What Makes a Good Romantic Hero?

I finished A Difference of Opinion by Nancy Dane last night. This morning, I woke up thinking about it, particularly about the hero, Allen Matthers. I'm not quite sure what to think about him. On the one hand, he's a very appealing character; on the other, [SPOILER] he's a murderer.

Allen has a lot of the qualities that I find attractive in a romantic lead, without falling into the cliche' of the romance-novel hero. It's clear that Allen is muscular and strong, but there are no descriptions of his "v-shaped back" or his "muscular thighs." He's handsome, with his bright blue eyes and coppery hair. He's intelligent and he's a musician, facts that raise him above his humble mountain roots. He's very good to Nelda, always showing up when she's in desperate circumstances, saving her life on more than one occasion. And he's always the gentleman - even when they are traveling together at the end of the story and camping alone together, he makes no move to push himself on Nelda. I liked the way he was openly confident he and Nelda would be together, even when she was telling herself she hated him for being a traitor.

But....I can't forget that Allen Matthers killed two men over a pocket watch and some gold coins. I suppose you could argue he killed them because they were a threat to his life - one of them had already shot Nelda. But Allen had already disabled one of the men by breaking his arm - why slit his throat as well? The story happens in a very violent time, the American Civil War. There are hints throughout the book that Allen may have killed several other men in the course of his work with the army (he's a "scout," not a soldier, though). I don't know. I may be able eventually to talk myself into believing he HAD to do it, but right now, it just seems to put a stain on his character that is hard to look past. It's like Allen Matthers, along with Joey Bolitho from FJ Warren's Broken Bonds, will always have an asterisk after his name in the "Hall of Fame" of romantic heroes I've encountered in my reading, ha ha.

Disappointment Is Even More Bitter When Promise Is Great...

Did you ever have a package for your birthday or Christmas that looked and sounded like the most fantastic gift ever? You just knew it was Just What You Always Wanted. You quivered with the anticipation of the moment you would be able to pry open the lid of the box and behold the wonderful gift. When the time finally came, you held the gift in your hands for a moment before opening it, enjoying that last bit of anticipation before you opened the box and discovered......socks. Or something like socks, servicable and entirely practical.

That's just how I felt shortly after reading the first couple of chapters of Red Moon at Sharpsburg by Rosemary Wells. It's been a long time since I've had the chance to read any historical fiction for young adults, especially historical fiction about American history. I picked up this book at a school book fair, but had other reading obligations that kept me from being able to read Wells' book until recently. It was with great anticipation that I opened the book and read the first page.

The first chapter was fine, and in fact, it set up a nice mystery for the rest of the book: "All else that followed during the war came of those three promises, two kept and one broken, made the week before I was born." But beginning with the second chapter, Wells shifted to using the present tense ("When you first see me, it is July 30, 1861."), and I felt a little itch of irritation start in the back of my mind. I really dislike present-tense narratives. Really dislike. In my opinion, present tense gives a book the tone of a book written for very young children. That tone simply wasn't appropriate for the mature ideas and events with which India has to wrestle in this book.

That brings me to another problem: the character of India was inconsistent. Some of the time, she is this tough, confident girl who holds the family together when her father is off in the war. Other times, she seemed to have more in common with my 10-year-old daughter, carrying a doll around. (Actually, even my 10-year-old daughter doesn't carry a doll around anymore.)

Actually, the characters in this book all seemed to have problems of development and consistency. To tell the truth, there was no one in the book I came to care about. There was no one that I identified with and was pulling for. They all seemed sort of like paper dolls acting out a story, but with no emotional depth - when the story was rife with opportunity for emotion! For example, India falls in love (I guess) with her tutor, Emory Trimble. There are scenes in which they are working together on science experiments and recording data, but I don't really see that they are coming to have any feelings for each other until Wells has India tell us they do. Here is the description of their first kiss: "Emory's kiss stays for only the drawing in and letting out of a single breath, but it is warm and steady, as I have pictured it so many times when no one can read my unchaste thoughts." And that's it. I'd like to get to feel that moment. That was my biggest disappointment - that I wasn't able to immerse myself into the characters and their lives.

Wells does have some nice historical details included in the book, and the plot has some interesting twists. Wells also tried to "open our eyes" to the poor medical practices in the Civil War and to the very circumscribed role of women of that time. Actually, I thought she was rather heavy-handed in doing that for both issues. I might write some more about that in a different post.

I'm not sorry I read the book. I'm just really disappointed that it fell so far short of its potential. I'm sorry that it is probably one of those books that I will forget rather quickly, stuck in the "sock drawer" of my mind.

Entry for April 30, 2007 - This Is for My Son

My son, age 11, is a big fan of fantasy stories of all kinds. During the past year, he discovered the Alex Rider adventure series, and somehow, the two of us made a deal -- I would read one of the Alex Rider books that he wanted me to read if he would read some historical fiction I want him to read.

Well, it took me about a whole month, but I finally finished Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz, the third book in the series, I guess. I must say, I'm not much of a fan of the "action" genre, but the book wasn't as poorly written as I honestly had expected it to be. I can see why it appeals to young boys. Alex is a 14-year-old schoolboy who is a spy for MI6, complete with cool gadgets, really evil adversaries, pretty girls (but not too much kissing!), exotic locations, and action, action, action. I was a little alarmed at first by the violence (several people die), but I realized it's "cartoon violence" (or "action genre violence," I suppose).

I might have been content to say, ok, I've read your action book, now you owe me Johnny Tremain. But all that changed today when I read Soldier's Heart by Gary Paulsen. It's a very short book (I was able to finish it in one day and still maintain my job duties, lol) that I had checked out of the university library, hoping my son might use it to fulfill the reading requirement for historical fiction for his language arts class. He never acted interested in it, so I was about to return it today, opened it, read the first few pages, and had to finish.

It struck me as I was finishing Soldier's Heart that it is a perfect foil to Skeleton Key. (may be spoilers ahead!) Both of the main characters are young boys -- Alex Rider in Skeleton Key is 14, Charley Goddard in Soldier's Heart is 15. Both end up in very violent situations -- Alex has to save the world from a madman with a nuclear bomb, while Charley is fighting the Civil War. Both of them end up with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder -- although that's not what either book calls it, of course (although Gary Paulsen talks about PTSD as a phenomenon in wars in his forward to the book). What is different is how the reader is led to experience the character's experience of the PTSD.

In Alex Rider's story, the awful things that happen to him are cartoonish, as I said earlier, and he always deals with them skillfully. Early in the story, he's surfing on a rare huge wave off the coast of Cornwall when a member of a Chinese gang chases him down on a jet-ski. Think about it -- this is a 14-year-old boy this is happening to. He does a skateboard-style flip, makes a "perfect landing" behind the jet-ski. But the gangster has a gun, and Alex has to jump on the jet-ski and throttle the guy's throat before the jet-ski goes out of control and they both are under the wave. (Fortunately for Alex, his pretty friend is there to pull him out and give him the "kiss of life.")

In Charley Goddard's story, his first battle makes him wet his pants. It's not pleasant to read, meaning Paulsen has done a good job of portraying the horror of seeing the head of the guy next to you severed by cannon fire, and the confusion of being in a storm of bullets, frozen and unable to remember anything you learned in training, dropping to the ground and using the bodies of your fellow soldiers to shield you from the bullets. And to me, the worst part is that Charley realizes there is no "out" -- when the commanders say to form a line and walk into oncoming fire, you do it, even if it is totally senseless.

Both Alex and Charley are affected by their experiences. At the end of Skeleton Key, Horowitz describes Alex's experience of PTSD: "Everything had worked out all right. He was a hero! So why did he feel like this? And how exactly did he feel? Depressed? Exhausted? He was both of those things, but worse still, he felt empty . . . Life was all around him, but he wasn't a part of it." I can't help thinking as I read that passage that this is the "cool" way for a spy to be -- detached from life, a la James Bond. No one can get to him, because his emotions are so suppressed, and that makes him the perfect tool for a spy agency. I don't especially feel for Alex, because it seems like part of the job.

But it feels more personal with Charley, even though the end result is the same -- isolation. Here's how Paulsen describes it: "He had waited with them, of course, and had settled into camp life and even marching life, but he still believed in the inevitability of battle and most of all believed in the absolute certainty of his own death. He could not live. Many others would die with him and many would live but he knew one thing: He would die. In the next battle or the one after that or the one after that he would die."

There is another scene in which Charley goes "battle crazy" and chases after the retreating Rebels until an officer stops him. And the impression I got (although it's not explicitly in the text) is that the officer is amused and thinks "now there's what we need -- fighters like that!" The irony of it -- to me -- is that an army does need fighters like that, soldiers who have been "ruined" as human beings (sorry if that sounds rough) so they can do the inhumane things soldiers have to do. I don't want to offend anyone with the "ruined" comment, but I do think war changes a person's life drastically. We talk about veterans who die as making a sacrifice, but I think anyone who goes into a battle situation has made a sacrifice. Even if he (or she) is not wounded, the things that he/she sees and has to do cannot leave that person untouched. The life he/she would have had before going to war will never be -- there will only be the life as shaped by the battles.

So --- it's very depressing to me. We give boys heroes like Alex Rider so they think "action" is cool. But the action people are facing in Iraq is not cool. You can't do a backflip and avoid the suicide bomber. As a mother, I pray my son will never have to be in Charley Goddard's shoes -- and I pray for the sons who are there now.