Running on Empty

HELLO AGAIN

I can't remember the last time I read a book and thought, "You know, I understand why people think burning books is a good idea." Oh, wait, yes I can. What a shame that the first YA book I get the time to read after two months of doctoral coursework (read: voluntary suicide) is such a dud.

Fitting, then, that this book was available for a dime at a library book sale. No, really, a dime, and I just happened to have one. You can't get anything for a dime anymore. A dime can't even buy you two nickels. I tried it at the bank and they said go away. I said I have a right to be here. They said we don't know how long you've been living in our break room, but it stops now. I said fine.

Don't click. Please, don't. I've never been so serious.

This book, by English author Julia Donaldson, is set in Scotland. Right away, there are two problems:
1. I may have Scottish ancestry, but the way their spoken language is written is maddening, and there are enough apostrophes in it to I don't know a good punchline for such a lousy setup.
2. The text on Donaldson's website is all Comic Sans. Therefore, I must attempt to destroy her.

The story itself is about a girl, Leo, who runs away from her aunt and uncle, her primary caretakers after the death of her parents. For some reason, when a kid in Scotland runs away from home, it makes the front page of the paper. Either it was a slow news day or the fine people of Scotland get their world news from around the cracker barrel. Anyway, running factors heavily into this story, for about, oh, two pages. Leo, in typical fashion, hasn't thought far beyond simply running away and is starving; she steals some donuts and is chased by the vendor, a nice young man named Finlay who becomes her best friend and ally. They befriend some invalid woman who somehow is released from an asylum. She yells and screams madcap things, which is supposed to be funny, I think? Yeah, nothing like making fun of the deranged, and then making some political commentary about how her shady drinking buddies only come around when her welfare check arrives. Kids love that stuff. They eat it up and talk about the pitfalls of the socialist model on snapchat and instagram.

As if that weren't enough, Leo is pursued by her uncle, who may just be a pedophile who talks to birds. What?  Oh, and Leo RUNS away from him, so there's your titular significance.

Within this mishmash mix-up of weirdos and pederasts, Leo attempts to find her identity as she attempts to track down her father's side of the family. HOWEVER, the entire story is compromised by several plot holes, flat characters, and the fact that it's her first and only book for people over the age of 7. Somehow, Donaldson won an award for positively portraying people with mental health issues. Did they even read this book? Mary the nut job is played for laughs, and if she isn't, she's just played to be a nut, with no redeeming qualities, over than breezily giving shelter to Leo. The rest of the time she's howling Johnny Cash lyrics and twirling in circles. There isn't anything to Mary, but of course, Leo and Finlay care for her, and her plot point is beleaguered the way it's shoehorned in...and then resolved through exposition. EXPOSITION. Come on. That's like killing Hamlet off-stage, and Rosencrantz & Guildenstern lumber onstage to describe his demise. "Bet you thought we were dead! Nope, we were too stupid die. Now, about the guy who's been whining throughout this entire play..." Not that this is even close to Shakespeare.

So, this was a tough 220 pages to navigate. The format is sort of neat; points to Donaldson for splitting up the sections with headings for the parts that center on Leo and Finlay and the person talking to the birds (I already spoiled that one, boo hoo). It works for a while but becomes tedious, as Leo's sections are in the first person, and the rest in the third.

And what's the deal with Finlay being ridiculed for experimenting with goth style? Why are we doing this to a subgroup of people? As if it's a phase that needs to be overcome. For a novel that's supposed to be about finding like-minded people and acceptance from others, this is a gross misplay.

Skip this one. Not even worth reading it to heckle.

NEXT TIME, I YELL ABOUT

A book for which I have high expectations: the heavy metal romance novel. In high school, I had down the heavy metal part, but the romance was absent and/or catastrophically present. I'm putting all my leftover angst and encyclopedic knowledge of the genre into this one. Let's just say, no matter how disappointing this one is, it can't be worse than the tripe I just reviewed.

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BORING STUFF

Running On The Cracks
Julia Donaldson
2009 Henry Holt & Co