This is Niven’s second Young Adult novel (though she has also written adult fiction and non-fiction), but the first one I have read by her – apparently, she was celebrated as a NY Times bestseller for All the Bright Places. I should begin by saying straightaway that having read Holding Up the Universe, I do intend to read her other YA novel too; Niven is quite readable, light without being frothy, and enjoyable.
Holding Up the Universe features a fat girl protagonist – the term ‘fat girl’ is what is used in the novel itself – and a male protagonist who is a popular guy but secretly suffering with prosopagnosia, or face blindness, the inability to recognise even loved ones by face. Libby’s story is that after her mother died very suddenly, part of her reaction was to eat excessively, until she weighed 653 pounds, and had to literally be cut out of her own house in a rescue. When we meet her, Libby has lost 302 pounds, and is rejoining high school as a junior after years of not being able to attend school. Jack Masselin is a mixed-race boy who is cool, popular, apparently confident, and brought up with decent values. He hides his prosopagnosia condition (which he later believes he caused by jumping off a roof when he was 6 years old and hitting his head) from the world, and tries to get by just by ‘identifiers’ – visual clues based on hair, clothes, objects people carry, mannerisms, body language, sizes and shapes, etc. Being an intelligent boy, he manages to get away with much, but on occasions, his inability to recognise people lands him in serious trouble. The story is of course about how Libby and Jack connect, played out against the background of high school with its usual crowd of some cool kids, some mean kids, some nice ones, some messed up ones.
Niven creates quite endearing characters, but they are just a little too good to be true – heroes are too heroic, and villains are too villainous, and minor characters are two dimensional. Libby is depicted as beautiful, elegant in her movements, smelling like sunshine, with symmetrical in features, a superb dancer, bright, articulate, courageous, self-aware, eager, undauntable, matured beyond her years, etc etc. All alongside or despite being fat. Almost as if Niven has to make her out to be a superwoman just to counter the depiction of her over-weightness. In an ironic way, Niven’s writing confounds the very point she may be trying to make – that fat is only going to be acceptable as a heroine is you are perfect and adorable in every other possible way. And oh, she has a magnificent relationship with her remaining parent, who is also incredibly cool as a dad and utterly loving and perfect. It is all a bit much. That said, she is a good enough author that Libby is rather sweet, extremely likeable as a character, and real enough to charm if you suspend disbelief even just a little. Even when Libby strips down to a purple bikini in the hallways of her school and hands out 400 copies of her “Treatise for the World” as a reaction to being bullied and having notes shoved into her locker about being unwanted, it is just on this side of brave and original, rather than absurd and attention seeking. The Treatise says things like:
“Believe it or not, I actually have a family who loves me and I also have friends. I’ve even made out with boys. […] Person Who Wrote That Letter, I’m pretty damned delightful. I’ve got a great personality and a great brain and I’m strong and I can run. I’m resilient. I’m mighty. I’m going to do something with my life because I believe in myself. I may not know what that something is yet but that’s only because I am limitless. […] Life’s too short to judge others. It is not our job to tell someone what they feel or who they are. […] YOU ARE WANTED. Big, small, tall, short, pretty, plain, friendly, shy. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, not even yourself. Especially not yourself” 316-7. It reads like a standard and not particular original pep talk, rehearsing the old cliches. But not tediously.
Compared to a few other YA authors, Niven is not necessarily the strongest of writers. Her writing is a little pedestrian. She has not John Green’s knack with language. She has not Rainbow Rowell’s ability to create enchanting characters and feelings. But like the best of YA authors, Niven creates teenaged protagonists who are unusual and/or quirky, not run-of-the-mill, protagonists who are different but not afraid to be different, although they don’t go out of their way to try to be different. These YA protagonists which capture the readers’ hearts are all matured beyond their years, especially emotionally matured, extremely capable of love, very giving and forgiving. Usually, they love reading and are avid readers. Usually they have some secret they are hiding. Usually they have very good relationships with supportive parents in the background. There are surprising commonalities in these protagonists across the genre.
It is also typical that in this genre, chapters tend to be very short, clearly demarcated, and often interspersed with either different characters’ POVs, or else script from messaging exchanges. Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why is a case in point, where the protagonist listens to 8 cassettes and the structure is divided up to both past and present as well as by each side of the cassettes listened to. Niven’s chapters are extremely short indeed, alternating between Libby and Jack – a little too predictably perhaps. But it makes for easy keeping track and short attention spans!
There is a clear difference between simplicity and somewhat pedestrian writing. Louis Sachar’s writing is deceptively simple, but there is marvellous pacing, careful plot development, and brilliant imagination of course. Niven keeps you turning the pages eagerly, plot driven, clear protagonists to identify with – but, well, maybe I am too demanding as a reader, but I guess not every YA writer can be a John Green, with his level of subtlety, his inimitable writing style, his flair for dialogue – and it is not fair to expect them to be. To continue in the hyper-critical vein nevertheless, where Green’s protagonists are remarkable by sheer personality, Niven’s protagonists are mostly remarkable for having certain traits like fatness or prosopagnosia; their personalities are fairly non-descript actually.
All that said, I would still advocate for Niven to be read; it will be worth your time, but it unlikely to transport you or change your life, or even your mind, much.
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