But are they Gatsby? 2 YA protags comped to classics

Some of the most famous books in English literature are about men who aren’t who they appear to be. 

I'm thinking specifically of Jay Gatsby and BratFarrar, although The Talented Mr. Ripley is better known than Brat because a) he's American and b) the movie. 

Brat - a corruption of 'Bartholomew' or 'Bart' - was the protagonist and title character of British crime queen Josephine Tey's 1949 novel of domestic suspense: either the long-lost heir or the most cunning imposter the English reading public of the time could imagine.  

Brat got a UK airing back in the 1980s but it didn't see a lot of play in North America. (now available on Youtube)

 

Gatsby, well, is there anyone who doesn't know The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald?

John Irving, in his foreword to one of the newer editions of The Great Gatsby, wrote:

Jay Gatsby turned to crime, made his fortune, and tried in vain to escape his past and beat his own fate. The odds were always against him, and he failed and died trying.

The last sentence of the book is its most famous: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Jay tried mightily to beat on, to fight the current, to rewrite his past but in the end could not overcome it.

 

The two books I’m contemplating today have characters equally compelling but they’re not men. They’re teen boys. Specifically, the lead characters in two young adult books from the past decade: Gary D Schmidt’s ORBITING JUPITER and Lisa McMann’s DEAD TO YOU.

While the adult novels examined the men’s lives and loves against the backdrop of their respective entitled spheres as seen through the eyes of a relative outsider, the YA novels excavate the inner and outer chaos of boys brought up in modern poverty and abuse. Both boys stumble through a world they don’t belong in, a picture-perfect Middle America where everyone goes to church and supports their local high school teams. 

The moral ambiguity is the common element. That, and the yearning for what they can never have. Gatsby wants Daisy. Joseph wants Jupiter. Brat and Ethan want to finally belong: to have a home and a family.

In the Schmidt book, cool-as-nails Joseph, like Jay Gatsby, is seen through the worshipful but wary eyes of foster-brother Jackson. Jackson records, defends, tries to puzzle out Joseph’s inner drive, while the adults around him speak ominously of Joseph’s dangerous past and uncertain future. Eventually Jackson learns Joseph is bending all his will to finding a girl separated from him by her cruel parents (okay, that part’s maybe more overtly Romeo & Juliet than Great Gatsby; but you may recall Daisy’s parents were reported to be similarly unimpressed when their golden girl looked smitten with an impoverished lieutenant from an unknown family). But in both stories the uncaring greed of another, more powerful male threatens all the new stability Joseph is building, and ultimately leads to ruin.

In the McMann book, streetwise Ethan, like Josephine Tey’s iconic wanderer Brat Farrar, returns home after a long absence and is both welcomed and constrained by the family he vanished from all those years before. His younger brother distrusts and resents him. His parents struggle to keep the peace and get his education back on track. He’s only fully accepted by the younger sister who has no memory of him to continually compare his present self against. But years of abusive environments have left their mark, and he can’t relax fully into the idyllic family setting. He’s always waiting for an attack, and soon enough, someone obliges.

 

What makes all these books tragedies is not only that nobody gets what they want, but that their trying leaves such destruction in its wake.

If the thought of dipping into the classics makes you yawn, dip instead into the modern world of YA lit in these two books. You'll leave with a deeper insight into the complex, hopeful, despairing worlds of modern boys. 

 

#Gatsby #JosephineTey #BratFarrar #OrbitingJupiter #DeadToYou #YA #