When Stella was in the sixth grade,
her parents held a birthday party for her and died from accidental drug
overdoses during the party.  They were regular users.  Stella got sent to
foster parents, Simon and Shana Roth, who have never loved her.  Now that she
is set to graduate from high school and go to Princeton in the fall, Stella
doesn’t think she will ever see them again after she leaves home.  Now that she
is ready to leave high school, it no longer matters to her and she stops caring
about her classes.  In fact, in a deadpan sort of way, she does not care about
her future at all.  She does not love anyone and she feels no real connection
with others.  She has a boyfriend, but it is just sex between them.  Strangely,
the person she feels closest to is the most aggravating person she knows: her
grandfather, Donald, who has always been unpleasant to her and is now in a
residential home hating his declining years.  He hasn’t even got the strength to
kill himself.  Stella goes out of her way to visit Donald even though he
continues to be angry and ungrateful.  Maybe one of the few acts of care she
can contemplate is helping Donald do what his is unable to do by himself. 

Like the Red Panda is a strange
novel, because Stella’s family history and her senioritis don’t go far to
explain her interest in death.  She is alienated from her life and she does not
feel pride at her achievements or pleasure at the prospect of finally escaping
from her foster parents.  She has social skills but she does not have any close
friends; she has stopped going to some of her classes, but she does to others
and she can’t even be bothered to fully drop out from school.  Everything seems
equally pointless.  The story chronicles her last two weeks of high school in
diary form, with contemplations of her life full of the darkest humor. 

Stella clearly is going through a
crisis, but it is low-key and confused, and until the end of the novel the
reader gets little sense of how extreme it is.  Alienation is a common
experience for young people in large high schools with dysfunctional families,
but most people get through it.  So the conclusion of the novel is something of
a surprise, and may leave the reader bemused.  Nevertheless, Like the Red
Panda is a well-crafted work and Stella is a narrator with subtle
charisma. 

© 2004 Christian
Perring. All rights reserved.

Christian
Perring, Ph.D., is Academic Chair of the Arts & Humanities
Division and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Dowling College, Long Island. He is also
editor of Metapsychology Online Review.  His main research is on
philosophical issues in medicine, psychiatry and psychology.

Categories: Fiction