Fangirl: Book thoughts, Book 4

Rowell, Rainbow. Fangirl. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2013. Print.

I loved Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl.  SERIOUSLY. Usually, I want to give a book five stars on Good Reads and end up giving it four. This time, I started with four stars and made a conscious decision to go with five.  Let me tell you why. I decided that for a book to be amazing, it does not have to amaze the whole entire world. It just has to amaze one person. Since I’m the one rating and writing about it, it’s okay if that person is me.

This book introduces readers to Cather Avery, a college freshman who just happens to be famous on the internet for her fan fiction about the book and movie series Simon Snow. Simon is clearly supposed to be compared to Harry Potter.   Yet, through snippets of Cath’s popular stories and the books she’s read with her twin sister Wren, Simon slowly starts to have his own life.

At the same time, so does Cath. This isn’t really a story about fan fiction.  It’s a story about how Cath builds and rebuilds her life during her first year of college. By the end of the book, she learns to live with the terrifying, unstoppable monster of change.  She makes an unlikely friend of her spunky roommate Regan. She falls in love with a cheerful boy named Levi who constantly occupies her room.  Cath even starts to figure out how to have adult relationships with her family.   

Fangirl is a novel that will probably never be a movie.  I feel fairly confident in saying so, because Rowell writes about college, not high school. There’s no tear jerking graduation scene or standing ovation of any kind.  No one dies. No one gets married, engaged or pregnant. No one even begins to save the world, at least not in the story itself. There are several stories within the story, and the leading man has a prominent receding hairline at 21. I deeply care about these characters and would love to see them on screen, but they have zero franchise potential.  They actually watch fantasy movies instead of determining what the next big one will be.

Despite all this, and largely because of it, Fangirl is one those books I’ll never even come close to forgetting.  I could be 99 years old and still smile when I see it on a shelf, or randomly remember a certain scene.  I wish I’d written some of the more poetic passages.

Maybe the real reason I love this book so much is that Rowell writes mostly of events and emotions I've experienced in real life, directly or indirectly. Some lines are things I’ve actually thought.  When I stop and think about that for a second, it legitimately amazes me. I don’t think it’s ever happened before, and it’s not likely to happen again unless I write a book of my own.

Cather Avery and I have a lot in common. I've been in college, I've been in love in college,  and I've had plenty of assignments I desperately thought I’d never finish.  I've been somewhat obsessed with an unforgettable world of a magical British boarding school.

Furthermore, I actually know what it’s like to have a guy obviously flirt with me for several months of my freshman year and have no idea what he is doing. I swear. It happened.

I suppose I can admit that, like Cath, I have also read and adored fan fiction about the passionate romance of two teenage boys who supposedly hate each other in the original story. (In my case, the original story is Glee, not Harry Potter.) Crazy, right?  But as Cath’s story shows open minded readers, it also kind of beautiful, and great fun.  In an unofficial fandom like Rowell’s Simon/Baz one, people from all over the world can bond, create and imagine in ways that once seemed impossible.

All fandoms, official or not, claim lots of real talent and true friendships. This book elegantly and hilariously reminded me of something very important to me. It reminded me that all fans of fictional worlds are free to live productive and maybe even magical adult lives.   Our favorite characters do not and will not stop us.  Rather, they will always be waiting for us whenever we want or need them, just like Simon and Baz. Just like Cath, Levi, Wren and Regan.

PS. If I’m wrong about the Fangirl movie, I’ll just go into a fit of happy giggles. I’ll be absolutely thrilled.  Unless they mess it up.