Wings by Aprilynne Pike

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I went into the novel Wings by Aprilynne Pike expecting to unilaterally hate it.

I was only mildly disappointed.

I’ll admit: my low expectations were, in part, a reflection of sour grapes. I first heard of Wings on one publishing blog or another, where Pike bragged in comments that she didn’t have to query agents to get her manuscript read, but that it was passed on, instead, by a well-connected friend (the Internet suggests that this was Stephenie Meyer, who also blurbs Wings, laughably, as “a remarkable debut” on the novel’s front cover). Pike then immediately received a four book deal and had Disney option the film rights. As a struggling beginning novelist writing in the same genre, who knows other writers in a similar position, I recognize this sort of success as the kind that often only happens to either the wildly talented or the terrifically well-connected. My cynicism told me the latter was more likely true, though I hoped to be disappointed.

After all, Pike’s premise is, at least, creative, if not also weird and a little silly. Laurel is a blond, tall, beautiful home schooled girl attending public school for the first time. Her flirtations with a surprisingly popular and studly science nerd are suddenly curtailed when she discovers what seems to be her very first pimple. Over the course of a few days, this zit grows to epic proportions, swelling first to the size of a softball, then exploding overnight to reveal a wing-like flower on the center of her back. It turns out that Laurel’s a faerie (Pike’s spelling, not mine), and that faeries are plants, not animals. And that the thing on her back isn’t a pimple, and isn’t wings (don’t ask me about the title, then), but is, instead, a reproductive organ meant for manual diddling by sexy faerie men.

Unfortunately, the actual plot doesn’t develop far beyond this basic premise, and Pike’s writing fails to save the story from its inherent silliness.

In fact, I’d blame Pike’s writing for the book’s failure overall. The first two hundred-or-so pages of Wings read like a very clunky, very poorly executed draft. Pike’s prose is adverb heavy and relies too much on staging when dialog alone would suffice. Here’s one of my favorite passages, from the novel’s first chapter: “He stood and offered her his hand. He pulled her to her feet and grinned lopsidedly for a minute” (6).

Lopsidedly? That’s an awkward mouthful.

This sort of clunky phrasing would be more forgivable if it were more rare, but the novel is chock full of it. Here’s another winner, from page 60: “David stared with his mouth slightly open. He stood, hands at his waist, lips pressed together. He turned and walked to his bed and sat down with his elbows on his knees.”

Honestly, the repetitive sentence structure, the contradictory descriptors (is his mouth opened or closed?), and the draft-like quality of these passages drove me batty. I did something I’ve never before done on a published book: I grabbed a pen and started line editing. This helped me see some of Pike’s persistent prose problems: reducing the number of adverbs by half, alone, would have resulted in cleaner, more readable writing. Unfortunately, my own “editing” soon degraded to crass commentary on the characters in the novel, particularly Laurel.

Because Laurel is, unfortunately, a total bitch.

I’m all for realistic and complex characters in YA lit. Characters should breathe—they should be human, with flaws and foibles. But Laurel is neither complex nor realistic. She’s written as a petty, shallow, whining girl, but treated as a kind-hearted and flawless princess by both the narrator and the other characters in the book. On more than one occasion she complains about the fashion choices of those around her or the ugliness of those around her (the evil of ugliness and “asymmetry” being one of the novel’s overarching themes); she clearly plays the two male characters, Tamani and David, off one another and yet is treated like she’s all goodness and light. We’re supposed to believe, somehow, despite the inherent ugliness of her personality that, as David tells her, she’s both “awesome” and “impossible to stay mad at.”

David isn’t the novel’s only bumbling idiot. Laurel’s parents, particularly, act as no responsible parents would; their contrived blindness to Laurel’s myriad flaws (especially her eating habits—more on that in a minute) are later hand-waved away as being due to faerie magic that makes them forget all the weird things about their adopted daughter. However, that didn’t make the first two hundred and sixty pages, where we’re told repeatedly they’re such hippies that they don’t believe in doctors, how they’ve never taken Laurel to a doctor and even got her exempted from a school physical, any more bearable.

This is particularly true with regard to Laurel’s completely disordered eating habits. I know, I know—Laurel is a vegan because she’s a plant, but prior to the novel’s inception, and throughout most of it, her parents don’t know this, and somehow, still, they never bat an eye. We’re treated to passage upon passage of vividly disordered eating. Laurel’s diet consists of salads, strawberries, canned fruit, and soda. Her mother, a health nut, allows Laurel to guzzle Sprite because “she couldn’t argue with the 140 calories per can. That was 140 more than water. At least this way she knew Laurel was getting more calories in her system, even if they were ‘empty.’” (11). Later, in the same passage, her mother turns her back while Laurel eats “one peach half and about half a cup of juice” to give Laurel “a modicum of privacy.” But we’re told that, despite this, “Laurel felt like she’d lost some imaginary battle.” Heck, if eating a can of peaches is so fraught, how could Laurel’s mother, as a supposedly good and responsible parent, not drag her kid to a doctor, no matter how crunchy she is?

These passages, and later ones, where David snaps at a friend who inquires if Laurel’s ever sought treatment for her apparent inability to digest “fats” (milk products and meat—Laurel at one point becomes nauseated at the smell of leftovers) read like a classic description of anorexia. While I have faith in Pike’s young readership to tell fantasy from reality generally, I don’t doubt that these descriptions could also be triggering for those who have experienced eating disorders. What makes them disturbing isn’t only their vividness, or their specificity (though those don’t help), but the way that Laurel’s parents embrace these habits. Laurel hasn’t started her period, another classic symptom of anorexia, but we’re told that her mother “always shrugged it off.” Later, Laurel has a very disturbing conversation with her father where she points out that the kids at school think her eating habits are weird. He responds: “I don’t know anyone who eats more fruits and vegetables than you do. I think that’s healthy. And you haven’t had any problems, have you?”

Laurel, in a rare moment of astuteness, replies: “Have I ever been to a doctor?”

Good question, Laurel. If I were you, I’d want some answers, too.

I said at the beginning of the review that I didn’t unilaterally hate Wings, and that’s true. Once the plot finally kicks into gear—a silly story about some ugly trolls trying to steal her parents’ property—it becomes a much more readable novel. I’m not sure if the prose actually improved, or if I didn’t notice it once there was something happening beyond Laurel’s protracted journey of magical self-discovery. Unfortunately, this plot only starts in the last hundred pages of a nearly three hundred page book. Had Pike had an editor who pushed her a little more towards conciseness—shearing a hundred or so pages from the novel’s first two-thirds, reducing wordiness, tightening up the plot generally—Wings might not have been such an exc
ruciating experience. As it stands, though, I’m looking forward to not reading the next three sequels.

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