A few years ago, a friend of mine named Kori lambasted a terrible book he'd just read. I had recently bought this book, and his response was to suggest returning it if I could.
Today I read that book in basically one sitting.
I wish I'd followed Kori's advice.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews came out in 2012, the same year as another YA book famously featuring a main girl character with cancer. While Andrews wasn't directly responding to The Fault in our Stars, it starts from the very beginning by setting itself apart from it:
You may have already figured out that it's about a girl who had cancer. So there's a chance you're thinking, "Awesome! This is going to be a wise and insightful story about love and death and growing up. It is probably going to make me cry literally the entire time I am so fired up right now." If that is an accurate representation of your thoughts, you should probably try to smush this book into a garbage disposal then run away. Because here's the thing: I learned absolutely nothing from Rachel's leukemia. In fact, I probably because stupider about life because of the whole thing.
If that paragraph made you roll your eyes so far back they began to hurt, I have news for you.
It doesn't get any better.
Let's begin.
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The Good Stuff
Non-Narrator Characters_
Earl is a young black man from Homewood, a neighborhood described by Greg as "non-affluent". It becomes clear what that means is poor. Earl's home situation is not great: dad lives far away and doesn't seem to be involved, mom has sequestered herself upstairs and doesn't seem to be involved, and the six children, all boys, seem to fend for themselves. Earl seems to use his friendship with Greg as a temporary escape from his homelife but sees his long-term trajectory as one that can't involve hanging out with Greg all the time.
I was trying to figure out what to eat first when Earl suddenly said, "It's a good thing, man, because I can't be making films no more. I gotta get a job or something. I gotta make some money and get outta my mom's goddamn house."
Earl sees things realistically, and it's jarring when we see Earl and Rachel together, because Greg's lack of general awareness about what is actually happening clouds everything. A scene in the book that highlights this intensely is when Greg and Earl go to visit Rachel the day before she starts chemo. Rachel and Earl don't know each other at all. Greg is accidentally high.
"I wasn't sure what your text message meant," she said. She was eyeing Earl warily. I had the queasy feeling that was mistrustful of him because he was black, although I also felt terrible for thinking that, because that would be accusing a girl of racism who is about to lose all her hair, and then probably die.
"Earl's the man," I said, as it this explaine anything.
"Yeah, you guys send gross text messages to each other."
It took me a long, uncomfortably silent time to remember that this was the only thing I had ever said to Rachel about Earl, and by the time I remembered that, Earl had already taken some initiative.
"Sup."
"Hello, Earl."
Silence.
"I like your room."
"Thank you. Greg thinks it's too girly."
I knew I had to say something here, so I sort of yelled, "I do not!"
"Of course it's girly," said Earl. "My room doesn't have no James Bond [Daniel Craig] in no..._thong "
{some discussion, veering to her impending chemo}
"It sucks a little bit," said Rachel.
"Yeah, but it's exciting."[said Earl]
"I guess."
If you get it early enough, you've got a good chance," said Earl, staring at the ground.
"Yup." Rachel was also staring at the ground.
Probably racist silence.
I'm sorry, but what? Yes, meeting someone from a completely different socio-economic and racial background is awkward. Especially when they're in your teenage girl bedroom, where you have posters of actors you find attractive on your walls. Add to that you could be dying, and death is uncomfortable.
The first time Greg thinks Rachel is uncomfortable because Earl is black is okay, understandable. The second time? Just obliviousness.
Greg says a few times that Earl is a better person than him. And it's true: Earl is better. As a person who understands how the world really works and as a fully-developed character.
Rachel
I feel for Rachel, I really do. Because this is all from Greg's perspective, we only get what he sees. And the biggest character we lose out on because of that is Rachel.
When Greg is visiting her after her diagnosis, he's the one doing all the talking. And she sits and listens drone on and on.
We learn little to nothing about her. Later, when Greg and Earl are making a movie as a tribute to Rachel, they try talking to Denise, Rachel's mom, about Rachel's life. [Noting that this quote is in screenplay format in the book, so the formatting for here is a bit different. Text is all the same.]
GREG (offscreen) : So, Denise. Can you tell me a bit about Rachel's birth?
DENISE (distractedly): Oh, Rachel's birth.
GREG (offscreen) : Yes.
DENISE: Rachel's birth. What an ordeal.
(inexplicably loudly) She was never much of a fighter. She's always been a quiet girl, just so sweet, never wanting to fight, and now I don't know what to do. I can't make her fight, Greg.
From then on, we learn that the chemo isn't working, so Rachel is "giving up".
That, to me, is the intriguing question. It's of course one never asked. And we can't answer it, or even attempt to answer because we don't know Rachel hardly at all.
It's clear that Rachel isn't the main character in the story, but she's used more like a prop piece than an actual person. She's there to highlight Greg's general crappiness and push him to do better. Like a motivational quote in human form.
I mean, her name isn't even in the title. Sure, Earl and girl rhyme. And in the conversation in the back of my edition, the name Rachel wasn't solidified for a while. But think about this as a title: Me and Earl and Rachel (the Dying Girl). It names her, it maintains the rhyme scheme, and we have something that matches Greg's voice.
[Side sad note: not only is she not in the title, her last name is Kushner, a surname that has not aged well.]
Vivid and/or Relatable Pieces
There were small portions that I found really enjoyable.
- Chapter 7—The Gaines Family: Summary
This early chapter really is what pushed me forward to keep reading. The descriptions of his family members were wonderful, highlighting their weirdness perfectly and really developing parts of their characters quickly.
Incidentally, you may have noticed that all of our names [Greg, Gretchen, Grace] begin with GR and are not at all Jewish-sounding. Oe night Mom had a little too much wine at dinner and confided to us all that, before we were born, and after she realized her children would have Dad's also-not-Jewish last name, she decided she wanted all of us to be "surprise Jews." Meaning, Jews with sneaky Anglo-Saxon names. I know, it makes no sense.
But it does! It completely does.
- Moms in High School
While my mom wasn't super overbearing like Marla, I did recognize some of the behaviors. For example, I once got a ride with a guy to the local little league park. My mom asked who he was, and I gave a typical, avoiding answer, as he was a friend of so&so (a true statement). While we had been talking (aka texting to get to know each other), it quickly died off, because I found him kind of boring. Months later though, I was getting a number from my mom's contacts in her cell phone, and there was an entry that stood out, because the last name was where the guy was from, rather than an actual last name. Turns out my mom had gotten the number (or gotten my sister to get the number) from my phone and logged it in her contacts.
All of this is to say that moms can be overbearing on high-school children and do things in a misguided attempt to be helpful.
- Humor
Andrews says in the back that his mission was "to write something funny about something that wasn't funny at all, and to try to do it in a way that didn't feel chep or cruel."
And there were some funny moments in the book. I'll get more into my reactions in a bit.
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The Bad Stuff
Greg
Greg in general is a really annoying guy. I get that I don't have to like all my main characters, that's fine. But geez, man, he got tiring, fast.
The entire book is written, as I mentioned, from his perspective. Mostly it's first-person, but he changes to screenplay format here and there, which is done in the third person. Even then, Greg's perspective of the situation at hand is still indicated, mainly through the directions for the lines (see above with him describing Denice's emotions.)
He's a kid, and he doesn't know how to write. He has a flawed view of the world around him. But, true to his world in the beginning, he doesn't seem to learn anything.
I just don't see any type of growth. At all. Nothing. And it doesn't seem that he will change.
One other literary character I could see a similarity to was Holden Caulfield. But I adore The Catcher in the Rye, so I thought, What makes Greg different than Holden? I think it's because Holden seems to want things to be better, whether that returning to a childhood without as much responsibility like his sister or for the world to not be such a phony place. He knows the world sucks, but he still has the spark of optimism that says that there is good somewhere. Greg's solution is to just blend, become invisible, skate through everything so people don't get to know him. He sees the world, particularly high school, as a sucky place to better off avoiding. We see a glimpse of his overall insecurity when the idea of college comes up. Rather than seeing it as an opportunity to find a people of his own, he sees it as a larger-scale high school. He sees life as an overall thing to avoid.
I just didn't feel for him like I did Holden.
"Humor"
So, up there in the Good Stuff Section, I mentioned revisting my reactions. My general reaction to the funny moments were those dismissive nose laughs. You know the ones--you blow air out of your nose as an acknowledgement of you recognizing it has some type of humor, but not funny enough to laugh.
That's it. Most of it was just not really funny. And normally, I would say, Okay, that's not my cup of tea, that's cool. But time and time again, people are non-stop laughing at Greg's absurdist riffs. After a line or two, the joke has been played. But another page at least follows, of him riffing off this one tiny joke.
Take, for example, when he goes over to Rachel's house to hang out, after her diagnosis. She's not interested in a pity friendship, but he manages to convince her to him a shot. What does he do?
Makes a long riff on masburating on pillows.
I am not joking.
Look, I don't need my humor to be sophisticated. I can laugh at crude jokes; I even tend to have strange, entirely too long joke rants with Brett on a regular basis. But I just didn't find this book funny. When that's set to be the major draw of why to read it, it becomes a problem. Fast.