{"id":973,"date":"2014-03-19T11:41:49","date_gmt":"2014-03-19T19:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.writinghope.com\/?p=973"},"modified":"2014-05-05T16:31:53","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T00:31:53","slug":"alienated-reading-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/alienated-reading-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Alienated (Reading Notes)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net\/books\/1384610045l\/13574417.jpg\" width=\"314\" height=\"475\" \/>Laugh-out-loud funny and emotionally relatable.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the time when teenagers feel alienated, it\u2019s because they haven\u2019t found their niche: they\u2019re running in that in-between zone that doesn\u2019t fit the cliques or stereotypes of their school or culture or region.<\/p>\n<p>Cara, in contrast, is at the top of her game. She\u2019s not driven by \u201cthe crowd\u201d but she\u2019s not self-isolated or socially inexperienced either. She\u2019s got a workable plan for her future, and becoming a world-famous host can only help that plan.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s because of her personal drive and ambition, along with her killer public speaking skills (she\u2019s captain of the debate team, too) that she\u2019s considered the ideal host for an intergalactic exchange-student program. While her older brother goes to live on another planet, one of that planet\u2019s young people comes to live in Cara\u2019s home.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">(Potential spoilers ahead: read at your own risk.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Aelyx is not impressed by earth, the family he is forced to live with, or the unnecessary extravagance of color and energy that now surrounds him. His plan is to get kicked off of earth as soon as possible, and return to the familiarity of home.<\/p>\n<p>These established personalities and the process of their growing closer to each other (come on, this can\u2019t possibly be a spoiler in a YA book!) makes for an enjoyable story, while raising some worthwhile social issues.<\/p>\n<p>Aelyx\u2019s success in getting people to distrust him results in the systematic isolation of everyone who cares about him. The portrayal of community-wide mobbing was unnerving and believable.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 60px;\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Overcoming-Mobbing-Recovery-Workplace-Aggression-ebook\/dp\/B00GSRWJ0S\/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1395532384&amp;sr=1-2&amp;keywords=mobbing\">Mobbing <\/a>is a phenomenon of bullying on a systemic scale, supported at multiple levels of hierarchy: the grunts, the peers, the overseers, working together to practically, physically, and emotionally shut out the individuals that don\u2019t fit the expectations of the majority.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>By establishing a vivacious, outgoing personality in Cara, the author did an effective job of showing how devastating such mobbing can be, before it ever turns physically violent.<\/p>\n<p>Possible negatives:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In this story we have a vivacious redhead bringing a gray planet\u2019s model citizen emotionally to life, and that may be too cliche for some people. On the other hand, familiarity doesn\u2019t need to breed contempt, and I especially enjoyed how hard Cara worked to find him food that was \u201cbland\u201d enough. It was a nice example of acceptance and real hospitality.<\/li>\n<li>Cara\u2019s boyfriend is sexually pushy, and while that\u2019s used to show how he\u2019s not a great guy, the main characters eventually get handsy, and it\u2019s played straight\u2013 i.e., they aren\u2019t being creeps.<\/li>\n<li>The emotional mobbing eventually becomes a physical mob. Lives are risked, lost, and people get hurt.<\/li>\n<li>Teenagers make major life-decisions that are probably non-reversible. The significance is addressed, though, and not passed over lightly.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Things I enjoyed:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A solid contrast between the two worlds.\n<ul>\n<li>The use of different technologies and foods, and communication styles was internally consistent and solid<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The (painfully) accurate portrayal of a community shutting out its own. It\u2019s so specific and deliberate and chilling.<\/li>\n<li>No sex in the story (yes, I care about that)<\/li>\n<li>Parents who are obviously in love (with a great in-story <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/LampshadeHanging\">acknowledgement <\/a>of it)<\/li>\n<li>Parents who are involved with their kids\u2019 lives without being jerks<\/li>\n<li>The Googling of how-to-kiss. Cracked me up.<\/li>\n<li>Fabulous arguing-in-front-of-others moment broken up by the crunching of popcorn.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Iffies:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The motivation of the aliens in connecting to the \u201cprimitive\u201d people on earth.\n<ul>\n<li>Related to that the flip-flop\/wishy-washy of yes we want our (grey planet) kids to hook up with your (Earth) kids, no wait that\u2019s sick, no wait, it\u2019s a viable plan.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The growing bitterness of the female exchange student, based on the non-stop sexual harassment she endured in her earth placement. This is portrayed as negative, but never addressed by any authority figures.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t tell if that was commentary on misogynistic culture, or the result of the girl never reporting it.<\/li>\n<li>The we-want-out-CRAP-they-want-us-out confusion\/inconsistency.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Recommended?\u00a0 Absolutely.<\/p>\n<p>(This book was provided by the publisher free for my review through Netgalley.com)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Laugh-out-loud funny and emotionally relatable.<br \/>\nWhile her older brother goes to live on another planet, one of that planet\u2019s young people comes to live in Cara\u2019s home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,21],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/Alienated.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3TVXH-fH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":991,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions\/991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/untanglingtales.com\/WritingHope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}