The Grounding of Group Six and other strange YA novels

[rachelmanija]

iknowcommawrite has a great review of The Grounding of Group Six, a deeply peculiar YA novel which I bet at least some of you read and were boggled by, and which I loaned her if she'd post on it. Go forth and discuss! (The Grounding of Group 6 on Kindle.)

coffeeandink solves a decades-old mystery for me by naming the book whose name I could never remember, The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and The Splendid Kids, and asks about subversive children's literature.

What books have you read where you thought, for reasons other than that it sucked, "How in the world did this get published?"

Comments

[pameladean]

What books have you read where you thought, for reasons other than that it sucked, "How in the world did this get published?"

Pretty much anything I've read by Hilary McKay, notably the Casson Family books. (Which are stupendous.) It's probably just a difference in attitude between American and British publishers; but I certainly did think that repeatedly.

P.

[rachelmanija]

What about them struck you that way?

[pameladean]

It's nothing like as wild as the two books you mention apparently are and a lot of it is spoilerific. But the angle of approach to acknowledged bad parenting, bad parenting and really good parenting existing in the same person depending on various plausible circumstances, the independence of the kids, which is (again plausibly) a mixture of coping quite well and doing absolutely hair-raising scary wrong-headed things. An extraordinary family history and how its discovery is handled. The degree of agency the children have and the actual degree of control they are able to exercise.

To some degree my initial response was dictated by some very adverse comments I've gotten over the years about Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, which is much tamer in most regards and did in fact get published, but was rejected by a YA publisher. It's not as good as the Casson family books -- Hilary MacKay has an unerring sense of balance and is incredibly good at both comic and tragic timing -- but given the reactions, I kept boggling at the fact that this series isn't even YA, it's middle grade. But, as I said, British.

P.

[sartorias]

I collected every Julian Thompson book I could find for a while there. Read this one, and yeah. The review pretty much nailed it.

[rachelmanija]

Which of his other books would you recommend?

[naomikritzer]

There were some really strange YA novels in circulation back in the 1980s but the one this reminded me of was the ones by Robert Cormier -- The Chocolate War, I Am the Cheese, The Bumblebee Flies Anyway. Did you ever read those? They are ODD. The Chocolate War was one of those books that got censored over and over and over, which is bizarre given that the main takeaway I remember was something like "Peer Pressure: sometimes bad," which is a deeply uncontroversial moral? (OK, there was a scene where a kid walked in on another kid in the boy's bathroom, discovered him masturbating, and pretending to take his picture since by chance he was carrying a camera at the time. The camera didn't have film in it, but the victim didn't know this. That was probably the source of the attempts to ban it. Neither boy in that side story was the protagonist.)

I also remember a book called "Lisa Bright and Dark" in which a teenage girl's friends attempt to fix her bipolar disorder with amateur group therapy? I was fascinated by the YA novels about mental illness but the ones in circulation in the mid-1980s were NOT GREAT, I have to say.

[thawrecka]

I actually studied The Chocolate War in high school English, and I think possibly the controversy could be because of the authority figures siding with the bullies and the bullies winning.

[mildred_of_midgard]

It's admittedly been a while since I read Lisa Bright and Dark, but my vague recollections are that the amateur group therapy was a last resort driven by the systematic refusal of the adults to admit that anything serious was wrong, the amateur therapy was about as effective as you'd expect from a bunch of teenagers, and the moral of the story was that the adults should have listened earlier, because things didn't have to get that bad.

It certainly wasn't the best book on mental health ever, but I don't remember getting the message that amateur group therapy was a great way of fixing things. I got the message that you stick by your friends even when they're mentally ill, that the stigma around mental illness is harmful, that reading a handful of library books doesn't make you an expert clinician but that social support is better than nothing, and that eventually maybe the adults will get a clue and do something constructive.

[rachelmanija]

I still don't understand I Am the Cheese. Like I literally have no idea what's happening in it.

[kore]

AHAHAHA I REREAD LISA BRIGHT AND DARK SO MANY TIMES. There was even a movie! ....no wait, that was Lisa and David, also based on a YA novel about mentally ill kids.

[naomikritzer]

Another deeply weird book I remember from my high school days: "Anna to the Infinite Power." I know a fair number of other people have read that, because it comes up as a Yuletide request with some regularity.

[rivkat]

I am that requester. Literally, I am, every year. Also the movie, which changes some things but is also a great 80s artifact.

[chomiji]

House of Stairs by William Sleator. Although now, in retrospect, it seems like the predecessor of the recent host of YA dystopias.

Also, Harriet the Spy and its sequel, The Long Secret, are old hat now, but when they were published in the 1960, they were pretty controversial.

[conuly]

House of Stairs by William Sleator. Although now, in retrospect, it seems like the predecessor of the recent host of YA dystopias.

But better, because MG and YA books were slimmer then, so there's less padding.

[rachelmanija]

I love House of Stairs.

[mildred_of_midgard]

I can't say it's quite so deeply peculiar, but I just finished a book that reads like the plot summary of a potentially very interesting book. Unburning Alexandria, by Paul Levinson.

It's about characters from the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries time traveling to the world of ancient Greece and Rome. Unfortunately, it alternates talking heads with characters rushing around doing the same things in different places. Every scene is either a subset of characters discussing their plans for time travel (usually while sitting down at a meal together), or a subset of characters traveling to a city with a time machine so they can get to their destination city to meet another time traveler from a different time who is either trying to assist them or thwart them. Characters change names and faces regularly as they time travel and impersonate each other and historical figures.

The plot-advancing scenes all read like: "Now I will go to London in 1850 so I can get to London in 150 AD so I can take a ship to Alexandria, where I will run into someone from 2050 New York whom I last saw in 50 BC Alexandria, which was last month for me but 10 years ago for him. He will tell me how in the last 10 years (for him) I showed up in 2050 New York under a different name and wearing a different face, which hasn't happened for me yet, but as a result of this conversation I will decide to go to 415 AD Alexandria and try to stop his past self." Every 5-10 pages, it feels like, we're in a different place and time, trying to figure out how to get to yet a different place and time. Hardly anything *happens*, people just race around space and time trying to rescue or intercept each other, while arguing about the morality of their respective goals.

The book was 250 pages long and needed to be at least 400, so we could get to know and care about the characters, or at least keep track of what's going on. Instead, we got a whirlwind of a few pages of dialogue here and there interspersed with a few pages of plot summaries here and there. It's the sequel to a book that was slightly better and didn't make me wonder so much how it got published (The Plot to Save Socrates), but wow. I'm planning to skim the next book, but I expect it to be much the same.

ETA: I just noticed the subject's post and should add that this is not a YA book.

[kate_nepveu]

I was not boggled by _The Grounding of Group Six_, because I was like 10 and so had no idea that it was weird! But it definitely stuck with me.

[kore]

It's fascinating what kids will find weird or not -- I remember reading Paul Zindel as a teenager and feeling like an anthropologist on Mars or something. But then I read Tiger Eyes, which was a pretty good representation of New Mexico, and of course that got sold as "exotic".

[thawrecka]

I read more than I should have of a work of Australian women's fiction, the title of which I don't remember, which was half written in past perfect. Characters would constantly go into a room and then remember what they had done earlier that week. Still don't know how that got published as is.

[rivkat]

OMG I was really into both of those, the former more than the latter! And to complete the trifecta that probably says way too much about me, The Girl Who Owned a City.

[conuly]

Interestingly, that was written to promote Objectivism. Didn't work on me or, as near as I can tell, anybody.

[conuly]

1. Did you ever read the sequel to Pitiful Teachers? You ought to.

2. Half of everything William Sleator ever wrote, for one. Some very weird books in there! Also, Galax-Arena, which I'm still not sure about.

[rachelmanija]

1. No, I never even knew it existed.

2. I love Sleator. Galax-Arena was memorable without me actually liking it.
I

[cahn]

I just finished Lifelode (Jo Walton) so that I could respond to this post :P It's a secondary-world fantasy about some very nice cozy domestic people living in a four-person poly arrangement. There is some interesting worldbuilding, and at the end some exciting fantasy plot happens! But that plot seems to happen fairly slowly and mostly at the end.

I liked it -- I had some reservations about some other parts of it (e.g., the title concept) -- and I didn't think it was nearly as odd as The Grounding of Group Six sounds -- but I am a little surprised that it got published at all. Like, "very nice cozy domestic poly people where not much overt Fantasy Plot happens until near the end," although it is catnip for me personally, doesn't seem to me to be a super hot ticket item for most publishers.

...Well, I wrote the above and... looking at the publication, it looks like it was printed by NESFA and hasn't in fact been picked up by a bigger publisher, so okay, that does actually make some sense. :)

ETA: Another one: This one's for mildred_of_midgard: Orfe, by Cynthia Voigt, a modern retelling of the Orpheus myth where Orfe (a woman) is a rock band singer whose schtick is that she projectile vomits on stage. It is weird!

[rachelmanija]

I have read both those! Orfe is so bizarre. It makes me sick!"

Please review Lifelode and I will come talk about it. It's very strange but also very enjoyable. I liked the domesticity and the worldbuilding.

[vass]

Hmmm. I would say Jenny Pausacker's What Are Ya? except that I know how: Australian small press, literary fellowship, actually less of a risk in that time period than now, which says all sorts of fucked up things about society.

Actually, I say that but I just went to the author's website to check the publication date, and discovered two things I didn't know:
1. It was the first Australian novel to have a gay main character, so I'm revising my opinion of how much a publication risk it was.
2. The ebook's available for free on her website!!!

Anyway, it's contemporary YA published in 1987, and includes sex scenes involving teenagers, a masturbation scene (ditto), and explorations of identity and sexual safety that felt honest rather than didactic in a way that impressed me.

Also, the lesbian protagonist ends up happily dating two different girls at the same time. Who know about each other. In 1987.

I'm well aware that lesbians were DOING that then and earlier, and that getting to keep being friends with your exes or to negotiate nonmonogamous relationships were Things well before the internet, but generally they weren't publishing young adult books about it. Or nominating them for the Premier's Literary Award. Or putting those books in school libraries for teenage vasses to borrow and read and reread.

[rachelmanija]

That sounds delightful.

[kore]

Aw, nobody's going to say Paul Zindel? Or maybe he counts more as subversive, rather than boggling. And a lot of his stuff is High School Realism. But it was so far from my experience that I found it rather boggling.

One of the most boggling books I read as a kid, although it was definitely not meant as YA and I was not supposed to read it, was My Sweet Audrina. You're not the first and best Audrina! You must sit in her room and rock in her chair until you become her! Audrina's father sleeps with everyone! Four women fall down the stairs! The already bizarre narrative takes an ugly turn into gang rape and gaslighting! IDEFK. That and Audrey Rose, which I was not supposed to read either. Late seventies and early eighties American horror novels were wild.

[derien]

I loved "The War Between The Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids." I named my adopted street cat Slinky Malinky, after Skinny Malinky.