2021 EDIT: Sadly, this is yet another quite disappointing reread for me, years later. It's so different from what I remember. 'The Female of the Species' gets some things right, about rape culture and such, but it's mostly awkwardly and unevenly written, meandering, and inconsistent in the characterisations. Nobody learns anything half the time. A lot of the dialogue exchanges come across as unnatural, contrived and staged. The characters go through the motions; which describes this particular reading experience for me as a whole. Other moments are like ,"WTF, that's horrible and perpetuates sexism and misogyny, book!" (like that assembly scene near the beginning and its red flags... I don't even).
It looks like 'The Female of the Species' has lost its spark, and while it has its moments and I don't regret reading it, there are other, better YA feminist books that deal with "dark" subject matters out there ('Speak', 'All the Rage', 'All the Bad Apples', 'Sawkill Girls', 'The Nowhere Girls', 'The Burning', and 'Sadie', for example). I still like a few of the characters - especially Alex - as flip-floppy as they are.
Additionally, the novel could have benefitted from having the only gay character (Sara) not be the only queer character, and not be the token lesbian best friend; and from having someone who's not white. Not all American small towns are white suburban, conservative bubbles, right? They can't be.
Final Score: 3/5
Original Review:
Ow. That hurt. A lot.
I love it.
'The Female of the Species' by Mindy McGinnis is wonderful, almost heavenly; very strange words to put to a novel about a teenage killer, that dives into rape culture and the vulnerable stages in the life of a high schooler. But I already consider this contemporary an instant classic.
It's like a YA equivalent of Stieg Larsson's 'Millennium' books (not that it's "lite" - far from it), and it's structured and themed in the same way as a Shakespearean tragedy. An addictive crime Shakespearean tragedy Fyodor Dostoyevsky would be proud of, and can be read in a day or two. J.K. Rowling might appreciate it, too.
In 'The Female of the Species', we follow the American small town high school drama of:
Alex Craft, who has killed the man acquitted of raping and murdering her sister. She got away with it, and might kill again.
Jack Fisher, the popular jock whom the boys want to be and the girls love. This pro-athlete at sports and sex seriously wishes for two things - to leave his hometown after graduation, and to become a better person and redeem himself due to a morality check. And due to the mysterious, antisocial Alex; the girl whose older sister was cut to pieces and buried all around the woods three years previously.
Peekay, or P.K. - short for the nickname, "preacher's kid" - another rebellious teen who is into alcohol and is trying to get over her cheating ex-boyfriend. She's a party girl with a questionable sense of humour, but she's insecure, and has a deep caring soul. She may or may not let her primal, angry instincts take over one day. Peekay and Alex both volunteer at an animal shelter, and through picking up a bag of dead puppies off a road, pacifying abused and abandoned dogs, and cleaning cats' ears together, they slowly become odd but warm friends, teaching the other to come out of her shell. What Peekay doesn't realise is how far-gone her strange, intelligent and surprisingly-compassionate new friend already is.
Other characters/players include:
Branley Jacobs, Jack's childhood best friend and fuck buddy. She's a beautiful, blonde, conceited cheerleader and prom queen, who despite "stealing" Peekay's boyfriend reveals that she has more heart than she lets on.
Park, Jack's silly, funny, sex-obsessed friend (one of the hilarious highlights of the book is Alex punching Park in the balls for trying to grab her without her consent).
Sara, Peekay's loyal basketball-playing friend who is also a lesbian, feeling quite alone in a small conservative town.
And the parents of these teens who are just trying their best for the future of their kids, and their kids' kids - they're forever in the life cycle of a tiny secluded county that's stuck in the past (most extremely in the case of Alex's mother, for understandable reasons). The only newsworthy thing to happen there was Alex's sister Anna's murder...
I want to talk about Alex. Really talk about her.
What I had hoped for before reading 'The Female of the Species' was a female main character who would be like the spiritual successor to Lisbeth Salander. Alex Craft didn't disappoint me.
She is captivating. A fantastically well-written and developed young killer lost in an unfair, unjust world that punishes her sex for existing, and this is considered normal. She would rather be dead to it all, but not literally, for she won't take things lying six-feet under. Alex is a traumatised, introverted, seemingly cold and lonely teen with anger issues possibly inherited from her estranged father. This girl is smart, cunning, fearless, quick to act, and takes no bullshit and says no bullshit. Struggling to remove herself from her father's rage-filled shadow, whilst being unable to resist embracing it, upon her sister's death she resolves to try to make the world a safer place for women to live in.
Alex is an avenging angel and justice warrior against rape and rape culture. Socially-ingrained phrases such as "boys will be boys" are the most insidious excuses for evil acts, and she knows this all too well. Admirable and sympathetic, in spite of her murdering the absolutely horrendous people facing her wrath - she is so badass while doing it! But the novel doesn't really justify the actions of this antiheroine with an abnormal mental health issue. While at first she's remorseless, through unintended social interactions with Peekay and Jack she does come to fear hurting others. It's not that the withdrawn and alluring Alex is a psychopath or a sociopath - not feeling enough isn't her problem. Feeling too much is.
I can see her as a 'Batman' villain, or a noir superhero. I just love her. Peekay too, for her own multiple complexities and flaws, but Alex is a new breed of female characters who are allowed to be as human and unforgettable as male ones. Not like a breed of dog or any other animal, although the female of the species is indeed always the most dangerous, and Alex Craft sets out to prove that of humans, as well (as a side note, she cares more for animals for their simplicity, than for people).
The big question is, who is truly insane: Alex, or the rest of the world for letting rape culture continue? She is icon-worthy, I mean it.
In 'The Female of the Species', the writing is clever, to the point and devilishly quotable. The character development is stellar. The placing of themes and symbols, in addition to the plotting, are superb. Female friendships are central to the story (Peekay and Alex, and eventually Peekay and Branley). Even the romance between Jack and Alex - as a teenage boy making a real effort to be kind and decent, and a girl keeping her distance from everyone for their sake, respectively - comes across as bizarrely, genuinely lovely, if highly unlikely and nonsensical (that's young love though, right?). And Sara, the only queer character, has a solid personality and her own awesome moments to shine (almost making up for the fact that everyone in the book is white, however that could be because of the setting).
'The Female of the Species' is a new YA novel that's shocking, bloody, important and impossible to put down. The ending, up to the last gut-wrenching page, doesn't exactly offer closure on everything, but that's how life is.
Hello and goodbye, Alex, Peekay and Jack.
Final Score: 5/5
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