A review by heykellyjensen
Calli by Jessica Lee Anderson
2.0
A lot of things in the story didn't work for me. I found the first person present tense jarring in this book, as so much got tangled up in back story. There's a lot going on -- Calli's mother has Lupus and she's a lesbian and her parents foster kids and one of the foster kids is a bad seed and Calli's existence is based on a one-night stand so she has some repressed father issues. But that's not where the story begins. It begins when Calli's foster sister kisses Calli's boyfriend. It stumbles out from that point and eventually wraps up with no real conclusion with the boyfriend, the mother's illness, and really, there's no arc to Calli (it ends with her wondering who she is, even).
There were a lot of elements and all felt a little under developed. I could have been on board with all of them had there been more flesh to the characters or the story as a whole. Pacing and the time line required me to suspend some belief, given the number of topics covered here.
One of the things that bothered me, and I know it's my sensitivity as a reader and the baggage I bring to anything I read, is how strangely handled the weight and size issue is here. Whether intention or not, sometimes when a character has body image issues, there is more undercutting that challenge than helping it. In this instance, Calli fixates on her size, and it seems in every chapter there is something food-related to set her back. By that I mean, even when she has no reason to be discussing food, it comes up. There's a section where she walks in on her mother and foster brother making cookies and what could have been a non-issue becomes one (she says "I took a cookie even though I wasn't hungry" and there is no reason for this at all -- she was merely observing this act of love between her mother and foster brother). As an adult reading this, it feels inauthentic. It feels like an *adult* bringing attention to the issue, rather than a teen (a 15-year-old, even). There's too much attention paid when the ultimate payoff on this issue never really manifests. What I'm getting at is there is a lot of adult knowing of the issue in the story, both subtlety and not subtlety, that never jives with the true *feelings* Calli has about her body.
That said, it's a clean read and one that's fine for middle schoolers. It's not a knockout, but I can see girls who never felt like they fit in enjoying this one well enough.
There were a lot of elements and all felt a little under developed. I could have been on board with all of them had there been more flesh to the characters or the story as a whole. Pacing and the time line required me to suspend some belief, given the number of topics covered here.
One of the things that bothered me, and I know it's my sensitivity as a reader and the baggage I bring to anything I read, is how strangely handled the weight and size issue is here. Whether intention or not, sometimes when a character has body image issues, there is more undercutting that challenge than helping it. In this instance, Calli fixates on her size, and it seems in every chapter there is something food-related to set her back. By that I mean, even when she has no reason to be discussing food, it comes up. There's a section where she walks in on her mother and foster brother making cookies and what could have been a non-issue becomes one (she says "I took a cookie even though I wasn't hungry" and there is no reason for this at all -- she was merely observing this act of love between her mother and foster brother). As an adult reading this, it feels inauthentic. It feels like an *adult* bringing attention to the issue, rather than a teen (a 15-year-old, even). There's too much attention paid when the ultimate payoff on this issue never really manifests. What I'm getting at is there is a lot of adult knowing of the issue in the story, both subtlety and not subtlety, that never jives with the true *feelings* Calli has about her body.
That said, it's a clean read and one that's fine for middle schoolers. It's not a knockout, but I can see girls who never felt like they fit in enjoying this one well enough.