Guess what? Mary and Emily are back again. This time, we’ve got a brand new YA BOOK CLUB for you. And oh boy, it’s a book. Don’t read on unless you’re okay with having the whole book spoiled for you. We say go ahead and let it be spoiled. Sorry, we didn’t like this one. Let’s get into it!
Mary: So, I’m just going to go ahead and state off the bat that I did not like this book. I wanted to like it so much, but I just couldn’t get into it. I did pick this book, but I admittedly didn’t have a good reason to do it. After months of seeing the gorgeous cover at Books-A-Million, I finally caved and bought the book. My copy has a clear plastic cover that overlays with a printed hardcover. It’s beautiful.
The book was not.
Emily: I did not own this book. Mary made me buy it to do this book club post. I want my money back. I’m going to make Mary compensate me for the cost of the book and the hours wasted reading it. Just kidding. Unless...
Mary: Hahaha! I cannot compensate you, but please know that I was right there with you suffering. Let’s talk about the voice of this book. It’s from the first person perspective of Pablo Neruda Rind, a young man who should be in college, but is instead working in a bodega (not really--it’s more like a fancy health food store than what I think of as a true bodega--though it does have a bodega cat!) and swimming in credit card debt.
Emily: Call it what you want, but if it looks like a bodega, and it has a bodega cat, well… it might just be a bodega.
We love a bodega cat
Mary: I support all bodega cats. The entire book is from Pablo’s perspective, and it’s not exactly a great perspective. I wasn’t convinced of Pablo’s voice at all, and I felt like I could never get a grip on him as a character. I do think that part of the book’s point is that Pab doesn’t know what he wants and has to figure that out for himself, and that uncertainty is reflected in his voice, but that voice didn’t seem like a real person to me.
Emily: This was the most difficult part of this novel for me. The voice. We’ve discussed voice a lot when it comes to young adult fiction. It’s really easy to get the voice in YA fiction wrong if, like this author, you’re trying too hard to sound like a young adult. And in my opinion, Choi fails twice over. For one, she’s trying to write a young adult voice. And it comes off as trying. Way, way too hard. So she fails. Second, this is a male voice, which she’s also not pulling off. Fail number two. It made it really hard to feel invested in Pablo as a real character
Mary: It felt like a book that was trying hard to be quirky or funny or cute, but that never really shook out. I kept being consciously aware that I was reading a book. It might sound weird, but when I read really good books I can suspend my disbelief and get involved in the story. The whole time I was reading Permanent Record, I was acutely aware that I was reading a book and that the author was trying to affect a certain type of voice.
Emily: 100% I felt the same.
Mary: Similarly, I felt completely uninterested in Leanna Smart as a character. She’s a popstar. She was a child star, a la Miley Cyrus or Demi Lovato or Selena Gomez. And she seems like a jerk.
Emily: Yeah… the whole reason we’re supposed to like Leanna from the very beginning is because we’re told she’s with it and just sort of gets things that normal people don’t get. But I don’t buy it. There’s a whole lot of “most people don’t know this, but…” talk in this book. This is another YA pet peeve of mine. As a shorthand to show that their characters are smart and cool, authors will make their characters like “obscure” artists or know about poets or old movies or bands. I was drowning in that shit in this book. Like, could not breathe. The main character’s name is Pablo Neruda, and he’s SO IMPRESSED when his love interest Leanna actually knows who that is.
I think the MOST ANNOYING one to me was when Leanna informs Pablo that they don’t actually eat breakfast at Tiffany’s in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Bitch, have you even seen this movie or read the book? THE MOVIE STARTS WITH HER EATING BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S. The moral of the story? Do not try to be smarter than me in your book because I WILL WIN EVERY TIME. Also, if you’re going to try to use dumb outdated pop culture references to signify that your characters are cooler than your average young people, at least get them right.
HOLY FUCK… she’s eating BREAKFAST at TIFFANY’S
Mary: That is exactly what drove me up the wall about Leanna Smart, or Lee as Pablo calls her. She seems to be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Exactly as you said, she knows all the most obscure music and has a fascination with Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which is a quirky girl classic (although, as you said, it’s more of a quirky girl thing to like it and not actually understand it at all. I love Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but I also am not romanticizing it into something it’s not). Leanna doesn’t really break into her own character either. She’s a pop star that’s controlled by her team of employees--her manager, her assistant, etc.--and she doesn’t emerge at the end of the novel. She doesn’t grow as a character.
Emily: Yes, she’s shorthand for a good character rather than an actual fully realized character. And while we’re on the subject of YA pet peeves, I also really hate the dumb nicknames characters often have in YA books. Like the fact that Pablo shortens his name to “Pab” and Leanna to “Lee.” It’s really corny and seems fake. I can’t imagine ever calling a real person in real life “Pab.” It’s so dumb. Honestly, this book is just a lesson in everything I hate about bad YA literature.
Mary: I’m okay with it to some extent, but there’s no way that people talk like that in real life. Pab is a dumb nickname, especially since Pablo isn’t even that long or weird of a name? Again, this felt like a way the novel was trying to go out of its way to be quirky, trying to be something more than what it was.
Emily: I hate the YA novel nickname thing. I need someone to explain to me why it exists because it just makes me wanna vom, like, every time.
Mary: I definitely want to talk about the ending of the book. Pablo comes to the conclusion that he should go back to school, but not at NYU. He gets his mom to help him with money, and he realizes that he should find something he feels passionately about. He also doesn’t end up with Leanna Smart. They encounter each other again at the premiere of a big movie she’s in (The Big One lol), but they don’t make up. They both acknowledge the feelings are still there, but there’s no way to make it work, so they just don’t.
Personally, I love this kind of ending, the ending in which the main character and the romantic interest don’t end up together. I’m a romantic, but I’m also kind of a realist, and it doesn’t always work out--especially with couples that are really young. It seems even more likely that Pablo and Leanna wouldn’t get back together because of red flags that flew hard during their relationship; Pablo can’t let Leanna pay for things, even though she makes tons of money, and Leanna can’t commit to giving Pablo the attention he needs. Even though it’s a type of ending I usually enjoy, it just felt empty here. What did you think?
Emily: I don’t know if it’s because I just watched the documentary TFW No GF, but I was thinking a lot about toxic masculinity as I was reading this and maybe projecting that onto the book. Or maybe it’s there. Sound off in the comments if you’ve read this. But it seems to me like a lot of the issues stem from Pablo kind of being a douchey character. Sure, Leanna has no personality traits to speak of other than quirky know-it-all. But Pablo actually comes off as a dick. There’s also a distinct “not like the other girls” thing going on here. He hooks up with a girl earlier in the novel who he clearly shows disdain for, and she’s sort of our contrast for Leanna, the girl who’s way more “on his level.” Leanna isn’t like the other girls he’s hooked up with on Tinder. She’s… special. Except ALL GIRLS ARE SPECIAL, Pablo. Maybe YOU’RE the problem. This also goes back to voice. Let’s circle back there. The author is trying to hard to make Pablo’s voice macho and cook that she kind of just makes him seem like all of the worst dudes you’ve ever met.
GET OUT OF HERE WITH THAT
Mary: I rated this book a 2 out of 5 on Goodreads. It was okay, but definitely on the lower end of okay, and I’m not sure I’d recommend it to others.
Emily: I also rated it a 2 out of 5. It was a quick read, and there were moments where it was entertaining. We didn’t even get into Pablo’s relationship with his brother Rain, which I found somewhat endearing. But overall, this book left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Here’s hoping the next book we read will be better?
I think this is one of the shortest YA Book Clubs ever. Sorry, we were just not feeling it, everyone.
Our next book is The Kingdom of Back by Marie Lu. Yes, we’ve covered a Marie Lu novel before, but this one is going to be very different. We’re getting into historical fantasy territory, starring Nannerl and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart! Where do I sign up? Oh yeah, I already did. We’ll be back at the end of May/beginning of June. Read along with us.