After having had a sharply negative
reaction to Shut the Door, a novel about a dysfunctional family with
self-destructive teenage girls, featuring sex and self-cutting, written by a
teenaged girl, Amanda Marquit, I wondered whether I maybe had some
unacknowledged prejudice about the genre.  So it was a relief to read and
thoroughly enjoy Pure, a novel about a constantly arguing family with a
sexually precautious young teen daughter who expresses her anger by cutting her
arm, written by a teenaged girl, Rebecca Ray. 

Pure was originally
published in the UK in 1998 under the title A Certain Age, and was
released in the US in 2000.  Ray was born in 1980 and left high school at the
age of 16 to write this novel.  Its opening sentence is "I was about
thirteen when I started letting the boys feel me up." and it proceeds to
tell its story briskly.  The book’s narrator, Liz, is first involved with
several boys, and then gets one boyfriend who is abusive and unpleasant, but
she keeps on putting up with his behavior.  Liz’s family consists of her
parents and younger brother Michael, who she doesn’t pay much attention to. 
Her parents bicker all the time, and sometimes it seems like their marriage is
close to ending.  Liz herself does not take her schoolwork very seriously, and
spends her lunchtimes with her friends smoking joints. 

Despite the dark themes and
explicit scenes in the book, Ray keeps the tone pretty light for at least the
first half.  It reminded me of the series of books for teens that start with Angus,
Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, about the trials and tribulations of
being a teenaged girl, or the many humorous "chick-lit" novels that
have done so well especially in the UK.  Liz’s parents are embarrassing and her
friends have the same kinds of silly conversations that most teens have.  Her
father wants to be close to her, and makes many efforts to try to talk with her
and gain her trust, but her relationship with him is increasingly strained. 
Her relationship with her mother is better, and they are able to talk about
some of the things going on in Liz’s life without her mother becoming angry. 
Nevertheless, Liz keeps on making bad decisions and does not know how to sort
out her problems.

The story takes a worrying turn
when Liz starts dating an older man, Oliver, who tells her he is 27 when she
has just turned 14.  She is soon spending nights at his house, and her parents
don’t seem to mind.  One of her friends tells her that Oliver is an alcoholic
and a pedophile, but Liz does not believe her.  Yet she clearly is unhappy
because each time something happens that she has difficulty coping with, she
gets something sharp like a razor blade and uses it on her arm.  The tone of
the novel shifts as this relationship progresses and Liz’s behavior becomes
more extreme.  Ray manages to powerfully convey Liz’s sense of alienation
without simply saying that Liz is alienated.  Here’s a passage that shows Liz’s
train of thought:

I didn’t expect Oliver to apologize.  I don’t know,
it didn’t really feel like he had anything to apologize for.  It felt like the
whole thing was important in some way I didn’t understand, and it didn’t hurt
my chest anymore when I thought about his face.  It was strange, thinking about
all the stuff that had happened last night.  I felt very close to Oliver, close
to his distance even though that sounds stupid.  I felt like he must know about
my arm.  He’d know all about the way I felt and he would understand.  Looking
at it logically, of course, it couldn’t be that way.  He couldn’t know.  Still,
I guess that it was kind of nice to dream. (pp. 244-5)

The final hundred pages of the novel are especially
masterful, and the climax of the story is dramatic, yet providing no
resolution.  Ray manages to create an impression of motion being slowed down,
in the way that some people report motion being slowed down during a car
crash.  The writing is deceptively simple yet few authors have the talent of
Ray, so it is quite appropriate that the novel carries an endorsement from one
of America’s best authors of suburban dysfunction, A. M. Homes.  Pure is
a gem of a novel, and deserves a wide readership. 

Links:

·       
Review
of Shut the Door

·       
Review
of Bridget Jones’ Diary

·       
Review
of Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging

·       
Reviews
of books by A.M. Homes

·       
Amazon.co.uk
listing for A Certain Age

© 2005 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