We had our very first book club meeting at Kayla's last night to discuss Impossible. I think we can all agree that the evening was a success. Kayla was a great hostess and set the bar high, as Bess said. I, for one, know that there's no way I'll be able to even compete with the food and drinks she offered us... So I'm not even going to try :)
Kayla made a delicious pomegranate beet salad and yummy drinks with St. Germain and champagne. She grabbed some ideas from our friend, Dulcie's blog, Two Tarts.
Even the straws and napkins were cute... Oh, and I promise, we did talk about the book. We just talked about a lot of other stuff while eating on Kayla's back patio.
What is better than having some drinks, some good eats, and discussing a book with a few of your best friends?
It rained for about 20 minutes, so we had to bring the party inside, where our real discussion was held. We tried to video several segments of our book discussion, but it was pretty hand-done and much of what we said about the book wasn't captured on tape. We'll share the videos with you in the next post.
But for now, I can tell you that we were all kind of disappointed with the novel. It had a lot of potential and got good reviews. Unfortunately, it just didn't seem to live up to that potential for several reasons, which Bess will summarize here:
**Spoiler alert!!
When we tossed around book titles at our very first book club get-together, we were uniformally intrigued by Impossible. But when we had our book club discussion on the YA novel, it was clear that we were disappointed by it, some more than others--no one gave it a higher rating than a 3. In short, we felt like the author brought up big issues like date rape, mental illness, and true love, but either wasn't able or wasn't willing to adequately deal with them. For instance, the boy who raped Lucy was possessed by someone else's spirit and then died, so his culpability and her shame and anger were washed away. We loved how the author brought in the song "Scarborough Fair," we loved learning about the different versions of the song and the folklore, and we loved the puzzle. We just thought the characters, tension, and themes fell flat, which was the one word Melisa used to describe the book.
|
What was your reaction to the book?
**Warning: Spoilers**
ReplyDeleteI thought the book was really pretty disappointing. Like Bess says above, the treatment of the "big issues" was thin. (I like the point y'all made that having the rapist be possessed and then immediately killed really white-washes most everything that is difficult about that situation.) However, just as disappointing, for me, was the fact that the fantastical elements were also quite weak. The Elfin Knight was uninteresting, his motives were flimsy and unclear. And the "impossible" tasks were solved in such a pat way. They should have been riddles...anything remotely interesting or clever.
In short, the book seemed to me to be not much more than a melodramatic teen love story. I wanted to like it; so I feel like a grouch.
Ditto what Scott said.
ReplyDeleteI found the book disturbing, perhaps more so because it is directed at teenage girls. As mentioned in the post, it treated heavy topics lightly. It used teen date rape as a device to further the fantastical plot line. It glorified teen pregnancy and teen marriage, without touching on any of the difficulties involved.
What I find even more appalling is that it fits the mold of a growing genre of YA books that glorify all sorts of difficult and abusive behavior towards women: teen pregnancy, obsessive boyfriends (Twilight), violence. What a disturbing trend.
I found the beet salad recipe here:
ReplyDeletehttp://emilystyle.blogspot.com/2010/10/recipe-beet-and-pomegranate-salad.html
This one's a keeper. Delish.
I have to thank Evan for making the tart for us. He changed it slightly from the recipe on Dulcie's blog, using a cilantro pesto base and skipping the prosciutto. Thanks for the idea, Dulcie!
Good points, Scott and Christina. We also thought there could have been more magic and intrigue, and way less "issues," since the author didn't deal with them anyway.
ReplyDeleteI am loving this cute blog! And cilantro pesto? Sounds perfect!
ReplyDeleteFun Blog! The pictures are great.
ReplyDelete