Catalyst, by Laurie Halse Anderson
Jun. 12th, 2019 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scioscribeYears and years ago, when this book first came out, I kept borrowing it off a friend of mine and then not actually reading it. I'd loved Speak and, later on, loved Wintergirls, but had never gotten around to reading more Anderson than that.
Catalyst is good but not as good. And reading it now as an adult, I can see why I kept shying away from it as a kid. Sexual assault and anorexia were thankfully subjects I had no real experience with, but academic stress and getting yourself into a shitty situation and continuously lying in the hopes that it would spontaneously resolve itself? Bristling with prickliness and resentment? Yeah, that sounds familiar. And unbearable.
The novel centers on Kate Malone, a driven and single-minded high school senior. She sees herself as split into Good Kate (shows up for her dad's chicken and biscuit dinners at church even though she's an atheist, takes care of her younger brother, is polite) and Bad Kate (selfish, occasionally seething with resentment, full of lusts and faults). Good Kate has applied to MIT, her (dead) mom's alma mater and her dream school. So far, so good. She was waitlisted and, as the novel opens, is now stuck in the agony of checking the mail everyday. It's particularly agonizing because, well, Bad Kate applied only to MIT, despite misleading everyone in her life into thinking she had safety schools. MIT is it for her, or it feels like her whole life is going to come crashing down around her.
Into all this comes Kate's classmate Teri Litch, whose house has burned down. She and her little brother move into Kate's house at her dad's invitation and very much not at Kate's. Kate grows to like the little brother, but at first it seems like nothing could make her like Teri, who steals from her (including the watch that Kate got from her mother), bullies her, and once beat her up. It's clear that class issues are part of this, but not, to be fair, the entirety of it; Teri genuinely and deliberately makes herself into someone pretty unpleasant to be around. For, it turns out, understandable reasons.
While Wintergirls and Speak both have prominent social issues they're tackling in a way that Catalyst doesn't--not as directly, anyway--Catalyst nonetheless feels like a cheaper, more "problem novel" take.
Spoilers below the cut.
Halfway through the novel, just as Kate and Teri are sort of starting to relax around one another and Teri has successfully led a church-sponsored repair team to fix most of her house... Teri's little brother electrocutes himself on some exposed wires and dies. And it turns out he was her son, conceived by her father's incestuous rape.
Also Kate doesn't get into MIT, but obviously that doesn't even feel as important to her after the kid's death. She spends a lot of time trying to take care of Teri and her life changes a lot in subtle ways as she drifts inexorably away from her boyfriend and more towards an undefined future. And there's a lot that's good here, like the realistic loose ends of people being people--Kate's boyfriend is sometimes nice and sometimes kind of a dick, Kate's father is being kind to Teri but sort of shitty to his daughter by forcing this situation on her, etc. Kate's POV is sometimes hard to like in a way that is, perversely, very sympathetic and believable.
But at the same time, the sudden, tragic child death and the revelation about Teri's past feels like extruded Profound YA product. Coming at it from the outside and not from the inside, from Teri's perspective, makes a difference there, I think, as does treating it as a twist as opposed embedding it more thoroughly in the narrative (like in Speak and Wintergirls). The end result doesn't really do much for me. It's just, "Normal life may seem stressful, but if you really realized how bad some people have it, and took the time to get involved with them, you'd have different priorities and would also be okay with someone stealing your watch." Which may be a lesson that needs imparting, except for the watch part, but is also much more of A Lesson, conveyed in an obvious way.
Catalyst is good but not as good. And reading it now as an adult, I can see why I kept shying away from it as a kid. Sexual assault and anorexia were thankfully subjects I had no real experience with, but academic stress and getting yourself into a shitty situation and continuously lying in the hopes that it would spontaneously resolve itself? Bristling with prickliness and resentment? Yeah, that sounds familiar. And unbearable.
The novel centers on Kate Malone, a driven and single-minded high school senior. She sees herself as split into Good Kate (shows up for her dad's chicken and biscuit dinners at church even though she's an atheist, takes care of her younger brother, is polite) and Bad Kate (selfish, occasionally seething with resentment, full of lusts and faults). Good Kate has applied to MIT, her (dead) mom's alma mater and her dream school. So far, so good. She was waitlisted and, as the novel opens, is now stuck in the agony of checking the mail everyday. It's particularly agonizing because, well, Bad Kate applied only to MIT, despite misleading everyone in her life into thinking she had safety schools. MIT is it for her, or it feels like her whole life is going to come crashing down around her.
Into all this comes Kate's classmate Teri Litch, whose house has burned down. She and her little brother move into Kate's house at her dad's invitation and very much not at Kate's. Kate grows to like the little brother, but at first it seems like nothing could make her like Teri, who steals from her (including the watch that Kate got from her mother), bullies her, and once beat her up. It's clear that class issues are part of this, but not, to be fair, the entirety of it; Teri genuinely and deliberately makes herself into someone pretty unpleasant to be around. For, it turns out, understandable reasons.
While Wintergirls and Speak both have prominent social issues they're tackling in a way that Catalyst doesn't--not as directly, anyway--Catalyst nonetheless feels like a cheaper, more "problem novel" take.
Spoilers below the cut.
Halfway through the novel, just as Kate and Teri are sort of starting to relax around one another and Teri has successfully led a church-sponsored repair team to fix most of her house... Teri's little brother electrocutes himself on some exposed wires and dies. And it turns out he was her son, conceived by her father's incestuous rape.
Also Kate doesn't get into MIT, but obviously that doesn't even feel as important to her after the kid's death. She spends a lot of time trying to take care of Teri and her life changes a lot in subtle ways as she drifts inexorably away from her boyfriend and more towards an undefined future. And there's a lot that's good here, like the realistic loose ends of people being people--Kate's boyfriend is sometimes nice and sometimes kind of a dick, Kate's father is being kind to Teri but sort of shitty to his daughter by forcing this situation on her, etc. Kate's POV is sometimes hard to like in a way that is, perversely, very sympathetic and believable.
But at the same time, the sudden, tragic child death and the revelation about Teri's past feels like extruded Profound YA product. Coming at it from the outside and not from the inside, from Teri's perspective, makes a difference there, I think, as does treating it as a twist as opposed embedding it more thoroughly in the narrative (like in Speak and Wintergirls). The end result doesn't really do much for me. It's just, "Normal life may seem stressful, but if you really realized how bad some people have it, and took the time to get involved with them, you'd have different priorities and would also be okay with someone stealing your watch." Which may be a lesson that needs imparting, except for the watch part, but is also much more of A Lesson, conveyed in an obvious way.