Ashleigh's Reviews > After

Another disappointment, courtesy of NPR. I have got to stop choosing books based on NPR reviews.

I was attracted to the concept of this YA novel. The author takes the idea of a baby found in a trashcan and the inevitable question, "how could someone do this?" She traces the answer back to a root of extreme denial. In this case, a teen girl (Devon) was in such denial about the fact that she'd had sex that she couldn't even allow the possibility of pregnancy to enter her mind. When a baby suddenly popped out, she went into a complete, deranged panic, basically couldn't even acknowledge to herself that it was a baby, and desperately shoved it away from her (into the trash).

I like this idea overall, and think it's ripe for exploration in novel form. Unfortunately, other than the concept, the whole thing pretty much stunk.

1. TRITE. Every single character in this novel is a cliche. The slutty, flaky mom who had Devon when she was 16. Devon herself, smart and hardworking, who pretty much raised herself and is driven to be nothing like her mother. The heart-of-gold, tough love soccer coach. The whip-smart female attorney with a soft side. The mean girl Devon meets in juvy (shocker, she cuts herself!). And on and on and on.

2. The courtroom stuff is WAY overdone. Too many pages are devoted to Devon's court proceedings. Every single one of those pages reads like a Law and Order script. Ugh.

3. Terrible writing. Some sentences don't even make sense. Now, I will grant that the whole thing is written in the present-tense, which is very difficult to do. However, as an author, you need to understand your own abilities. If you aren't good enough to write an entire novel in the present-tense, DON'T DO IT.

4. The handling of Devon's emotions comes off as trivial, superficial, and immature. Nothing is very well explained. There is no real depth. The author missed a big potential opportunity in devoting more time and thought to Devon's sessions with the psychiatrist. Her psychological state is very central to the book, so this is a big problem.

5. Gratuitous use of gore. How many times to I need to read about blood in the underwear, milk squirting out all over the place, or "pulsating umbilical cord"s? I get that birth is a messy process and that the trauma of it severely affected Devon, but as much time and attention as is devoted to the yuck factor is completely unnecessary.

6. Finally, the end was a joke. It was not properly built into and it did not resolve anything. It's like the author got tired of writing, so with no forethought she suddenly launched into a swell of good and redemptive emotions, ending with the clincher, "She'd won." Yippee. It didn't feel like a win at all, but surely that's the appropriate sentence for ending a story like this one.