Review: Shut Out by Kody Keplinger
Shut Out by Kody Keplinger
Recommended.
Second books can be tricky. Even when authors produce standalone novels, eschewing the literary world’s current hunger for sequels and series, they have a difficult task ahead of them: producing work that’s more than just a retread of earlier success. In some ways, I know that comparisons between Kody Keplinger’s first novel, The DUFF, and her second, Shut Out, are inevitable. It’s not just their bright, girly covers that tie them together but thematics (a teenage girl’s ownership of her sexuality) and character (the poor family of origin with a complicated past; the control-freak girl; the supportive friends). But, while Shut Out does occasionally falter in much the same way that The DUFF did, it also stands quite capably on its own merits.
First for the bad: I thougt that the opening chapters of Shut Out suffered from the same sometimes-awkward writing that I noticed a year ago when reading The DUFF. The dialog in both begins overly deliberate and sometimes clunky; there are too many awkward physical descriptors and said bookisms. But you’d be wrong to judge either book on these first chapters. As Keplinger warms up, so do her prose stylistics, becoming more natural and confidently voiced. More, I was quickly enveloped in the story.
I suspect quite a bit of what appeals to me about Keplinger’s books is how familiar the lives of her protagonists feel. Shut Out brings us another working class family. Lissa lives at home with her dad, who has been wheelchair-bound since the car accident that also took away her mother, and with her older brother, who has dropped out of graduate school to help out at home. The men of her family are fans of the local high school football team, so when Lissa brings home Randy, a high school football star, he quickly becomes a part of the family. There’s something real, tender, and sad about the way the men in this book bond while Lissa makes them food and mothers them.
This is the first of Lissa’s many foolish and real choices in Shut Out. Like Bella Swan, she falls into a caretaker role that isn’t entirely fair. However, it was clear to me that this domesticity wasn’t necessarily meant to be a positive trait, but rather a realistic reaction to feeling motherless and adrift and to having one’s needs ignored by the grown-ups around her.
People generally ignore Lissa’s needs. Her boyfriend, for example, is so embroiled in a rivalry with the high school soccer team that he abandons their trysts entirely to play pranks with his teammates. Lissa finally gets fed up—she proposes a sex strike against the boys on both teams until they agree to abandon the rivalry entirely.
This sex strike is the central premise of Shut Out, and its selling point (it’s a retread of the Lysistrata). As Lissa unites with the other girls, she begins to struggle against the pressures and stereotypes they all face. I found this message more organic and interesting than the one found in The DUFF. Honestly, I never entirely believed Keplinger’s first book’s message that “we all feel like DUFFs sometimes”—far more convincing to me was the message here that “teenage girls face all sorts of sexual pressures and deserve to be in control of their sexual lives despite the schizophrenic attitudes of our society toward female sexuality.” It’s a messier, and less optimistic theme, maybe, but it rang truer for me. As in our world, in the world of Shut Out some girls do it and some girls don’t. But nearly all of them struggle against their reputations.
But far from being a merely didactic undercurrent, this message actually provides a dramatic reveal about one of the characters—one I didn’t see coming at all, and which spurred me to page back through the book and examine it in this new light. It’s a neat little narrative trick, and one with Keplinger utilizes deftly, clearly illustrating her control over her plot and characters.
As the story progresses, Lissa continues to stumble forward. Again, she’s a protagonist who often makes terrible choices, who is often blind to the truth in front of her, who is sometimes selfish and stubborn if only to cover up her own weaknesses. Like Bianca from The DUFF, she suffers from certain control issues—but they’re more fully fledged here, and realistically problematic. I found Lissa to be a terrifically messy heroine. Her mistakes might not be fun for teenagers to read, if only because they likely hit a little too close to home, but they’re certainly true to life. She’s struggling—with her mother’s death, with her father’s disability, with change and with sex and with growing up.
Her problems aren’t all solved in the end, although Keplinger again concludes on an optimistic note. We’re given the impression that Lissa is a work-in-progress—as we all are, really. And as a reader who craves honesty even from books emblazoned with neons and pinks, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Disclosure: This book was generously provided by the publisher for review purposes. I’m also personally acquainted with the author.
Phoebe
Phoebe is a 20-something writer who lives in New York State with her husband and cat. She is a dork, not a geek or a nerd.
Her debut novel, Starglass, will be released from Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers in Summer 2013.
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