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A review by nghia
No Sad Songs by Frank Morelli
3.0
I came across mention of No Sad Songs, a YA (Young Adult) novel by Frank Morelli, in a column on "hopepunk" literature, a reaction against the far more common "grimdark" kind of fiction -- dystopian, amoral, or violent worlds like The Dark Knight movie or Breaking Bad.
What about No Sad Songs makes it "hopepunk" instead of "grimdark"?
The setup: 18 year old Gabe LoScuda is in his final year of high school. Both parents suddenly die in a car crash and he's left as the sole caregiver for his grandfather who is far gone with Alzheimers. An entire life derailed. An overwhelming amount of responsibility.
Yet in Morelli's hand the book is upbeat & full of hope. Gabe accepts his new-found responsibilities. Most everyone around him is a genuinely decent human being. Teachers at school are decent human beings. His best friend, John, is an especially decent human being. The many, many challenges of being a caregiver for someone lost to Alzheimers are generally treated with humor rather than despair. Even when Gabe's life slowly spirals out of control, the underlying cause is because he's (willingly) letting caring for his grandfather overwhelm everything else in his life. And when he's ultimately saved it is because of the efforts of his friends caring for him, along with other adults just being decent & understanding.
It is a nice, sweet little book and, especially for the YA audience it targets, is a good read about a difficult situation few of us have real experience with. That's part of why we read, after all, isn't it?
So...why only 3 stars, then, when I seemed to like it pretty well? I think that comes down to three things: the 1990s aesthetic, the use of the word "freaking", and some weak plotting.
The 1990s
The book is set in the 1990s, which I think is a tremendous mistake for a YA book. The book is set before any YA reader was actually born. That means it is chock full of fairly obscure references that will mean nothing to any YA reader. The time period is not really integral to the book; it could easily have taken place in 2015 instead and been much more accessible to YA readers.
(The author was a teenager in the 1990s and it is hard not to assume he set this in the 1990s because it is either vaguely-memoir-like or because he didn't want to do the research to make it sound like teenagers in the 2010s.)
After a while, I started taking notes of the kinds of references that I think will fly over the heads of actual YA readers:
"I pop a CD into the stereo on Dad's workbench: Nirvana. The one with the naked, swimming baby on the cover."
"The salesman - some dude with a ZZ Top beard and a pair of overalls"
"In his beach chair, the old man looks like he could star in the movie Weekend at Bernie's"
"[...] attempting to recreate wrestling moves that were best left to guys like the Junkyard Dog and Jake "the Snake" Roberts"
"John swings himself inside the car like he's in an episode of Dukes of Hazzard"
And it goes on and on. Nolan Ryan. Dick Tracy. Dirty Harry. Tales from the Crypt. LA Law. RBI Baseball on the Nintendo. Miami Vice. Doogie Houser. Lionel Richie. It isn't just one or two references that are easily skipped over by a YA reader that was born a decade (or more) after any of those things.
To add insult to injury, Morelli makes a few slip ups by setting the book in the 1990s instead of a more current time period; twice I noticed him talking about things that didn't exist when the book takes place. He mentions the poem "Simplicity" by Dejan Stojanovic, which wasn't published until 1999. He also says that Gabe's grandfather is taking Razadyne, which is an anti-Alzheimers drug that didn't exist before 2005.
"Freaking"
Gabe doesn't sound like a real teenager. When I first started reading the book, I assumed he was maybe 12 or 13 because he uses words like "freaking" and "crummy". But he's actually 18. I haven't seen someone that old use "crummy" non-ironically since Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. I just don't think 18 years in Philadelphia say "crummy" in their interior monologues.
But, okay, it is a YA book and the language is made a bit G-rated for sales/marketing purposes. I can swallow my disbelief.
And yet....Gabe's G-rated verbal tic is to use the word "freaking" constantly. And I do mean constantly. The book is 228 pages and "freaking" is used 118 times in those 228 pages. In some cases it'll appear two, or even three, times on a single page.
Ugh. Just. It was too much. I'm surprised his editor didn't tell him to mix it up.
The plotting
One of the challenges of "hopepunk" is that, if everyone in the world is decent, how are you going to find a source of drama and tension? The usual stereotypes: mean teachers, clueless parents, misunderstandings with your best friend, and so on aren't really available.
Morelli almost dodges this problem but not entirely. The two or three pivotal moments in the book -- the confession/arrest, the trial, and John's outburst in the cafeteria -- didn't feel as genuine and organic and, yes, "realistic", as the rest of what happens. I'm not sure what a better solution for those moments would have looked like, exactly, but I couldn't help but feel that the book became a bit too formulaic at those points. (Formulaic as in: "we will now have a cafeteria fight scene between BFFs because that's what teen movies usually have in the second act")
(As a side note: I was especially irked at how formulaic the love interest/triangle thing was. The pretty blond girl turns out to be bland and not especially smart. The girl who listens to The Pixies is just soooooo interesting and unique!. For a book that did so well avoiding tropes in other places, it was a disappointment that it fell back into these well worn tropes.)
So, those negatives dragged down my final rating a bit. Maybe the "freaking" won't grate on you as much or maybe you won't mind the 1990s setting, in which case you'll probably enjoy the book even more than I did.
Hopepunk, the latest storytelling trend, is all about weaponized optimism
What about No Sad Songs makes it "hopepunk" instead of "grimdark"?
The setup: 18 year old Gabe LoScuda is in his final year of high school. Both parents suddenly die in a car crash and he's left as the sole caregiver for his grandfather who is far gone with Alzheimers. An entire life derailed. An overwhelming amount of responsibility.
Yet in Morelli's hand the book is upbeat & full of hope. Gabe accepts his new-found responsibilities. Most everyone around him is a genuinely decent human being. Teachers at school are decent human beings. His best friend, John, is an especially decent human being. The many, many challenges of being a caregiver for someone lost to Alzheimers are generally treated with humor rather than despair. Even when Gabe's life slowly spirals out of control, the underlying cause is because he's (willingly) letting caring for his grandfather overwhelm everything else in his life. And when he's ultimately saved it is because of the efforts of his friends caring for him, along with other adults just being decent & understanding.
It is a nice, sweet little book and, especially for the YA audience it targets, is a good read about a difficult situation few of us have real experience with. That's part of why we read, after all, isn't it?
So...why only 3 stars, then, when I seemed to like it pretty well? I think that comes down to three things: the 1990s aesthetic, the use of the word "freaking", and some weak plotting.
The 1990s
The book is set in the 1990s, which I think is a tremendous mistake for a YA book. The book is set before any YA reader was actually born. That means it is chock full of fairly obscure references that will mean nothing to any YA reader. The time period is not really integral to the book; it could easily have taken place in 2015 instead and been much more accessible to YA readers.
(The author was a teenager in the 1990s and it is hard not to assume he set this in the 1990s because it is either vaguely-memoir-like or because he didn't want to do the research to make it sound like teenagers in the 2010s.)
After a while, I started taking notes of the kinds of references that I think will fly over the heads of actual YA readers:
"I pop a CD into the stereo on Dad's workbench: Nirvana. The one with the naked, swimming baby on the cover."
"The salesman - some dude with a ZZ Top beard and a pair of overalls"
"In his beach chair, the old man looks like he could star in the movie Weekend at Bernie's"
"[...] attempting to recreate wrestling moves that were best left to guys like the Junkyard Dog and Jake "the Snake" Roberts"
"John swings himself inside the car like he's in an episode of Dukes of Hazzard"
And it goes on and on. Nolan Ryan. Dick Tracy. Dirty Harry. Tales from the Crypt. LA Law. RBI Baseball on the Nintendo. Miami Vice. Doogie Houser. Lionel Richie. It isn't just one or two references that are easily skipped over by a YA reader that was born a decade (or more) after any of those things.
To add insult to injury, Morelli makes a few slip ups by setting the book in the 1990s instead of a more current time period; twice I noticed him talking about things that didn't exist when the book takes place. He mentions the poem "Simplicity" by Dejan Stojanovic, which wasn't published until 1999. He also says that Gabe's grandfather is taking Razadyne, which is an anti-Alzheimers drug that didn't exist before 2005.
"Freaking"
Gabe doesn't sound like a real teenager. When I first started reading the book, I assumed he was maybe 12 or 13 because he uses words like "freaking" and "crummy". But he's actually 18. I haven't seen someone that old use "crummy" non-ironically since Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye. I just don't think 18 years in Philadelphia say "crummy" in their interior monologues.
But, okay, it is a YA book and the language is made a bit G-rated for sales/marketing purposes. I can swallow my disbelief.
And yet....Gabe's G-rated verbal tic is to use the word "freaking" constantly. And I do mean constantly. The book is 228 pages and "freaking" is used 118 times in those 228 pages. In some cases it'll appear two, or even three, times on a single page.
Ugh. Just. It was too much. I'm surprised his editor didn't tell him to mix it up.
The plotting
One of the challenges of "hopepunk" is that, if everyone in the world is decent, how are you going to find a source of drama and tension? The usual stereotypes: mean teachers, clueless parents, misunderstandings with your best friend, and so on aren't really available.
Morelli almost dodges this problem but not entirely. The two or three pivotal moments in the book -- the confession/arrest, the trial, and John's outburst in the cafeteria -- didn't feel as genuine and organic and, yes, "realistic", as the rest of what happens. I'm not sure what a better solution for those moments would have looked like, exactly, but I couldn't help but feel that the book became a bit too formulaic at those points. (Formulaic as in: "we will now have a cafeteria fight scene between BFFs because that's what teen movies usually have in the second act")
(As a side note: I was especially irked at how formulaic the love interest/triangle thing was. The pretty blond girl turns out to be bland and not especially smart. The girl who listens to The Pixies is just soooooo interesting and unique!. For a book that did so well avoiding tropes in other places, it was a disappointment that it fell back into these well worn tropes.)
So, those negatives dragged down my final rating a bit. Maybe the "freaking" won't grate on you as much or maybe you won't mind the 1990s setting, in which case you'll probably enjoy the book even more than I did.