The children of the night

When I say that reading Aster Glenn Gray's Diary of a Cranky Bookworm feels like spending several delightful hours with an old friend, this is just about the least surprising statement in the world I could possibly make, because:

a.) Aster is indeed a longtime friend, and also
b.) both the book and Sage-as-protagonist are drawing explicit inspiration from many other teen-girl-writer bildungsromans (I Capture the Castle, the Montmaray trilogy, the collected oeuvre of LM Montgomery, etc.) that are beloved old friends to me, and also
c.) every character and interpersonal dynamic in this book does indeed feel like an exact portrait of someone I either was or knew in high school, with pitch-perfect and sometimes painful accuracy

Sage Perrault, Our Heroine, is an imaginative, judgmental misanthrope from a small town in Minnesota who was fortunate enough to form a small tight friends group in elementary school who also proved themselves worthy of her affection by being precocious readers:

- Georgie, Sage's best friend since kindergarten, when her mother (terrified of Sage becoming a miserable loner like Gay Cousin Rachel who Never Comes Home For Christmas) seized on the other precocious reader in class and started arranging playdates with feverish speed. Sensible, driven, raised by an overprotective mom who never got out of town and is thus double determined to Get Out Of Town. Friends outside of Sage: church youth group
- Arielle, the dramatic friend, with inattentive divorced parents, a moderate case of main character syndrome, and a rich life of the imagination often expressed through implausible lies about her past. Passionate in her enthusiasms but will not stop obnoxiously sending you fanfiction that you do not care about. Friends outside of Sage: drama club
- Hilary, the chillest friend; always delighted to run with any bit that she's given and make it more fun and funny, but holds her own emotional cards close to the chest. Has a very nice boyfriend and never talks about him. Wonderful to hang out with at any time but is planning for pre-med so will almost certainly be far too busy to stay in close touch with anyone when they scatter. Friends outside of Sage: almost the entire school, everyone loves Hilary because she's a delight, and the fact that she chooses to eat lunch with Sage and Hilary and Arielle is frankly a great compliment to all of them

This has left peacefully free to hold onto grudges also formed in elementary school, continue happily hating the kids in her class that she has hated since they were all eight, and avoid going through the effort of speaking to anybody else. Unfortunately, it's senior year! College is looming, and with it new tensions and unpleasant questions, such as:

- can being a precocious reader really continue as the be-all and end-all of Sage's perception of her own self-worth? and how can she write a college essay about it?
- how much of what Arielle's told them all about her plans for college is normal bad ideas, and how much is outright lies, and how much is in fact a cry for help?
- how can Sage break it to beloved best friend Georgie that she doesn't want to go to the University of Minnesota Minneapolis, which is the ultimate apex of Georgie's ambitions, and instead kind of wants to attend a small liberal arts college somewhere in the middle of nowhere?
- but if she doesn't go to college with Georgie, will she ever successfully speak to another human being?
- and on that topic, is it possible that a Longtime Beautiful Enemy is in fact a human being worth talking to, to despite the fact that she's bad at spelling and was mean in middle school?

Sage, early on: Arielle always tries to blow on whatever flickering embers of bisexuality she finds within herself, which I admire. I'd be far more inclined to play Whack-A-Mole. And obviously part of the book is also that Sage has to stop playing Whack-A-Mole, but the big emotional question of the Longtime Beautiful Enemy subplot is less "will they kiss" [though they do, eventually] than "can Sage build an emotional connection with a new person, at the same time as she's facing fundamental shifts in all her other most important relationships?" At its heart this is a book about friendship in all its different shapes, the different kinds of ties you build with different people and the way those change with you as you grow.

And also, of course, about being judgmental about books and films and art. There's a whole other conversation that I feel like I've been coincidentally having in various different contexts about the purpose of the literary cross-reference in this sort of text; I am definitely one of the people for whom there's a profound self-indulgent pleasure in watching characters react to another work [Kage Baker's infamous Cyborgs Watch D.W. Griffith scene my beloved; what a bad idea to spend a whole chapter on it and what a delight it was for me personally] as long as I don't believe that the author believes that all right-thinking people should agree with the character's opinions. Fortunately I am in no danger of this with Sage. Sage has a LOT of opinions about books and films and art, and I disagree with many of them but so do many of Sage's friends; this, too, is one of the important shapes of friendship.