Call It.

[redbrunja]

Has anyone read Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell?

Because I got it from the library and I don't know if I want to keep reading.

One, because having a fandom front and central in a book makes me a bit uncomfortable (ignore the woman typing behind the curtain!).

Two, because I have the feeling that she's going to ~learn a lesson~ about going out into the world and being less shy.

And three, because she's a slash fangirl, and I have no fucking patience for interludes that are the "canon" of her slash pairing and no fucking patience for slash being written about in a completely unexamined (i.e. ladies, what ladies, why should there be ladies?) way.

Comments

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Yup! Read it and wrote a review/article for it here: http://www.heroesandheartbreakers.com/blogs/2013/09/first-look-rainbow-rowell-fangirl-september-10-2013

I thought she did a good job with the fandom stuff for the most part. I find it kind of ludicrous that Cath's supposed to be a BNF but she writes the most chaste slash ever. Like they barely work up to kissing in her fic. But I get what the author was trying to do with it as a metaphor for her character.

Cath does learn a lesson by the end but it's a halfway compromise. She doesn't discard fic as a juvenile pursuit, which is where I feared it might go. She still writes and loves fic, but she also has friends and a boyfriend whereas at the start she only has her twin. I thought that part was fairly sensitively handled.

That being said, while it was good, Eleanor and Park was better, I thought.

[platypus]

I agree with all of this, though I also had a major embarrassment squick moment involving her disagreement with her writing professor. (And I skimmed the in-story fic, because it did not interest me at all.) But I enjoyed the story and the writing, and went on to read Eleanor and Park (which was definitely a better book).

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Oh right. That bit was surprising to me. That she honestly didn't have the savvy to know the professor wouldn't think that was acceptable when she seemed aware of the stigma of fanfic/fandom in general. A little bit contrived.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

Okay, thanks for the information.