The Fix Is NOT In: Tamsen Parker's THE INSIDE TRACK

I am, by nature, a fixer. Whenever I hear someone talk about a problem, I immediately start to think about all the possible ways I could act to make that problem go away. It can be a really annoying habit, this urge to want to fix everything, especially when it comes to people. Not everyone needs, or even wants, to be fixed. Even if the larger society around them thinks they should do something to make their situation better, a lot of people are perfectly happy being the way they are.  Because broken isn't always fixable, especially when it comes to people. And also because one person's "broken" may just be another person's "different."

Reading Tamsen Parker's latest contemporary romance, The Inside Track, gave me a much-needed reminder of this. And did so while making me laugh harder than I can ever remember laughing while reading a romance.

The Inside Track's two white protagonists, financial advisor Dempsey Lawrence and boy band guitarist Nick Fischer, do not function in socially conventionally ways. Readers of Parker's earlier books featuring License to Game (Love on the Tracks and Thrown Off Track), the boy band on the cusp of aging out of their audience, will remember Nick as the goofball screwup of the group, an eight-year-old boy in a 28-year-old's body. Nick's more than just a bundle of impulsivity; he fidgets, he wrestles, he talks a mile a minute about the most fascinating, and often disgusting, things. He's never worried about making a fool of himself; he adores being the center of attention. Witness the book's opening scene, in which we find a drunken Nick with the accordion which once belonged to Lawrence Welk, an accordion which he's "borrowed" from the wall of the Los Angeles restaurant where he was dining. He's playing it outside, in the middle of a fountain—stark naked. If only he had his unicycle, too...

Using close first person, Parker gives readers access to the whirling pinball inside Nick's head, following his thoughts as they carom from topic to topic, making leaps of association that are as amazingly imaginative as they are hilarious:

Maybe these police officers would like to be my friends. Because if any of my guys were here, they probably would've suggested that climbing into a fountain, naked, with an accordion was maybe not my best idea. Or at least they would've held my goddamn pants so some dickwad wouldn't take them. Fucking pants thieves. That's just low.  (Kobo epub, Chapter 1, page 7)

Or this, from the second chapter, where Nick is serving out his community service sentence for the aforementioned accordion incident by speaking with kids at a local performing arts school about managing your money when you're a creative. Nick on the coolness of spreadsheets:

"They're like wizards, guys. Seriously. Magic on your screen. They do math for you, but in a cooler way than a calculator. And then you can even make pie charts. Pie charts are really fu— falutin' rad. I don't know about you guys, but like, sometimes numbers make my head hurt? But I'm totally game for colors and shapes. And pie. Pie is delicious. My favorite is probably key lime. Why do you think they call them pie charts instead of pizza charts? Because pizza is great, and it would make them sound way cooler. But then I guess they call pizzas pies, don't they? Which is weird. Because it's not like a real pie. Except in Chicago. You guys like deep dish?" (Ch. 2, p. 13-14)


Even after encountering Nick not under the influence, a reader who knows anyone with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is likely to be thinking "It's ADHD! Get diagnosed! Get some help!" But Parker is not interested in telling the story of a person whose life gets put back on track after receiving a welcome medical diagnosis. Sometimes, a diagnosis doesn't lead to an easy fix. As Nick reveals later on in the story, he was diagnosed as a child, but rebounding off the drugs proscribed to deal with the ADHD made him sullen and violent, and the meds themselves gave him a tic. So his family decided against medicating Nick's condition. Neurotypical is certainly not the word to describe Nick. But he and his family and bandmates have come to love him for who he is, not for who he should or could be if only the drugs had worked better for him.

Parker pairs attention-hound Nick with perhaps the most unlikely of opposites: a woman who has not left her property for more than five years. Thirty-four year old Dempsey, a former teen tv star, experienced major trauma due to her career. She, unlike Nick, takes medication, because the trauma has left her with debilitating problems; her meds help curb her anxiety and panic attacks, and allow her to function as a financial planner to other young show business kids who don't mind working with someone over the phone. But neither her doctors nor "a shit ton of pharmaceuticals" have been able to rid Dempsey of her agoraphobia. A shiny new boyfriend certainly won't, either, as Dempsey makes clear to Nick when she first tells him about her condition:

"You're not going to be the hero here. There are no white horses or castle moats or needle-pricked fingers. You should assume that I'm never leaving this quarter-acre lot ever again and make your choices based on that. There's the door." (Ch 6, p 9)

But unconventional Nick doesn't think Dempsey's agoraphobia is as anathema to romance as she does: "I like you. I  like being with you. And if I have to come here to hang out with you, then I will. I don't really feel like that's a big thing. No one's perfect." (Ch 6, p 10). Nick loves everyone's attention, but there's something about Dempsey's that is just off the charts compelling to him. Almost as if she can channel the cheering of a stadium full of people, just by herself. And Dempsey is equally charmed by Nick's intelligence, humor, and utter lack of guile. After being lied to over and over again in the past, Dempsey truly appreciates a man who isn't hiding anything.

As I read further on into their story, one part of my mind kept expecting some big plot event that would "fix" either Dempsey or Nick. Some danger to Nick would compel Dempsey to leave her house, and she'd find herself miraculously recovered. Or some new doctor would give Nick a different diagnosis, or would offer him a new drug that would calm down the impulsivity of his brain. And Parker throws out several plot complications that look like they might be headed in one of those directions—only to pull back and disrupt the common romance trope that falling in love will fix everything. Dempsey and Nick do help each other, not to fix themselves, but rather, to adapt to each other's needs, while keeping their own abilities and needs also in view. Those adaptations might be a bit on the unusual side for this particular couple, but its a process anyone, neurotypical or no, who is involved in a relationship must embrace if they are to make it past the first blush of romance.


Photo credits:
Lawrence Welk album: Treadwell's Music
Pie pie chart: EdwardTufte.com

Tamsen Parker

The Inside Track

License to Love #2

Indie published, 2019

Romancing the Spectrum: Katharine Ashe's THE PRINCE, Helen Hoang's THE KISS QUOTIENT, Talia Hibbert's A GIRL LIKE HER

I've read quite a few strong romance novels that featured heroes with the social difficulties, language impairments, and repetitive behaviors that characterize those with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). But finding books with heroines with ASD has been far more difficult. Not just because the disorder is more commonly diagnosed in men than in women, I'm guessing, but because of many romance readers' preference for "nice" or "perfect" female leads.

Which was why it was such a pleasure to come across not just one, but three romances this past month featuring women falling in love while navigating their worlds as people with ASD.

Katharine Ashe's The Prince (book 4 in her Devil's Duke series) is set in 1825 England, long before the terms "autism" or "autism spectrum disorder" came into medical usage. A "small madness," is the term Ashe's heroine, twenty-year-old Elizabeth (Libby) Shaw and her father use to talk of her set of "peculiarity": repetitive daily routines; an eidetic memory; a lack of a social filter; and a single-minded desire to follow her father and become a physician, in a time when women were not allowed to apprentice as surgeons. Libby's so intent on her goal that when her father travels to London, leaving her behind in Edinburgh, she dons men's clothing and takes on a male identity in order study anatomy and chemistry, and to gain a mentorship at the city's Royal Infirmary.

There's not much of a plot in The Prince beyond Libby's medical studies and her growing romantic relationship with painter Ibrahim Kent (a bit about corpse-stealing comes in late in the novel). And don't ask how the two come to be sharing a house; you have to accept some plot contrivances whenever you pick up an Ashe historical. But the interactions between intelligent, direct Libby and secretive, wounded Kent (or Ziyaeddin, as he was called before he was exiled from his Middle Eastern country [one invented by Ashe]) are a real pleasure. As a painter, "it had always been his curse to see what others did not"; part of Ziyaeddin's seeing is recognizing the beauty in the not just unconventional but outright odd Libby:

He considered himself her protector. He wished to keep her safe, yet so differently from the manner in which her friends and father always had. They always wanted to protect her from the morass of her own thoughts and desires. He wished to protect her for herself, so that she could pursue her dreams. (185)

In turn, Libby uses her growing medical skills not to keep her "protector" close to her side, but instead to help him realize his own long-thwarted dreams.

My favorite lines:

"I finished bleeding two days ago."
     The kisses ceased.
     He rose onto his elbow to look down at her. "What are you saying?"
     "That I shan't get with child from this.... Women do not typically speak of such matters to men, of course," she said, "unless the man is a physician, and even then infrequently. But I should think this a very useful thing for lovers to discuss." (319)

Indeed.

Katharine Ashe

The Prince

(Devil's Duke #4)

Avon, 2018

Unlike Katharine Ashe, new author Helen Hoang uses humor to draw in readers to her story of a 21st century woman struggling to incorporate romance into her tightly structured life. But readers are never invited to laugh at Stella Lane, the protagonist of The Kiss Quotient. Instead, the humor comes from the gap between Stella's way of looking at the world and the ways her family and her co-workers see it. Take the book's opening lines, spoken by Stella's mother: "I know you hate surprises, Stella. In the interests of communicating our expectations and providing you a reasonable timeline, you should know we're ready for grandchildren." I'm still smiling at that one, even after reading it for probably the fifth time now.

Stella, a (presumably white) Silicon Valley native, knows she has Asperger's, or what is now termed ASD, and is quite self-aware about her own differences. She hates uninvited touches; she likes to do things in a certain order, at a specific time each day; she tends to either be indifferent or obsessed in her interests; she can't help but say exactly what she's thinking, without any reference to the impact it might have on others. Stella knows her social awkwardness and singleminded focus on her job (as an econometrician for an online-shopping behemoth) will make it difficult for her to even find a boyfriend, never mind stay with a guy long enough to raise a child together. As Stella thinks to herself, "The problem was she couldn't keep a man for the life of her" (3).

After a conversation with a rude coworker, Stella has an "ah-ha" moment: "Maybe sex was just another interpersonal thing she needed to exert extra efforts on—like casual conversation, eye contact, and etiquette" (8). And so she comes up with a logical, rational plan: she'll hire an "escort" to teach her how to be better at sex, so she'll be better able not just to enjoy the deed, but to attract a "regular" man.

But Stella isn't counting on the emotions that often come along with sex—especially sex with a man as kind, and as gorgeous, as Michael Phan. Biracial Michael (Norwegian father, Vietnamese mother) trained to be a fashion designer, but returned from NYC to help his mother after she was diagnosed with cancer. And since he's always enjoyed women and sex, working as an escort in addition to his day job as a tailor at his mother's dry cleaning store to earn the money to pay her medical bills wasn't a big deal. But he's starting to get a bit bored with it all—until he's hired by Stella.

Because—feelings. Unexpected feelings. Surprisingly moving feelings. And not just on rational Stella's side, either. As he gradually introduces her into participatory, mutually pleasurable sex, seemingly easygoing Michael keeps getting taken aback by Stella's unwitting display of kindness and caretaking, things he's never experienced before from other women who have paid him to have sex.

Self-acceptance is the underlying message here, not just for Stella but also for Michael, who is burdened with his own insecurities and guilt. But it comes with a large helping of kindly laughter, as well as deep insight into the challenges of being an odd duck in a world that would prefer to everyone to quack to the same beat.

Helen Hoang

The Kiss Quotient

Jove/Berkley

2018

Perhaps my favorite of the three books is Talia Hibbert's A Girl Like Her, the first book in her small-town Ravenswood series. The book's cover features a hunky white hero, but the real draw here is the heroine, prickly Ruth Kabbah, whose mother emigrated to England from Sierra Leone. Unlike Stella, Ruth isn't worried about people knowing about her autism; soon after hot Evan Miller introduces himself as her new neighbor, Ruth tells him, "Before you ask, there's nothing wrong with my brain.... I'm autistic." Like both Stella and Libby, Ruth lacks social filters; she's obsessed (with comic books ); and her brain doesn't quite work the same as most other peoples'. As she thinks to herself during a difficult lunch with her neurotypical sister, "it's not you or anything you've done, it's me and this fucked-up tongue that won't obey and this fractured mind that won't think" (308).

But Hibbert's story is not about self-acceptance. Or at least, not acceptance of a disability. It's about coming to terms with past bad mistakes, mistakes that any woman could have made. Mistakes involving a boy, and the strong emotions of adolescence, and not having enough experience to see the difference between healthy and unhealthy desire. Ruth's become a pariah in the small town of Ravenswood, and not because of her ASD; she's crossed the town's golden boy, Daniel Burne—who also happens to be Evan's boss.

But Evan's an adult, and a newcomer to Ravenswood; he can see what the others, too caught up in Daniel's smiles and reputation, cannot: "This man had never been told no, and never thought he would be. Those were the men you had to watch" (187). Even though Daniel's all charm and Ruth is all prickles, it is Ruth who draws his attention, Ruth whom he wants to befriend.

And Ruth whom he wants to sleep with, a prospect that has Ruth, wary from her bad past with Daniel, not quite knowing how to respond:

     "You can't say yes?" His fingers stopped.
     "I can't say yes. I can't say no, either."
     He swallowed. Hard. "You're not afraid of me. Are you?"
     "No." She'd never been less afraid of a man in her life. "I just. . ." She took a deep, shuddering breath. "I can't give you permission to fuck me over."
     He smiled slightly. "That's not exactly what I want to do."
     "But you will," she said sharply. Was this really what she thought?
     Yes.
     "You will, and when you do, at least I'll know I never gave you permission." (1876)

It takes Ruth some time to understand just how different Evan is from Daniel. His words—"It's just, I want to do things with you. Not to you. There's a difference" (1892)—aren't enough. He has to show her, not just tell her, that he's worthy of her trust. That's something that can only build over time. But the reward for Ruth, and for the reader, is well worth the wait.

Favorite line:
"Feelings weren't as straightforward and binary as he'd once assumed; around Ruth, he could feel fifty things at once."

Talia Hibbert

A Girl Like Her

Ravenswood Book #1

Nixon House, 2018

Disability and Historical Romance: Mary Balogh's SOMEONE TO WED

Protagonists with physical and/or emotional disabilities appear far more often in the Regency romances of Mary Balogh than in the books of perhaps any other historical romance writer. By my count, of her 86 novels published to date, at least thirteen feature a main character with a physical or mental impairment of some sort; other books (Slightly Married, Simply Perfect, A Secret Affair, and probably a few others I'm forgetting) include secondary characters with disabilities of various sorts. Some back of the envelope math suggests that characters with disabilities feature in almost 20% of Balogh's books.

Some critics have found Balogh's engagement with disability issues worthy of praise. For example, Reviewer Caz on Romantic Historical Reviews writes of Balogh's Survivors' Club series, which features protagonists who have all been seriously injured (physically and/or mentally) by war, "In each case, the author has approached her characters' injuries and disabilities sensitively and un-sentimentally, showing how difficult it has been for each of them to regain anything resembling a normal life following their terrible experiences." And although scholar Ria Cheyne cautions in her article "Disability Studies Reads the Romance: Sexuality, Prejudice, and the Happily-Ever-After in the Work of Mary Balogh" that she is not "aiming to fix these novels as 'positive' representations which should be played on some hypothetical list of 'acceptable' representations of disability" (212), her discussion of Balogh's Slightly and Simply series does argue that Balogh's romances with disabled protagonists "offer significant opportunities to challenge negative stereotypes around disability" (201-202).

In contrast, Meoskop, reviewing The Arrangement (book #2 in The Survivors' Club series) on Love in the Margins, finds Balogh's depictions more than a bit lacking: "There are authors that do disability well, and then there's Mary Balogh. Her disabled characters are more Matt-in-Downton-Abbey than Harold Russell." Her review concludes with a clearly ironic recommendation: "If you love inspiring stories about disabled veterans and the wives that don't leave them, then The Arrangement will hit all your Inspirational Story buttons."

Though Meoskop doesn't spell it out, she clearly objects to the way that Balogh's portrayals of the disabled barely skirt, or fall into, the trap of "disability as inspirational" for the non-disabled reader. As Deborah Davis on the Abilities.com web site writes,

Many disability advocates have expressed disdain for being viewed as "inspirational" in popular media and reject the premise that this emotion adds any positive value to their status. This often-used description associated with able-bodied individuals' emotions in connection with accomplishments or just daily living of those with disabilities is seen by some in the community as separating, objectifying, condescending and regressive in terms of equality and inclusion.

(Check out this great post on Everyday Feminism, "7 Reasons to Stop Calling Disabled People Inspirational" for more on what has come to be called "inspirational porn").

All of the above is to tell you that I come with a lot of backstory to my reading of Balogh's latest, Someone to Wed. Its heroine, 29-year-old Wren Heyden, has been a recluse for the majority of her life, and wears a veil to cover her face whenever she goes out in public. Wren has just completed a year of mourning for her aunt and uncle, with whom she had made her home since the age of ten. Having inherited her uncle's glassworks manufactory, Wren is now wealthy—wealthy enough to buy herself what she longs for, but believes she could never win or earn: someone to wed.

For Wren is "severely, cruelly marred" by a large purple birthmark on the left side of her face, which covers her from forehead to jaw (Kindle Loc 317). Although the descriptive words in quotations are the thoughts of the novel's hero upon first seeing Wren's face, they could just as well have been Wren's. For while her birthmark is not a physically incapacitating disability, some unnamed abuse Wren experienced because of it during her earliest years has created in her a major emotional disability: "In my own person I am not marriageable," she tells Alexander Westcott, the new Earl of Riverdale, the third man she's "interviewed" for the position of spouse.

In her joint review of the book on Dear Author, reviewer Janine points to structural similarities between Someone to Wed and Balogh's 1997 novel, Indiscreet. For me, though, the more telling comparison is to Balogh's 1993 category Regency, Dancing with Clara, which also opens with a disabled heroine who wishes to marry. In the twenty four years between the publication of these two novels, how had Balogh's depiction of disability changed? Had any of the insights of Disability Studies, which call attention to the problematic ways that the disabled are often "othered" and marginalized in popular culture, filtered into popular consciousness?

19th century Bath chair

Clara of Dancing with Clara is physically disabled: "crippled," restricted to a wheeled chair, unable to walk since contracting an illness in India as a child (Loc 85). While both Clara and Wren feel that "Only my money can buy me a husband" (Dancing 273), they go about their husband searches differently. Rather than openly declaring her wish for a husband,  Clara allows the gloriously handsome fortune hunter Frederick Sullivan (the villain of a previous Balogh book) to come to her. He flatters her, even tells her that he is in love with her. She knows he's lying (and so does the reader, as we are given his POV, as well as hers). But he's so handsome, and she's so lonely, Clara lets his deceptions go without challenging them, and agrees to marry him. She only tells him to stop calling her "my love" two weeks after they marry, when her own feelings start to become engaged, and his obvious overstatements make her feel as if he is spoiling the good relationship they have started to build. When Freddie gets upset by her request that he stop lying, Clara feels guilty for making him feel ashamed.

In contrast, Wren takes the active, not the passive, role in searching for a husband. It is she who invites Alexander to her home, and she who asks Alexander to marry her. Wren is a businesswoman, not a lady of leisure as Clara is, and she treats the husband search in as businesslike a manner as possible: "Perhaps we could combine forces and each acquire what we want" (263). Though the novel presents Wren's hiding her emotions as a problem she must learn to overcome, her business acumen grants her far more agency than did Clara's passive desires. Wren is also honest with Alexander from the start about what she wants, and what she hopes to gain from him. And he is honest with her about his pecuniary problems, a far different approach than taken by Freddie and Clara.

Both Clara and Wren desire a husband, in part to satisfy "needs," needs of the sexual kind:

She was lonely. Dreadfully lonely. And she had needs that were no less insistent than they could be in other women despite the fact that she had no beauty and was unable to walk. She had needs. Cravings. Sometimes she was so lonely despite Harriet's friendship and despite the existence of other good friends that she touched the frightening depths of despair. (Clara 124)

She had longings and needs and yearnings that were a churning mix of the physical and emotional. Sometimes she could not sleep at night for the ache of something nameless that hummed through her body and her mind and seemed to settle most heavily about her heart. (Wed 431)

But Clara wants Freddie Sullivan in particular, because of his beauty:

She wanted him. Mr. Frederick Sullivan, that was. She wanted all that health and strength and beauty to belong to her. Almost as if she could make them her own, she thought wryly. Almost as if she could transform herself by marrying him. (Clara 327).

Clara, longing to rid herself of her physical disability, imagines that she can "almost" annex Freddie's beauty and health by marrying. Marriage thus equates to being able-bodied, at least in some corner of Clara's mind.

In contrast, Wren is upset when she first meets Alexander Westcott to find he is "the proverbial tall, dark, handsome man of fairy tales" (Wed 448); she would have far preferred a plainer man, an older man, a man, the text implies, against whom she would not feel quite so ugly (Wed 184). Wren is used to being in charge, having a degree of power and control; the text suggests her dismay at Alexander's good looks is a fear of loss of control.

The two books are alike in one important regard: both Clara and Wren engage in satisfying sexual relationships after their marriages. This is in contrast to what Anna Mollow and Robert McRuer argue is a far more "pervasive cultural de-eroticization of people with disabilities" (Sex and Disability 4). But this depiction of the sexuality of the disabled may be as much of a factor of genre as it is a challenge to popular culture norms; sexual compatibility/fulfillment is typically one of several components that are required of any romantic couple who hopes to enjoy a romance HEA. Or in other words, it just wouldn't be a Mary Balogh romance if it excluded sex.

The two books differ as far as which of their protagonists—the disabled or the able-bodied—must learn a lesson, must change and grow, in order for the couple to achieve a HEA. On first glance, it may appear that in Dancing with Clara, it is Clara who has to change: by novel's end, she learns to walk. But the true emotional change comes within Freddie, not Clara. Freddie, a careless, even selfish, rake, a continual disappointment to his family, must learn to put others—in particular, his wife—before himself. This would be a fine, even feminist lesson—if Freddie's lesson did not center around helping Clara overcome her disability.

Freddie encourages Clara to move beyond the protective shell in which her fearful father had always placed her—to consult with a new doctor, to take exercise, to try to move from her wheeled chair. In some ways, then, even though Clara is a protagonist of the novel, she also serves as what Ria Cheyne terms a "yardstick character," a character who exists largely measure the worth of other characters. If you're nice or kind to, or protective of the yardstick character (a kitten, a child, a disabled person), you're a character the reader should admire. This is a problematic construction when the yardstick character is physically, emotionally, or mentally impaired, for the unintentional message is that disabled characters are more important for how others respond to them than important in their own right. From the start of Dancing with Clara, readers are introduced to Freddie as a fortune hunter, a bounder, a self-absorbed man. We come to care for him because he is kind to Clara, and is the impetus to her moving beyond her (falsely imposed) disability and learning to walk again.

Clara's learning to walk again not only rings that suspect "inspirational disabled person" bell; it also suggests that getting rid of one's disability might just be necessary if one is to be fully worthy of love, or is to enjoy love's benefits to the fullest. Abelism is writ large in this earlier book.

Wren, unlike Clara, is the emotional star of Someone to Wed. Alexander begins the story an upright, morally kind character, the kind of person who always puts others first, and this doesn't change very much over the course of the novel. Although he longs to marry for love, he feels it is his duty to marry for money so that he can support the estate he has just inherited. When Wren makes her forward proposal in the book's opening scene, Alexander doesn't immediately reject it; instead he proposes that the two get to know each other a bit first, to see if they could be compatible. And Alexander, the protective, help-others type of romance hero, feels drawn to Wren precisely because of the pain she has suffered in the past. So he ends up getting both to marry for money, and to marry for love, requiring little character change or growth.

In contrast, Wren's character arc includes far more change than Alexander's. Wren's physical blemish, unlike Clara's inability to walk, is not something she can change. And unlike Clara, she never dreams that she can change it, or wishes that she could even though she knows that she can't. But the story does insist that her emotional disability—the abuse she suffered as a child that convinced her never to go out in public, never to mingle in society, never to make a friend beside her aunt and uncle—must and should be overcome. Is this ableism, just writ on a smaller scale than in Clara? Or is this an insistence that viewing disability as only a social construction, and denying the embodied aspects of bodily impairment, is just as problematic? Part of me wants to cheer for Wren as she gradually overcomes her isolation, and becomes incorporated within Alexander's large, extended family. But another part feels more than a bit uncomfortable with the "healing power of love" message. . .

In the Dear Author review mentioned above, reviewer Janine points to her discomfort with what she reads to be lookism, more than (or as much as) ableism, in Someone to Wed. Though on its surface, the story insists that beauty is not skin deep, by dwelling so frequently on Wren's birthmark, and making Wren so isolated because of it, it inadvertently suggested the opposite.

In order to counteract the potential claim of lookism, the story provides a traumatic backstory to explain Wren's isolationist turn. The most problematic aspect of the book for me was this backstory, and its deeply sexist undertones. I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone, but would be curious to hear from other readers what your response was to Wren's meeting/confrontation with a key figure from her past near the book's end.

To sum it all up, then: there are clear and important positive shifts in Balogh's depiction of impairment and disability from 1993's Dancing with Clara to 2017's Someone to Wed. But if Meoskop were still alive and blogging, she'd surely have more than a few scathingly ironic critiques to make of it.

Photo credits:
Inspiration Porn critique: Medium
Bath chair: Wikipedia

Mary Balogh

Someone to Wed

Berkely, 2017

Romance at the Roosevelt: Heidi Cullinan's CARRY THE OCEAN

"A quad[riplegic], an autistic, and a depressive walk into a bar..."

Sounds like the opening line of a really insensitive joke, no? But it's an all-too-likely description of three residents of the Roosevelt, an assisted living facility for younger adults who need a little extra help in order to live apart from their parents. The first book in Heidi Cullinan's new romance series actually begins before the Roosevelt opens, when first-year college student Emmet Washington develops a crush on the young man who lives (literally) across the Ames, Iowa railroad tracks. Because Emmet has autism spectrum disorder, which in Emmet's case has gifted him with an eidetic memory, mad math and computer skills, physical sensitivities, an inability to read others' emotions, and a tendency to hum and flap his arms when he's excited or distressed, meeting new people is more difficult for him than for the average Joe. Especially when that new person is as cute as recent high-school graduate Jeremey Samson.

After ten months of frustrated pining, Emmet finally gets his chance to meet Jeremey in person when their neighborhood holds a summer block party. Emmet's been practicing polite party talk, and is doing a good job of keeping his flapping to a minimum when he walks up and introduces himself to Jeremey. Some guys might panic when the boy of their dreams starts having a panic attack not long into their first conversation, but not straightforward Emmet. Instead, Emmet just asks if he can help, and holds out his hand. And Jeremey takes it.

Turns out that Jeremey's problems interacting with other people may be even more difficult than Emmet's. Emmet, after all, has informed, amazingly supportive parents who accept him for who he is, and work with him to figure out how he can best make his way independently in the world. Jeremey's, in contrast, won't listen to the doctor who tells them that Jeremey is suffering from major depressive disorder, won't allow him to take medicine for it, and keep telling him that he just needs to  "get over it," just needs to make an effort and he'll be normal.

Emmet's matter-of-fact acceptance of his own disability, as well as Jeremey's shameful secret is, a revelation to Jeremey: "It took me a second  to digest the fact that he'd spoken of his disability as casually as he might a paper cut. Plus he'd given me so much information about himself, helpful information. Intense and direct. It was, honestly, refreshing. I wondered if I could dare to be the same" (Kindle Loc 448). Emmet's straightforward, "What do you think? Should we give friendship with each other a whirl?" has Jeremey thinking about something besides himself for the first time in a long time, and the two fall quickly into an easy friendship (Kindle Loc 229). A friendship that over the summer gradually turns into a romance when mutual meltdowns lead to mutual comforting, and then mutual arousal. Turns out people with autism spectrum disorder, as well as people with major depressive disorder, are far more than just their diagnoses; they also have sexual identities, and sexual desires. As Jeremey notes:

I don't think most people believed we actually were having sex, or if they did, they thought we were cute while we did it or something. People saw us walking down the street to the grocery store or wandering the aisles of Wheatsfield and acted as if we were escapees from the Island of Adorable, puppies dressed up in people clothes. Like we weren't really boyfriends, like we were fake. (2739)

With her explicit depiction of Emmet and Jeremey's sexual relationship, Cullinan goes a long way toward showing readers that their "cutsey" views of disabled peoples' sex lives is more of a defense mechanism against their own worries than any accurate vision.

Cullinan breaks down other stereotypes, too, including ones related to genre expectations. For true love does not lead to instant recovery of health or ability, as it might have done in a romance novel of the past. Emmet and Jeremey help each other, but Jeremey cannot keep people from teasing Emmet when his excitement or frustration leads to arm-flapping or humming. Nor can Emmet prevent Jeremey's depression from worsening, to the point where even his parents have to accept that their son needs help, far more help than the easy "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" advice they've been giving to date.

That help takes the form of a stay in the hospital, a new relationship with a supportive psychiatrist/social worker, and, to Jeremey's surprise, a new life with his boyfriend Emmet at the Roosevelt. Living on their own, without their parents, for the first time, is a challenge for the two young men, especially when they're adjusting not only to apartment living, but to living with a romantic partner. And to living with their fellow Roosevelt residents, too, some of whom are less than happy to find themselves living in "the freak house" with Jeremey and Emmet (2788).

Is it "normal" for a quad, an autistic, and a depressive to walk into a bar? Cullinan's novel argues that there is no real "normal" even while insisting that we not regard that line as the opening to a joke, but to a very real situation we might encounter in our "normal," everyday world.

Illustration credits:

Autism Awareness Ribbon: Wikimedia Commons

Depression word cluster: Mental Health Resources

Group living cartoon: Autism blog Seattle Hospital

Heidi Cullinan

Carry the Ocean

Samhain, 2015

Critiquing the portrayal of disability in romance

While researching the portrayal of disability in romance fiction for my last post, I came across Emily M. Baldys's intriguing 2012 article, "Disabled Sexuality, Incorporated: The Compulsions of Popular Romance."* Noting that people with disabilities have often "struggled to be recognized as sexual beings" (125), Baldys finds the prevalence of disabled heroes and heroines in romance fiction worthy of study. In particular, she wonders if, or how, such novels "revise or channel oppressive attitudes" towards the disabled and their sexuality.

To answer her question, she analyzes five romances that feature cognitively disabled protagonists: Colleen McCullough's Tim (1979); Billie Green's A Special Man (1986); Peggy Webb's A Prince for Jenny (1993); Pamela Morsi's Simple Jess (1996); and Jennifer Ashley's The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie (2009). Ultimately, she suggests that such novels are not as progressive as they first appear; though they grant their cognitively disabled protagonists sexual subjectivity and agency, they "strictly limit the kinds of (heterosexual, marriage-oriented) romantic options available to disabled characters" and "showcase ableist commonalities" in order to "downplay, reinscribe, and rehabilitate disability" (130).

I've not read the first four books that Baldys discusses, but I have read the the most recent title, the Victorian historical romance The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie. And my memories of it did not at all square with Baldys's critique. So I decided to reread the book, to see which I found more credible, Baldys' argument or my own recollections. Readers who haven't yet read Ashley's book (and I'd recommend it, highly) might want to stop here, as spoilers abound below.

Baldys raises four major objections to the portrayal of the disabled. The first three focus on the way "romances featuring characters with impaired minds compensate by assigning an increased aesthetic, erotic, and metaphoric significance to physical bodies" (130). These arguments lose much of their persuasiveness, however, when one considers the fact that they can be applied not only to books with disabled characters, but to the majority of romance novels published before 1990. If writers are following genre conventions, rather than conventions specific to romances with disabled characters, then it seems redundant to critique these specific novels rather than the genre as a whole.

Even if this were not the case, the first three objections Baldys raises do not apply to Ashley's Lord Ian. Significantly, Baldys only quotes from Lord Ian once, and in an unconvincing manner, to support these claims, although her evidence from the other books is persuasive. These differences suggest that the portrayal of disability in romance may have changed in important ways over the thirty-year span the works she analyzes cover.

Baldys's first claim is romance authors are able to make disabled heroes and heroines viable objects of sexual desire by focusing first on their bodies, rather than their minds, bodies which appear whole and normal. "The novels' narrators, as though offering preemptive compensation, emphasize the disabled characters' physical charms before their disabilities are revealed, so that, in most of the novels both readers' and characters' first impressions are of physical wholeness and attractiveness" (130). This is certainly not the case in Lord Ian. The book's title openly proclaims the hero's "madness," while its opening chapter includes no physical description. Told through Ian's point of view, the scene reveals not only his unusual behavior, but the different way he thinks about and responds to the world around him. Contemporary readers generally read his behavior as stemming from Asperger's Syndrome, but in 1881 England, the condition would have more likely been thought a form of lunacy. Ian's cognitive differences, rather than his physical "wholeness," is what is emphasized here.

Baldys also points to the "blatantly hyperbolic language" typically used to describe disabled bodies in these novels (130).  Well, yes, romance heroes in general are often presented in such language; Beth, Ian's heroine, thinks he "had the body of a god" (Ashley 150). But for Beth, Ian's attractiveness lies not only in a "normal" attractive body. During their first meeting, although "her entire world stopped" at the sight of him, Beth finds herself intrigued not only by Ian's looks, but also by his behavior: his restlessness; the way his eyes can't quite meet hers, or anyone else's; his abrupt announcement that he wants to bed her, and will marry her in order to do so. Older romances may have relied on the normalizing power of an attractive body to undercut readers' potential negative reaction to a cognitively-disabled protagonist, but Ashley's novel does not.

Lord Ian also does not follow the pattern of Baldys's second objection: the way "sexual desire and activity are used to interpellate the disabled characters as 'men' and 'women'" (131). Ian does not become a "man" when he consummates his desire for Beth; Ian is already sexually experienced before he ever meets Beth. And their sexual joining is not portrayed as "natural, organic, or instinctual, arising from the essential 'rightness' of heterosexual relations," as Baldys' argues occurs in the other novels.

Baldys cites from Lord Ian to provide evidence for her third objection, the way these novels deploy metaphors of able-bodied lovers incorporating the disabled into themselves. Such metaphors are not just an allegorizing of of sex, she suggests, but also work to contain the threat disability poses to compulsory heterosexuality; "incorporation works to discipline and restrain disability by representing its threat as safely contained within normality" (133). The quote she cites from Ashley's novel seems to support this interpretation:" [Ian] hungrily took her mouth, wanting to pull her inside him, or himself inside her. If he could be part of her, everything would be all right. He would be well. The horror he kept secret would go away" (Ashley 214).

Yet Baldys does not provide the context for this quote, a context which undermines her interpretation. Ian's hope that by being "pulled inside" he'd be "well" is not a wish for his cognitive differences to disappear. It is a wish that the "horror" he has kept secret for five years (that he believes his brother committed a murder) would disappear. His desire to be "well" is a desire to escape the pain of the nightmares that his remembrance of that secret bring on.

Even if Ian had been wishing to rid himself of his cognitive disabilities, though, the text that immediately follows this inner monologue suggests that it is a misguided one, and that Ian knows it is misguided: "Except he knew it wouldn't" (Ashley 214). Ian knows that striving to achieve normality through sex with his able-bodied wife cannot accomplish the impossible: it cannot change the events of the past, nor the present reality of his mental state.

Older texts typically cure or kill off disabled characters, in order to remove their threat of deviance. But this "narrative impulse to reduce and erase disability" does not work in the genre of romance, where happy endings are de rigueur. Instead, Baldys suggests, romance novels with disabled protagonists "radically reconstruct disability in order to conform to a particular kind of fantasy, one that imagines a compliant model of disability amenable to both reinscription and rehabilitation" (134). In particular, they suggest that "the effects of the disability are mitigated or overcome by the effects of blossoming love" (134). Her prime example of such "recuperation" is Ian Mackenzie.

Ian's recuperation plays out, Baldys argues, "through the explicit attribution of moments of 'improvement' in Ian to the influence of Beth and/or their relationship. Beth's love serves to cure Ian's headaches, calm his fear of crowds, and lessen his bouts of rage" (135). A closer look at the novel suggests that this is not in fact the case. One of Ian's bouts of rage stems is the direct result of another man's apparent threats to Beth, a rage that Beth is unable to contain. Another, the one mentioned above, is a result of his fears of his brother's guilt being revealed, or being directed in violence against Beth.  Beth is not able to mitigate or contain these rages.

When Ian shares his fear with Beth that some day he will harm her in one of his rages, just as his father harmed his mother, Beth points out to Ian that his rages all stem from his desire to protect, not to harm. When he still insists "I have the rage inside me," she retorts, "Which you know how to control" (311). His ability to control his rage when it might unfairly harm another is not something that results from his love of Beth, but something he already had. She just allows him to see it for himself.

Baldys would have it that Ian, who could not look directly into Beth's, or anyone else's, eyes at novel's start, can once he acknowledges his love for her. But the text explicitly denies this:

     Ian cupped her chin and turned her face up to his. Then he did what he'd been practicing since the night on the train—he looked her fully in the eyes.
     He couldn't always do it. Sometimes his gaze simply refused to obey, and he'd turn away with a growl. But more and more he'd been able to focus directly on her. (Ashely 318)

Looking Beth in the eye is not something that magically happens because he now loves her; it is something that Ian struggles to accomplish, and not always successfully, in order to demonstrate to Beth his love.

A passage from Lord Ian that Baldys doesn't quote, but that speaks to the desire to "recuperate" disability, occurs toward the end of the novel:

"All of us are mad in some way," Ian said. "I have a memory that won't let go of details. Hart is obsessed with politics and money. Cameron is a genius with horses, and Mac paints like a god. You find out details on your cases that others miss. You are obsessed with justice and getting everything you think is coming to you. We all have our madness. Mine is just the most obvious." (Ashley 306)

Is Ian's statement an attempt to normalize disability? Or to disable normality? My view is that it does the latter, to quite positive effect.


Are there any readers out there familiar with any of the other novels Baldys discusses? Do they conform to the patterns she suggests? What about novels with physically, rather than cognitively, disabled protagonists? Are 21st century romances freer from the problems Baldys identifies than 20th century ones?


*Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 6.2 (2012): 125–141.

Next time on RNFF:

Miranda Neville's The Importance of
Being Wicked

Romancing Disability: Bonnie Dee's NEW LIFE

The first thing you need to know about me is I'm not retarded. Or mentally handicapped I guess is the polite term these days. But whatever you call it, I'm not that. I have a mental disability, but I wasn't born this way. It took extra stupidity for me to get this way—driving drunk, shooting through the windshield, landing on my noggin, and scrambling my brains permanently.


Jason Reitmiller is not your conventional romance hero. We don't get a description of a handsome, physically-compelling body before we're informed about his disability, as we are in so many other romance novels with physically or cognitively disabled protagonists. Instead, readers of New Life know right from its opening lines that its hero is different: a little rude, a lot irresponsible (at least in the past), and "permanently," un-fixably disabled. Jason's first-person narrative voice, and its straightforward description of the cause of his disablement,  demands that the reader not take a sentimental stance towards him or his disability. Jason is not an innocent victim whom readers are meant to feel sorry for or romanticize, but a man learning to live with the drastically-changed circumstances of a life lived with "scrambled brains."

Not your average seduction tool...

As Jason tells his side of this dual-narrative romance, he shows readers the many areas of his life that have been affected by his accident and its aftermath. He speaks slowly, often with gaps between words or phrases while he struggles to find the word he needs. Sometimes the wrong words come out (he calls the girl he's interested in a "liar" instead of a "lawyer"). He has trouble keeping on task, and isn't as creative as he used to be; he has to write out all the steps of his job as a janitor in a downtown office building, otherwise he'll forget and get distracted. His memory is sketchy, and he's prone to sudden bursts of sorrow or anger, although he's gotten better at controlling his emotions if he avoids stressful situations. In case of emergency, he has a card with his name, address, and his parents' contact information, along with a line that states he is brain damaged. This certainly wasn't the life he had pictured as a young, party-happy college student.

Despite its unflinching depiction of Jason's disabilities, New Life neither holds Jason up as a heroic martyr, nor does it insist that the life disabled is a life doomed to tragedy and pain. And above all, it doesn't construct a narrative in which Jason is saved or rescued from his disability by an able-bodied lover.

In fact, during their first meeting, it is Jason who offers help to new-lawyer Anna, crying on her office-building stairs after she's embarrassed herself during her first day in court. He offers her advice, makes her laugh, and draws her attention not only to his good looks, but to the way he sees: "He was hot in an unkempt slacker kind of way that I'd always secretly been attracted to but had never dated. Shaggy black hair curled around his ears and fell like a crow's wing over his forehead. Equally dark eyes had looked into mine as if he really saw me. Intense. Intent."

Looking for Love: Disabled participants on the British TV show The Undatables

As Jason and Anna gradually ease from office friendship to dating, learning to understand Jason's disabilities, and, just as importantly, how to communicate with each other about them, proves a challenge, but not an insurmountable one.  "I'm sorry," Anna tells Jason early in their relationship. "I don't mean to pry, but can you tell  me a little more about the injuries from your accident? They're part of you. If we're going to spend time together, I think I need to know." But while she "understood we couldn't ignore Jason's disability if our relationship continued," Anna also recognizes that " it wasn't something he wanted to touch every aspect of his life." Disability is an important part, not the defining only, of Jason's identity.

Jason's disability will not magically disappear just because he's falling in love; Anna can't fix or change him because she loves him. And loving a person with disabilities means making choices, choices other lovers don't demand. As Anna's colleague tells her, "If you're going to be involved with this guy long-term, you need to consider what you're willing to give up, what compromises you're willing to make." But it needn't be an unbreakable barrier to their relationship, either, as long as they are able to keep talking with each other, and talking honestly, about how Jason's differences affect them, their feelings, and how they spend their shared time together.

When he meets Anna, Jason is still in the process of adjusting to his new life. As his romance progresses, he recognizes that he needs to make some changes, needs to mature and grow. But it's not Anna, or falling in love with Anna, that leads Jason to reassess his priorities. Instead, it is the fact that he is able to date, when he wasn't sure that it would be possible post-accident, that makes him ready to make other changes. "I didn't expect anything like this," he tells a friend who questions him about why he's suddenly become willing to talk during their group therapy sessions. "[Dating has] kind of changed my perspective about what I can expect out of life." Jason begins to ask himself what he wants out of his new life, what kind of goals he might have for himself, what it will take to make him happy and fulfilled, not just in a romantic relationship, but in other aspects of his life, too.

Another welcome aspect of the novel is the way it actively engages with, and undermines, popular culture discourses surrounding disability. After first meeting Jason, Anna thinks, "I noticed his movements were slow and deliberate. I thought about movies I'd seen in which people in rehab worked to reclaim the simplest motor skills, usually in an inspiring montage set to music. How awful it would be to lose everything in one life-changing moment." In contrast, a girl from Jason's past casts him in a role far more worthy of a feel-good movie of the week:

     "You don't seem the same. You seem a little lost and confused and... sort of pure or something. Like a sheet of paper that hasn't been written on yet." She reached across the table to touch my hand. "Horrible as your accident was, you gained something few people get to have—a chance for a real fresh start."
     "I guess so." Her poetic view of me didn't reflect my reality at all. I wasn't fresh or new, and I definitely wasn't pure or innocent. I was still a fuck up.

And after Jason makes a particularly spectacular "fuck up" in his relationship with Anna, and tries to apologize through the "grand romantic gesture" common to romantic comedies, it backfires in a truly spectacular way: "Wasn't this the part where the girl was so moved by the guy's sincerity that she gave in? But there was no swelling music in the Haggenstern and Lowe offices, only the quiet whispers of staring lawyers and Anna's softly muttered, 'Please go, Jason. I don't want to do this here. I'll talk to you later.'"

Two other unconventional, and very welcome, aspects of Dee's romance are its attention to social class, and its disruption of traditional gender roles. Anna and Jason also must negotiate differences in social class, as well as in ability, in order to make their relationship work, a component of identity not often acknowledged in the world of romance. Anna's embarrassed when her parents arrive early for a visit and discover a disheveled Jason in her apartment. When Jason calls her on it, she thinks "How could I respond to that? You're right. I'm a little embarrassed to be dating a janitor with no apparent plans to be anything else. Jason was hardly the guy I wanted to bring to the law firm's Christmas party or a family event, and I couldn't reconcile that feeling with my very real love for him." Instead of hiding her fears from him, though, she admits her ambivalence, and tells him "I can't pretend the discrepancy between our economic positions doesn't exist, but my feelings about it are just something I'll have to work through. You're not the only one struggling to adjust to this thing between us."

The novel concludes with an interesting take on gender roles: it is Jason, not Anna, who ends up in the role of homemaker: "Yeah, I was a kept man, but the living arrangement suited both of us. I cleaned the house, cooked, and did laundry. She brought home the bacon." Is this a dig against the domestic, suggesting that only the mentally disabled would find the role of homemaker rewarding? Or is it another attempt to disrupt conventional wisdom by suggesting that a man, as well as a woman, might find cooking, cleaning, and doing the laundry to his liking? Or perhaps a bit of both?


What other novels with cognitively disabled protagonists would you recommend?

Bonnie Dee, New Life. 2013. e-book.















Photo credits:
Floor buffer: Hardwood Floors Blogs
The Undatables: Guardian UK
Worst Romantic Gesture Ever: Deviant Art

Next time on RNFF

Disability and Heteronormativity:

A match made in romance?

Can a stalker be a romantic heroine? The case of Sharon G. Flake's PINNED

In a recent post on the website of the Popular Romance Project, Deborah Kaplan muses on the different response readers in her graduate class on children's and YA fantasy have to the "stalker-ish" behavior of two different teenage paranormal heroes: Edward Cullen, the sparkly vampire of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight books, and Sorry Carlisle, the more ambiguously constructed witch of Margaret Mahy's The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance (1984). The question with which Kaplan concludes her post—is the morality of the hero's actions determined by the heroine's reactions to them?—seemed to stalk me as I read a very different book: Sharon G. Flake's YA novel Pinned (2012). But it wasn't the hero's actions that caused Kaplan's question to haunt my mind, but rather the heroine's.

A work of realism, not fantasy, told in alternating first-person chapters, Pinned tells the story of two African-American ninth-graders who appear to have next to nothing in common. Ambitious, intellectual Adonis is one of the top scholars at Beacon Academy, and basks in his teachers' encourage to "let my light shine, and not to be so humble" (63). Born without knees, lower legs, or feet, Adonis may be confined to a wheelchair, but knows that "you do not need legs to dream big. You need to be determined; convinced that it is within you to accomplish great things" (27).  Adonis's academic successes and lofty self-confidence lend him an air of superiority that many students find annoying, but few can dispute.

The only student who seems to rile him is Autumn, the one girl on the school wrestling team that Adonis manages. Saying whatever she thinks and feels, instead of measuring her words; fighting fiercely to win each and every wrestling match; outspoken about her determination to be the perfect girlfriend for Adonis: Autumn is precisely the type of aggressive, muscle-bound girl Adonis dislikes. Besides, she has such trouble reading, she probably hasn't even read a book since last summer, Adonis thinks. So what if Autumn keeps invading his dreams; Adonis will simply NOT allow her or her problems to pin him down.

Frustratingly, though, Autumn can't seem to take a hint. Or repeated hints. Or even outright rejection:

     "Stop stalking me!" He puts up one finger. Then two. Then five when he say, "You show up at the van. Now you're at the elevator. Last week you were waiting for me after a morning meeting with Mr. Epperson. Plus you came to my AP psychology class. You forgot something, you told the teacher."
     It sound wrong when you hear it out loud.
     ....
     "I ain't like that. For real. It's just that—what if I texted you. Would that be better?" (35-36)

Autumn spends much of the remainder of the book dogging Adonis, sending him those text messages, asking him unnecessary questions about the wrestling team, even volunteering in the library just so she can be with him, though being surrounded by books literally makes her sick. Adonis uses the word "stalking" to describe her behavior, and vocally protests her pursuit at almost every turn. Yet I found myself resisting Adonis's label, and I'm guessing that most readers will, too. If we flip the players in Kaplan's question—is the morality of the heroine's actions determined by the hero's reactions to them—then the question in the case of Pinned clearly seems to be "no." Why should this be so?

I've come up with a few possible answers:

• By using alternating first-person chapters, Pinned gives us not just Adonis's take on the situation, but also Autumn's. While Stephenie Meyer gives us only Bella's point of view in Twilight, not Edward's, and Margaret Mahy gives us only Laura's, not Sorry's in The Changeover, Flake's dual narrative allows readers inside both characters' heads. We see Autumn not only through Adonis's eyes, but also through her own. Flake shows us the talents (she's an amazing cook, with dreams of one day opening her own restaurant) as well as the vulnerabilities, that Adonis never sees. And we are shown Adonis through Autumn's eyes, too. Flake's text asks readers to identify with, or empathize with, both Adonis and Autumn. How can you judge a character a stalker after accepting an author's invitation to identify with her?

• Though Adonis labels Autumn's behavior "stalking," no one else in the novel finds Autumn's behavior untoward. Adonis's mother, who finds out about his unacknowledged obsession with the girl wrestler because her son talks in his sleep, encourages Adonis to invite her on a date, and even attends a wrestling match just to watch Autumn compete. Autumn's best friend, Peaches, continually tells her not that her behavior is scary, but rather that Adonis isn't good enough for her. And other girls in the school behave as directly and aggressively as Autumn does. As a white, middle-class reader, I might be tempted to lean toward calling Autumn's behavior stalking, but I would be wrong. In the context of the urban, mixed working and middle class school that Flake portrays, her actions are not seen as problematic.

• In order for a stalker to be frightening, said stalker must have power, and be tempted to wield it over her victim. Edward Cullen can bite Bella and turn her into a vampire at will; Sorry Carlisle can use his greater knowledge of witchcraft to help or harm Laura. But Autumn has little power in the world of Beacon Academy, or in the world at large. The differences in the way they speak—Adonis in perfect standard English, Autumn in black vernacular—illustrates not only their differences in personality, but also the larger differences in social class that separate them. Adonis's mother is a head nurse, while for much of Autumn's childhood, her parents worked minimum wage jobs, the only jobs available for high-school dropouts. Only now that her parents have earned their GEDs has the family stopped moving in search of jobs with benefits (and to avoid landlords demanding the rent). But their peripatetic lifestyle has already done damage to Autumn's prospects; the constant disruptions in her schooling meant that Autumn's reading skills have never progressed as they should. While Adonis' future is all that is promising, Autumn's in danger of flunking out of school. As stalker material, Autumn may be annoying, but she's hardly a figure of fear.

• Toward the end of the novel, Autumn stops chasing Adonis, finally realizing that it's better to forget a boy who could let her down like Adonis has. Of course, it is when Autumn stops chasing that Adonis finally begins to realize her worth.

• Perhaps most importantly, Autumn is a girl, our romantic heroine. The typical female stalker in popular culture is constructed as a figure of terror, not as romantically charming: Glenn Close's spurned lover in Fatal Attraction; Kathy Bates' delusional fan in Misery. While a hero may be allowed to stalk a heroine and still have readers find him sexy and compelling, I can't think of a romance that gives the same leeway to its heroine. Can you?

Sharon G. Flake, Pinned. Scholastic, 2012.

Next time on RNFF: Mistaking feisty for feminist