Hey there. Look, posting more than once in three months, dang. Actually, I didn't think that would be happening, since I was in the middle of Stephen King's Dark Tower series--but the file for the fourth book (it's on my Kindle) appears to be corrupt, so here I am.
I actually read this book about seven million times between sixth grade and my freshman or sophomore year of high school, because I was in an awful reading rut and although I did eventually get sick of it, I didn't know what else to read. And I'm speaking of this book, and of a wide variety of books which were basically Sarah Dessen books, and I have to say, she writes the same thing over and over and over. I got to Just Listen before I figured that out (also that was the name of the reading book we had in third grade, loooool). Anyways, Pete's niece mentioned that she just bought this and I was like, hey, I remember that book, I really liked it! So I decided to see if it was still any good or if I was just awful.
Okay, first of all, the cover. I just took a class on Literary Publishing, and we had a two week long unit on the covers of books: misrepresenting the text and whatnot, how that's pretty common but how authors rarely have a say in it, and how you also want to make the book look appealing and cool. We had to write a paper on a book that failed at having an appealing or representative cover, and one that succeeded in both respects. Anyways... I can't help but apply that here.
The cover of the copy I had was dark blue, there was a girl out on a pier and it's all kind of in shadow or darkened. Her reflection in the water is missing the face--it's simply not there. The title is on the bottom in white. I'd say this is pretty representative of the book--the main character, Caitlin, becomes entrenched in an abusive relationship and she loses herself. So the symbolization is there, and the cover has that dark, dreary feel.
The cover my local library has is a little creepier--the image of the ocean is still there, but the cover looks pieced together. There's a picture of a girl's face which has been torn up but has since been taped back together, another picture of a girl whose face has been cut out, and a fragment of lined paper with handwriting on it. Again, there is the repeated symbol of the girl who has lost herself. Caitlin's last gift from her sister who ran away at the very start of the novel was a diary, and I think what words are written on the paper on the cover are actually lines right out of the book. And there's an important moment at the end of the book where Caitlin does tape a picture of herself back together, showing how she has rebuilt herself. So this cover probably represents the book the best, though it is really creepy looking.
This cover is light blue, Sarah Dessen's name is in huge letters on the top in darker blue (though I suppose she's popular enough with the teen romance sect for her name to be a selling point), and the title is in little lowercase letters at the bottom. The picture is several flat glass squares (like coasters in how I imagine them) on top of each other. There's a heart showing on them; either a heart-shaped bit of plastic was placed behind the stacked coasters or they all have red colouring together that adds up to the shape of a heart (I guess that's not really important). ...What? This book is about an abusive relationship. I mean, I guess glass can shatter, but there is a full heart here. Not broken or messed up, it's a book about a sixteen-year-old caught in abusive relationship. Or maybe it's meant to say it looks like love? Or something? Either way, I think this cover is dumb and misrepresents the book pretty hard. But I guess I can see how it has grabability? I mean, it's pretty generic, but I guess your average teen looking for high school romances isn't going to care about that?
And this time when I read the book, I noticed that in Sarah Dessen's introduction she included the phrase "who survived my lost years and, like me, lived to tell" (no number, but it's there, I promise). Which made me feel guilty when I really wanted to rip into the book, because to me it seems to indicate that she was basing this from some extent off her own life and had a similar experience in a bad relationship like Caitlin... or perhaps she ran away from home, like Caitlin's older sister Cassandra. Cailtin is lost metaphysically (is that the right word to use?) and Cassandra is physically lost. Cassandra ran off at age eighteen before college started to be with a guy named Adam in NYC (he works on a trash TV show stationed there, which strikes me as a little funny because Cassandra was meant to go to Yale, and Jerry Springer, Maury, Steve Wilkos, etc, are all filmed in CT). And Cass at age sixteen gets on the cheerleading scene and meets Rogerson and eventually we see he is true colours and so on.
Okay, so I've read the book like ninety times, and I'm older now, so I'm noticing a lot more. First of all, the book starts on Caitlin's sixteenth birthday. I was like eleven when I first read this, so it seemed normal, but I'm four years older than that now, so every moment that I remember that Cait is only sixteen I'm like, whaaaaaaaaaat? Anyways, that first chapter is all full of foreshadowing. Cass leaves that day, and because of that no-one notices the cut/swelling on Caitlin's face from when she tripped that morning, as no-one will truly notice what's wrong with Caitlin at the very end, and so on.
Oh, it's also to weird to think of Cassandra as being eighteen cause I'm two years past that too, and in my third year of college. Whoops.
One thing that always bothers me is the guy's name. The abusive boyfriend is named Rogerson Biscoe. Who's ever heard of Rogerson as a first name? Oh, also, the first time she meets him he's wearing penny loafers with no socks (Dessen 50). EW. Let me be petty and say, EW. And her friend Kelly says he looks like a drug dealer. SPOILER ALERT. (The second time she sees him she watches him do a deal, though I don't think she realizes it at the time.)
Oh, Caitlin lives in Lakeview too. Apparently this is a real place... Somewhere. I saw it on a list online, you know, "areas from books based on real places" and stuff--like how Scott Pilgrim is very clearly set in an area of Canada, etc. Not so much in this book, but in other books you see similar things: I hated her book Just Listen, but in it you see Remy and Dexter (I think that was his name) from This Lullaby in it, which was really cute... In some of the other books, the book that Remy's mom wrote appears... The girl in The Truth About Forever is dismissed in another book... I do love it when authors do things like that, and I liked it a lot when Dessen did it. Anyways, my point is is that all of the books are pretty much set in the same place.
Oh, and Rogerson tells her about how he has all these misdemeanors. All or most of them are because of selling pot (this was written in 2000). Still, I would be kind of put off by that. (Then again, she's sixteen? I don't know. The existence of any criminal record would make me wary, even if I really liked the guy.) Anyways, Rogerson refers to such misdemeanors as "long stories" and Caitlin does come out and say that he "apparently had a lot of 'long stories'" (Dessen 71).
And I like how surprised she got at the sight of pot. Oh no, pot! But it's 2000 so I guess that can be excused? It still seemed kind of comical to me. Anyways, she takes a single hit and becomes SO HIGH that she's scared to use her hands. One hit is not going to get you that high, unless if it's from a bong. Anyways, I was just like come on, calm down. You're that one girl. You're the Amanda of this party.
Oh, God--the part that has remained my favourite since the first time I've read it: "'How did you meet our Rogerson?'... 'At a party,' I stammered. 'We met at a party.' 'Oh, yes,' she said absently, as if she wasn't really listening, still looking at something over my head. 'He likes those'" (Dessen 83). Okay, there's something clearly off with the mom. But it still makes me laugh every time.
Okay, one thing I hate about Sarah Dessen is that it seems like in every book she complains about Pink Floyd and talks about how much she hates them. Get over it, Sarah Dessen, f'real.
Okay, the first thing that always comes as a hint to me... Well, Rogerson knows a lot of random trivia. He says it's because he's grandfather would buy him books of trivia and test him, which I noticed and thought as more sinister than any other time I've read it before. (Also, I should mention that you actually see his dad punch him. And the mom clearly has issues.) Anyways, the first thing that always struck me as odd and a little off, even the first time I read it, is when she is talking about all the places she'd randomly ask him trivia and what she'd ask him to try and stump him. The section ends with this: "'Rogerson,' I asked him sweetly as we sat watching a video in the pool house, 'where would I find the pelagic zone?' 'In the open sea,' he said. 'Now shut up and eat your Junior Mints'" (Dessen 115). Excuse me? I would have gotten real sassy real fast. Don't tell me to shut up. Or eat Junior Mints. They're gross. But props to Dessen for dropping that warning there.
Caitlin meets my favourite character, Corinna, through Rogerson--he's friends with Corinna's boyfriend... "She had a pretty face and cat-shaped eyes" (Dessen 116). Did she now?
Anyways. Corinna leaves David by the end of the book--year after year they said they'd go to California, this and that, David was continually shiftless, and eventually she just up and leaves, despite the fact that they seemed like they were so madly and deeply in love. The lifestyle was too rough, too poor, and Corinna was working her butt off, and David was not doing a thing. But that's how Caitlin says she imagined Cassandra and Adam were living (before Corinna left, of course). And, this makes me wonder about the end. I guess I'm going to have to reveal the end (I've already pretty much given it all away anyways), but when Caitlin returns home after her stay at a recovery faculty, her sister is there to meet her. I always assumed Cassandra came back because she had been stuck in a similar situation with Adam as Cait did with Rogerson, but it's possible that she was like Corinna and had the luck to see it and get out before Corinna did. Then again, there's a third possibility which never occurred to me before this time--she could just have been going home to greet her sister. Who knows? Their next-door neighbours were in a similar situation that turned out well, they've been together since Boo was eighteen and it worked. So I guess Dessen's point wouldn't be that it always turns out one way, just that there are many ways it can turn out. You know?
The scene on page 133-134, when Caitlin sees her friend Rina crying in her car over a break-up, "fiddling with her radio, reaching up every few seconds to wipe her eyes with her shirtsleeve or run her fingers through her hair. Every once in a while she'd start singing along with the radio, slamming her hand on the steering wheel to emphasize one chorus or line, and then her shoulders would start shaking. It was clear. Rina was driving and crying" (Dessen 133-134). This SAME EXACT SCENE happens in This Lullaby. A girl whose boyfriend that she had been with for years breaks up with her, or she finds out he's cheating on her or something--Remy comforts her friend at the Quick Zip (or whatever), and they happen to see the guy in traffic--she launches a cup of soda at him and hits him in the face with it. And it's awesome.
Anyways, this makes her late to hang out with Rogerson, and by the time she gets home to meet him, he's gone. They can't meet until later, she tries to joke with him after he gets so uptight about her being late--she playfully calls him a big baby and he punches her in the eye. And it continues. Sarah Dessen does, I believe, do a very good job at portraying the relationship after the abuse begins. Possibly because, as we noted earlier, Dessen may have been involved in such a relationship at one point in her life.
Anyways... There's a huge chunk of pages I haven't marked--not until seventy pages later, when Corinna leaves, and David creepily hits on Cait before she leaves the house too. Anyways, after that there's another ten, fifteen page break to when Rogerson is finally confronted and jailed, and Caitlin is sent to the care facility, and then the next is when she tears up the picture, which I already talked about. She gets a letter from Corinna that's really sweet (Corinna had made it to New Mexico), and a letter to her sister... Well, that's it for my notes, except when the sister comes back at the end, but of course I just talked about that.
So, in retrospect? It's a decent book, and Dessen is very eloquent in Dreamland, but I'm definitely out of the age range for this genre or whatever. I'm glad that of all Sarah Dessen's books, I chose to reread this one. This is the first of all her books that I read, anyways. I definitely won't be rereading her other books though. Not a bad choice though. Just don't pick it up thinking it's going to be romantic! Bad cover designers. Bad.
Works Cited: Dessen, Sarah. Dreamland. Speak: United States of America, 2000.
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