Book review: Are We All Lemmings And Snowflakes?

Given that her rage-inducing early novels are what incensed me to start a blog in the first place, it might be surprising that I returned to Holly Bourne, forking over my money at the Waterstones counter with stingy hands. I've certainly surprised myself. But when I saw her most recent stand-alone, Are We All Lemmings And Snowflakes? smack in the middle of the teen fiction table, I couldn't quite resist masochistic temptation. I knew that this was one of her best-received books - at least within the witches' coven that is the Goodreads review section - and so I made the snap judgement to put all past grievances aside. Maybe this time, there'd be no faux-feminism, no cardboard representation and no bizarre victim blaming.

Mercifully, people do learn from their mistakes. Some of them, at least...

The synopsis: Where summer camp meets CAHMS

After being dragged to A&E for suspected suicidal tendencies, the inventively named protagonist Olive is offered the chance to attend Camp Reset, a summer camp that manages to look both like NCS and celebrity-endorsed rehab. Eager to defeat her vices, Olive signs up and is very quickly shipped off, establishing the main setting of the narrative at the very British manor house where Camp Reset is run. Our information about Olive and her home life - her usual equilibrium - is sparse, but one thing that Olive makes clear to us is that she doesn't want to hear her medical diagnosis. This is something that instantly marks Olive out at Camp Reset - as if her unfortunate name isn't enough - and some of her campmates take offence to her reasoning, which is that she doesn't want to use her label as an excuse not to recover, or to "be a dick". More on this later.

We don't find out what breed of black dog Olive has until the revelation is unceremoniously dumped on her, by way of accidental mention from an unlucky psychotherapist trying to do his job. Against her will, Olive learns that she may be bipolar - at which point the brutally clever narrative voice really shines through. As Olive enters a hypomanic episode, her first-person narrative becomes very disjointed and fast-paced, showing how her thought processes have been affected by the disorder. With her newfound energy, Olive comes up with the idea that mental illness is a mathematical manner, thus able to be calculated and solved through algorithms. She enlists the help of Lewis, a lovable yet laughable cariacature of a virginal nerd, and later the rest of her friends in order to spread her proposed cure - kindness.

The message is delightfully simple and deliciously marketable. Unfortunately, Olive is not able to take part in the spreading of the "kindness virus" - a name that likely wouldn't find its way into print today - because she has crashed into a depressive episode. Olive's narrative ends with her stewing in a pit of self-hatred, incredibly "numb" to the world around her. However, despite her sombre state, the book ends on a tentatively hopeful note. Olive watches a news report which shows that her eventual project - dropping kind messages to guests at Notting Hill Carnival - was well received. This form of ending may be somewhat unexpected for readers who are not familiar with young adult literature, though in reality it appeared inevitable from the very first indications that Olive's hypomania would not last. Bourne was evidently anxious to express that mental illness is an ongoing battle, which cannot be won over the span of 400 pages. This necessitated an untidy and restless finish, designed to drive home the sentiment that Olive's struggle is by no means over - yet she can still be hopeful for the future.

Stylistics: Caps lock, line breaks and comic sans

The vast majority of established authors have a notable style. Some embroider their work with eloquent descriptions, riding the perilously fine line between clever and stupid. Others, most overtly Irvine Welsh, infuse their narratives with an impenetrable regional dialect, demanding that readers outside of their geographical clique must bring their own decoder. In the case of Bourne, the recurring features of her prose tend to be a witty female narrator, a colloquial tone and a scattering of references to real locations, brands and events. The latter tactic is part of an American literary movement known as Kmart realism, intended to familiarize the reader with the fictional setting. However, in Lemmings & Snowflakes, the pages are littered with an entirely new stylistic device, which veers tooth-grindingly close to the aforementioned "stupid" territory. This new tactic involves splitting sentences and writing them like so:

"The

Human

I

Always

Hate

Most

Is

Me."

Including typographic tricks and flicks is a dangerous game to play in the world of fiction. A reader can endure pages and pages of insufferable drivel before they give up the ghost, but if they decide they do not like the appearance of a page, they may depart much sooner. Anything calling attention to the book as anything other than a story - for instance, the inclusion of chapters with no content (42 and 44) - erode the sense that the story is real. Identifying the book as a physical object makes its contents less believable for the reader. Whilst the line breaks were unexpectedly juvenile, I found them tolerable, though I think I could just as cheerfully have gone without. Neither would the book suffer from a removal of Mid Sentence Capitalizations for emphasis, or a more sparing approach to caps lock and the use of comic sans. I may sound as though I want to strip the book of Olive's burgeoning personality, but allow me to assure you that this is not the case. The content of the writing itself is more than enough to craft a realistic, likeable character - and there is rarely a pressing need to employ distracting typography in an attempt to prove it.

The prototype entourage: side characters as cladding

Olive's fellow prisoners are gradually revealed and introduced in a natural, realistic manner, as opposed to more amateur novels wherein the side characters are paraded through the early chapters in a police line-up style establishment of their existence. It is only by chapter eleven that all of the relevant characters are known by name and appearance, which is down to Bourne's deft handling of time in the narrative and the clear expression of which campmates Olive treats as worth speaking to. Most of the relationships she forms are a means to an end; the first meaningful interaction she has with a patient is an encounter with Jamie, a sexually-charged guitar player who Olive is instantly attracted to. Her later friendship with Lewis, the resident maths-loving virgin archetype, is only sparked due to her needing his intelligence for a scheme she has in mind. They are primarily functional tools within a narrative that centralizes Olive, oddly similar to the formulaic construction of Agatha Christie's murder mystery novels. In both contexts, the minor characters undergo little development, and instead serve to support the main story.

Take the case of Sophie, Olive's timid campmate. Sophie is characterized almost entirely by her struggle with social anxiety, rarely managing to interact with other people without being prompted. Contrasting the relatively harmless stereotypes adopted by the rest of the cast - Jamie's obsession with stoner culture, Lewis' high proximity to blush whenever a female is near - Sophie's characterization is simply quite depressing. Her function in the wider mechanism of the novel is to express to Olive that she is on the right track; since coughing up her "kindness virus" idea, Sophie begins to manage more words per minute than originally thought possible. This plunges Olive further into her belief that her quest is vital, as well as giving the reader something to coo over. This attempt at character development would be more welcome if it were in any way founded. It appears to come from nowhere, from a character whose impact on the plot is little more than that of the dubiously mentioned Darrell, a campmate who Olive mentions vaguely and never interacts with. The story is so heavily consumed by Olive's life and Olive's mind and Olive's failed sex missions that there is simply no time to provide a satisfying character arc to any other character. The result is an entourage of hastily assembled characters, composed of a generous handful of premade archetypes. Sadly for stoner Jamie, feisty Hannah and hapless Lewis, they are doomed to live by their assigned stereotypes for the novel's duration.

Repeat offences: the return of ill-advised sexual themes

I mentioned that Bourne has learned from many of her earlier mistakes in storytelling. This is something I stand by, yet perhaps the most grievous problem with her previous novel, It Only Happens In The Movies, was its appalling handling of sex and consent. I regret to inform you that this novel shows no improvement in this department. Olive has an abysmal lack of concern for others' sexual consent, the first inkling of which is spawned during her attempt to have sex with Jamie. This remains an attempt because Olive has no contraception, which makes Jamie back out. Prior to this, however, Olive lies that she is on the pill, attempting to manipulate Jamie into still having sex with her. Of course, this is an incredibly inappropriate breach of consent, but Olive recognizes this and apologises for her actions. A lukewarm appeal, perhaps, given that she attempts to initiate sex again fifteen minutes later, but it doesn't go unnoticed. The subterranean bar set by It Only Happens In The Movies has made me hypersensitive to strides of improvement.

It is all too unfortunate, then, that this slight lapse in judgement is not Olive's only questionable act. She also initiates a relationship with Lewis, who is, as aforementioned, a firmly defined virgin with no prior romantic experience. Olive draws attention to this fact several times, as if questioning her own motives in pursuing him, but her carnal instincts apparently win out. She goes to his bedroom in a sundress, wearing no underwear, her intentions very clearly laid out - have sex with Lewis. Unsurprisingly, Lewis isn't ready for such a rapid development, and he finds it all too much when Olive reveals herself in all her naked glory. There is something to be said about Olive's blatant lack of forewarning or asking for consent, but depressingly, that is hardly the main issue with this scene. Olive cannot handle Lewis' rejection, and attempts to manipulate him into carrying on:

"You don't want me," I say small-y.

If this is not textbook manipulation, I'm not sure what is. Olive's peak of hypomania definitely has a hand in this behaviour, as shown by her subsequent crash, but mental illness is certainly no excuse for sexually predatory behaviour. And to continue the pattern established as early on as What's A Girl Gotta Do, the main character does not apologise for her damaging and/or abusive actions. Victimizing and exonerating female perpetrators of sexual assault in It Only Happens In The Movies was apparently not enough for this writer. As parent-like as it sounds, I am incredibly disappointed. It all seemed to be going so well, and yet the temptation of including ill-advised sex scenes was all too irresistible.

The verdict

I find myself unable to give this book more than two stars out of five, purely out of principle. Whilst the writing style was engaging, if a little heavy on the capitalization, I cannot excuse the presentation of sexually abusive behaviour without acknowledgement or apology from the perpetrator. It is as I said in my first review, and as I will continue to say until the lesson is learned - it is perhaps for the best if Holly Bourne decides not to include sex scenes in her YA novels, be they healthy, unhealthy, or somewhere in the self-established "between".

2.5/5