A review by badradio
Boy Heaven by Laura Kasischke
3.0
I think one of Laura Kasischke’s strongest talents is her ability to create a believable character. When we read young adult fiction, or even watch teen movies, there’s usually that overly revered popular girl, who is so wicked that the audience spends most of the movie wondering how she got to be so popular in the first place. Kasischke doesn’t make that mistake in Boy Heaven. With Kristy, she’s revered because she’s pretty and nice, but she’s not the prettiest—that’s Desiree, who doesn’t even have any other friends because she’s, as Kristy admits herself, Desiree is a slut. Not only is she easy, but she’s also mean—she has “a handful of snow for a heart,” she cheats on all of her boyfriends, etc. And then we have Kristi, and when I first saw that there was a Kristy and a Kristi, I wondered why Kasischke bothered doing that. But Kristi and Kristy are nothing alike.
Kasischke’s grasp of character and her skill at characterizing not just these three girls but the cheerleaders and counselors and small characters they encounter while at this cheerleading camp is so breathtaking that I was ten pages into the story and already felt like I knew them, like I was friends with them, huddled in the backseat of the little red Mustang with them, smiling at boys with them. These weren’t just characters—they could have been any real girls in the world, and I think that’s what made this book so very startling for me. Whatever Kristy told me, as a narrator, I believed. I believed the ghost stories and the fact that she heard screaming in the woods and everything she told me about her family. I felt as though I was her diary, the secret confidant she reveals she still writes every event of her life in.
Another strong point of this novel was how Kasischke warned us of what would come with subtle metaphors and similes. She compares Kristi’s freckles to blood spatter, uses terms like “knife” and “sliced” to refer to seeing the flame of a lighter flick to life, and other strangely out of place terms and phrases that are subtle enough that someone might not notice them but out of place enough, for the lightness of this story at first, for us to completely overlook it. As you read and things become more serious, these comparisons and word choices begin to make sense, and you remember them.
The pacing of this book was magnificent, something I struggle with in my own writing, as well as the characterizations. It wouldn’t have had the same effect on me, I think, if the girls were flat characters, chattering cheerleaders and revered popular girls without rhyme or reason or flaw, but because they were so real, the story itself struck me. This isn’t a cast of characters or a story I’m likely to forget. Even by the time I’d reached page 160 and nothing of significant importance had happened yet, I was so drawn in to the mystery, my expectations were so high from the book’s summary as well as the general tilt of suspense, that I had to keep turning the page. That’s an art. I think what I learned most from Kasischke’s work is pacing and character, and I hope I can carry that art into my own writing.
Kasischke’s grasp of character and her skill at characterizing not just these three girls but the cheerleaders and counselors and small characters they encounter while at this cheerleading camp is so breathtaking that I was ten pages into the story and already felt like I knew them, like I was friends with them, huddled in the backseat of the little red Mustang with them, smiling at boys with them. These weren’t just characters—they could have been any real girls in the world, and I think that’s what made this book so very startling for me. Whatever Kristy told me, as a narrator, I believed. I believed the ghost stories and the fact that she heard screaming in the woods and everything she told me about her family. I felt as though I was her diary, the secret confidant she reveals she still writes every event of her life in.
Another strong point of this novel was how Kasischke warned us of what would come with subtle metaphors and similes. She compares Kristi’s freckles to blood spatter, uses terms like “knife” and “sliced” to refer to seeing the flame of a lighter flick to life, and other strangely out of place terms and phrases that are subtle enough that someone might not notice them but out of place enough, for the lightness of this story at first, for us to completely overlook it. As you read and things become more serious, these comparisons and word choices begin to make sense, and you remember them.
The pacing of this book was magnificent, something I struggle with in my own writing, as well as the characterizations. It wouldn’t have had the same effect on me, I think, if the girls were flat characters, chattering cheerleaders and revered popular girls without rhyme or reason or flaw, but because they were so real, the story itself struck me. This isn’t a cast of characters or a story I’m likely to forget. Even by the time I’d reached page 160 and nothing of significant importance had happened yet, I was so drawn in to the mystery, my expectations were so high from the book’s summary as well as the general tilt of suspense, that I had to keep turning the page. That’s an art. I think what I learned most from Kasischke’s work is pacing and character, and I hope I can carry that art into my own writing.