2019 EDIT: Spoilers. Content warning: suicide.
I'm changing my rating, since I don't have a lot of fond memories of this book. Hindsight can be a downer, and a shadow.
Skimming it again, 'Eliza and Her Monsters' starts off beautifully, but it could have benefited from being shorter. Eliza can be really irritating and nonsensically self-absorbed, even for an introverted teen with anxiety issues. Why doesn't she give out trust as easily as she receives it again? Also her love interest, Wallace, who starts off very nice and subversive, becomes a selfish prick towards the end; which is sadly archetypal in YA male leads. He doesn't think about Eliza's feelings and her obvious mental breakdown at having her huge secret outed. He actually drives her to contemplating suicide, while she's in a daze, which he rescues her from in such a melodramatic plot contrivance (like, how and why did he get to her in time? I can't remember). Big strong macho guy rescuing poor wallflower damsel - yeah, I'm not a fan of that. Wallace is barely sorry for causing Eliza grief, as well. In fact his dialogue indicates he puts some of the blame on her. Yeah, he's no hero.
Overall, for a creative, celebratory well for artists, fandoms and introverts, 'Eliza and Her Monsters' is pretty miserable. The side characters I don't remember at all. Some things at the end are ridiculous, and everything seems to work out too perfectly. Aside from receiving therapy sessions, I don't feel like Eliza especially grows, or develops to be the least assertive and independent. It's all about a boy, as always. (Plus reading some books for that spark of creative inspiration, but it gets there a little too little, too late, in my opinion.) 'Monstrous Sea' certainly doesn't interest me anymore.
I don't regret reading 'Eliza and Her Monsters', and I'm sure it will inspire others - there is a lot of refreshing, helpful insight to be had - but I prefer a bit more self-awareness and less disappointing and dickish boys in my books.
Last note in hindsight: How did Eliza, a seventeen-year-old full-on introvert with anxiety and depression, get a driver's licence? Is this a thing in America, where every single teenager just HAS to drive and own a nice car, even if they're poor or otherwise of a lower middle class background?
Final Score: 3/5
Original Review:
''There are monsters in the sea"
"You found my name in a constellation"
- 'Monstrous Sea'
'Eliza and Her Monsters' is a book made for all creative types and introverts. It is lovely, sad, tragic, inspiring, and it successfully, heartrendingly gets into the mind of a hugely-imaginative, antisocial teenager in her last year of high school miserably going through the motions of outside living. When all she wants to do is stay in her room and create, and escape into, her own fantasy world. One that is famous in the online community.
It is Eliza Mirk's own special art, a webcomic called 'Monstrous Sea', uploaded under the avatar LadyConstellation. In its three year run, the fantasy world full of monsters, elfin heroes and Faustian themes has become a phenomenon, gaining a huge fanbase and following.
With all the success of 'Monstrous Sea', nobody, except a couple of online friends keeping maintenance on the web content and comment sections, knows who LadyConstellation is. And Eliza wants to keep it that way.
What about when she shares common interests with a new boy at school? Wallace, who looks like a football player but is so shy he tends to communicate in writing than in speech, is a big 'Monstrous Sea' fan - the only one Eliza has met in real life - and writes novel versions of the story (and popular fanfictions of it under his own mysterious avatar). He wishes to get published someday, to earn a living for his creativity and doing what he loves. Will this fellow complicated introvert be able to break Eliza out of her shell? Enough for her to finally find a way to tell him her secret, that she is the creator of his inspiration; his beloved fandom?
The real world is harder, less simple, and more painful than in a story, where there are rules to follow, lines to get right. Emotions, anxieties, decisions: they are unpredictable and scary. Life has no structure to it, or a clean happily ever after - you make it what you will; what you choose to do every single day, for yourself and others.
There are monsters in the sea. Some big, some small, some subtle. Some within as well as without.
'Eliza and Her Monsters' is a spiritual successor and soul sister to Rainbow Rowell's 'Fangirl'. It's a love letter that understands fandom and geek culture in an intimate way. Capturing the mental and emotional state of a teenage girl with social anxiety issues who prefers the worlds in her own imagination to real people, and who is in the cusp of adulthood and thinks she already has it all worked out, is not an easy feat in writing. But Francesca Zappia accomplishes it with sensitivity, understanding (especially of the internet age and how it affects depression and other mental illnesses), and humour as well as drama. I was surprised by how funny this book actually is, coming from both new and familiar people in Eliza's circle, making jokes and managing to get a response - laughter - out of her as well as the reader.
Eliza Mirk, while a sensitive girl prone to obsessing over worst case scenarios, isn't typically self-conscious or insecure for an introvert. She just doesn't care. She prefers to be unseen, to remain safe everywhere, so why bother with her appearance or being social? She is shy enough round people that she is viewed as invisible at best and a freak at worst at her school. She has a rocky relationship with her fitness-and-sports-junkie parents, who are well-meaning but frustratingly out-of-touch, and she has nothing in common with her two outgoing and cheeky younger brothers, Sully and Church, so she doesn't pay much mind to what they do. Though she'll come to realize how much she doesn't know about her own family, who are only human like her, and are capable of empathy and care. She didn't know these things beforehand due to her own closed-off existence.
'Monstrous Sea' is what Eliza lives for passionately, and she will work to create new pages for her fans who don't know who she is every week, never breaking routine in three years. I related to her so much in my own horrible school days filled with shyness, loneliness, bullying, secrecy, mood swings and an overactive imagination, that I had to love her, even when her actions don't make much sense. Every introvert is different and views things differently, after all, some more dramatically than others.
Eliza's relationship with Wallace is sweet and meaningful; gradually moving from communicating through notes to talking more and more about themselves. The way they become a romantic pair in the middle of the book feels natural between two incredibly socially-awkward teens. I love the way they are written together - closely, warmly; comforting, as they share what they love (books! I'm in heaven!) and have lost with each other. Funny, tragic Wallace, who has a poet's unpretentious soul, would be another book boyfriend of mine, if not for his own stupid, selfish actions towards the end. This feels minor, however, when reviewing his character and backstory, and how beautiful a boy he is in the beginning and middle.
I don't think it's a spoiler to say that eventually Eliza's secret is outed. Every blurb and book jacket available tells you that's what happens, and it is an obvious development. It just happens in a way that is unexpected. I only wish I understood better why Eliza never tells Wallace that she is LadyConstellation in the months they've been dating. He will likely be thrilled since he loves 'Monstrous Sea' - something they share and talk about constantly, as fans - and he had poured his heart and soul, and risked rejection - which he fears more than anything - in telling her his own dark secret early in their relationship. She still doesn't tell him. It doesn't come across as an issue of courage or anxiety so much as self-indulgence; in spite of Eliza's development throughout the novel, the secret she has kept for so long is nonetheless more important to her than her boyfriend's feelings. Change, no matter how minor, is still too scary for her. Even after everything, she doesn't understand shared trust, nor does she try to. Sometimes Eliza's selfishness can be irritating.
One of the things in this book that reflects reality in fandom all too well is Eliza observing how shocked and disappointed some online users are to find out that LadyConstellation is a girl. When her name is LadyConstellation, and her avatar drawing is of a female. It's telling of how trolls only love to complain, since if it turned out the creator of 'Monstrous Sea' is a boy, homophobic insults would fill up comment sections and Twitter feeds fast and loud, leaving room for nothing else. They are not only bored, lonely, fragile and insecure enough to hate things considered girly and therefore weak - they hate women, the easy targets of their problems, for creating and expressing themselves in any way, but especially positively.
There are many other elements, themes and subplots in 'Eliza and Her Monsters' I could talk about. For example, the very interesting one about Olivia Kane, an author of a popular children's fantasy book series, who quit writing before completing the final installment, and cut herself off from society, nobody knowing what has become of her. It foreshadows Eliza's own anxiety revolving around her responsibility as a popular creator; she and her favourite author are kindred spirits. But I think that readers would fare better in going into this book not knowing everything about it, and coming to their own conclusions. Maybe I've already ruined a lot of the surprises 'Eliza and Her Monsters' has to offer, but I try not to.
It's so good. 'Monstrous Sea' looks and sounds interesting as well. I hope Francesca Zappia goes somewhere else with it in future books, if not a full story centering on it, in comic book or prose form.
A beautiful, charming and serious novel about the connection between reality and art. It is full of real people with real problems, and relationships and friendships online and offline, and the benefits and downsides of both. Does it get overly dramatic and contrived? I don't care. It's a story worth sharing with the world.
Life and art are precious. So is passion. They are so important. Never forget that.
Final Score: 4/5
No comments:
Post a Comment