Reflections on "Criss Cross"

Art, whether it's writing or photography or a movie, is a little slice of life. Photos, for instance, capture moments -- like the moments before your date arrives for prom, or someone's first kiss after getting married, or when your new puppy sees his home for the first time. These little slices have a built-in editing system: you don't take pictures of the boring stuff, like doing laundry or doing your algebra homework. 


The same thing can hold true for movies and writing. In movies and books, we meet characters and we follow them on their adventures, but writers edit their characters' stories to make them exciting. There are parts of our characters' lives that are left out because... well, they're just not that engaging, or they aren't relevant to the main point of the story. It's because these stories are "slices of life," pieces put together to tell a story or a teach a lesson-- they're not like exactly like real life.


 I was thinking about this because in an interview with USA Today, Lynne Rae Perkins, author of Criss Cross said that when she was growing up, she needed assurance that "life doesn't always happen like it does in movies and books, but that's OK."  Criss Cross seems to reflect that idea. It's about a group of 14-year-olds coping with the everyday concerns of teenagers: boyfriends, girlfriends, parents, clothes and feeling different. One review of the book criticized it for not having enough plot. "Nothing happens at all," writes one reviewer. Other readers appreciated the pace and the fact that these teenagers weren't living thrilling, glamorous lives, but more realistic ones. (Read a more positive review here .) 


The "slices of life" in Criss Cross are put together, maybe, with the point of showing that the average teenager's life isn't like a perfect snapshot, or like an epic movie with a grand soundtrack. Sometimes, things don't happen to all of us. 


I just wonder if that makes the book more enjoyable or not. What do you think? Sometimes I like escaping to books that don't mirror my life at all. That's part of the fun with art: those slices and snapsots and film clips have the ability to whisk you away and show you something new. So, what do you think about books that stick closer to reality? 


Let me know what you think.
Happy reading!
~Meredith