Review: XVI by Julia Karr

Posted on January 18, 2011 by Phoebe 4907 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebenorth.com%2F2011%2F01%2F18%2Freview-xvi-by-julia-karr%2FReview%3A+XVI+by+Julia+Karr2011-01-18+18%3A43%3A20Phoebehttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.phoebenorth.com%2F%3Fp%3D490

XVI by Julia Karr

XVI is not a feminist novel.

I’m opening my review with this caveat because, as someone who owns a dog-eared copy of The Feminine Mystique, whose heroes are Margaret Atwood and Ursula Le Guin, and who has, at times, stopped shaving her armpits (sometimes one just can’t be bothered), accounts of feminist content in Julia Karr’s debut were definitely a selling point for me.

The initial premise of XVI make it sound as if it has feminist potential. In the near-future, girls are allowed to have sex on their sixteenth birthdays; at this time, they’re tattooed with the roman numerals “XVI” on their wrists to advertise their sexual availability. In public, they’re sexually harassed, raped, and assaulted, but in private, lower-class women are expected to maintain their purity so that they might be elected to serve as female companions to high ranking men on colonies out in space, a career move that their government promises will elevate their families above their impoverished origins.

But, though this is, undeniably, a discussion of the dual pressures that young girls face in our society both to be sexual and remain pure, the ultimate conclusions of XVI seemed to me to be little more than tut-tutting about the sluttiness of teens. And therein lies the problem with this sort of narrative, particularly when it’s aimed at teens: too much of a focus on the evils of sexuality; the animalistic, uncontrollable urges of men; and the goodness of girls who choose to abstain, and readers are left with something that’s no better than a fifties morality tale where our intrepid heroine ends up pregnant, destitute, or dead—all because she chooses to have sex.

And this is what happens to girls in XVI who, you know, do it. Or even want to do it. They end up homeless, murdered, raped, or burned-beyond-recognition. Most of the men in this universe are pedophiliac bogeymen who want little girls as their slaves, sexual or otherwise. We know that our hero Nina Oberon has depth because she’s squicked by the idea of having sex—we know that her friend Wei is truly awesome because she doesn’t have sex, either, despite the fact that she’s legally allowed to do so. We know that the designated love interest, Sal, is an okay guy because he tells Nina that he doesn’t want to do it, either. He just likes kissing.

(My apologies, but I didn’t find this very realistic for a teenage boy. Not that all teenage boys are unmitigated horn-dogs or anything like that, but surely he wouldn’t mind having sex?)

In this way, XVI sets up a false dichotomy for girls: “defend” your virginity, and have depth, and don’t die (or have lighter fluid poured on your face, and be set on fire), or be a shallow, mindless “sex-teen” who wears revealing clothing, enjoys flirting, and ultimately bites it in the end.

(Significant, too, I think, that women in this society are protected from STDs, but not pregnancy . . . why? Really? Why? I don’t get what benefit this would have to anyone in this society.)

The only hint at complexity here is during a scene where Nina realizes that—oh, my my!—she might actually enjoy having sex. I had hopes that this would lead to some discussion of healthy and safe ways for teens to explore their sexuality, but instead, she’s relieved of the possible burden of doing it when Sal tells her that he doesn’t want her to be a “sex-teen” either. Phew! All this would be fine, except there’s no hint of the real, myriad joys of sex, or how a teenager can keep herself safe and explore her sexuality in this world. Maybe it’s something that Karr plans to explore in future volumes, but it’s just too simplistically stated here, a stark reduction of the reality of adolescent life into a black-or-virgin-white morality. Karr’s argument is the same one that teenagers are getting in their abstinence-only sex ed classes, and it’s a fundamentally whacked, harmful one. Any way I can get an old copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves packaged with this book? I feel like we’ve fallen so far since the nineteen seventies.

So, no, XVI is not a feminist book.

Apart from these rather important issues, XVI is a mixed-bag. It has some of the silliest world building I’ve seen from a YA dystopian—goofy slang abounds, including “emo-detectors,” “sex-teen,” and “trannies.” And the writing, generally, is quite slip-shod. There were quite a few run-on sentences in my ebook that did not seem to be for stylistic effect. Transitions between scenes were abrupt and jarring. Dialogue was wooden. At times, the book seemed unfocused—though the back-cover copy promised that it was about the quasi-feminist issues I discuss above, the bulk of the story was really about Nina recovering from her mother’s death, joining a rebellion, escaping her murderous almost-step-father, and trying to find her supposedly-dead father (I won’t spoil this plot point, but I will say that when we reach a resolution, it’s an entirely listless, uninteresting one).

But XVI did have something going for it: the characters. Nina and her friends were, without exception, well-rendered and interesting. More, they were incredibly true-to-life. Even Sandy, Nina’s sex-teen friend with whom she has a somewhat combative relationship, was sympathetic; their complicated friendship reminded me of fading friendships I shared with other girls as a teenager. And Nina has two male friends—Mike and Derek—real, platonic friends who act like real, messy boys. I can’t recall any YA novel I’ve read lately that’s done guy friends nearly so well.

(Done less well? Awesome-side-character Wei’s stereotype of an Asian-mystic mother. A scene where she applies herbal medicine to Nina’s wounds and shows her a magic box that’s “around 794 years old” was just ridiculous, both for its unsubtle stereotyping and its needless specificity.)

Likewise, Nina’s emotional situation, the story of grief over her mother’s death, of caring for her little sister while balancing life with her new group of friends, was realistic and compelling. For me, this was the real heart of the novel—not the poorly-conceived dystopic elements. Karr seems to genuinely understand the emotional situation of teenagers, and she knows how to craft them in all their thorny glory. Ally Condie could learn something from her, I think.

Unlike Condie, Karr has significant room to grow on a prose and pacing level. But her approach to teenagers is still excellent, despite my feminist reservations about her chosen themes. There’s promise here, undeniably—even though XVI was sort of a hammy, poorly-conceived outing, I’ll be keeping an eye out for Karr’s future works.

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