a weird message to put in a kid's book.
To further the consent conversation and also really cement the protagonist as unlikable, there's a scene at a dance where he does something really weird and unrelatable--
Spoiler
he pulls down his pants and exposes himself to a girl he likes in public to "prove he is a man."There was also a strange element where the protagonist was, at one point, the racial minority in a situation (the only white kid at camp), and it made him uncomfortable, but wasn't in any way used to teach any kind of lessons about actual racism or the experience of being a racial minority in the wider world, which made me question the point, again.
Now, looking back at everything I've written about this book, it is quite a long list of problematic elements. That said, they only cropped up here and there throughout the book, and there were plenty of spaces in between that were at least entertaining. It did feel as if it were written for the younger side of YA, as certain things that happened felt a little too on-the-nose or unbelievable (such as the camp randomly having a sign out in front of it saying "No lawyers beyond this point" or characters shunning other for deciding to partake in any kind of vice such as drinking or smoking). It also didn't feel like it was written to be problematic on purpose or for any kind of agenda; I think it was just a reflection of how the author actually saw the world and I doubt he ever thought anyone would have issues with it.
Overall, it was an okay book. It gave me some laughs and I did enjoy some parts of it, though I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone. I'm sure this same idea has been done better by someone else somewhere; I'll let you know if I find it!