Fangirl (Rainbow Rowell)

Fangirl: A Novel
Rainbow Rowell
St. Martin's Griffin
Fiction, YA General Fiction
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: Twins Cather and Wren Avery have always done everything together. They made friends together. They played together. They wrote fanfic for Simon Snow, the blockbuster fantasy franchise, together. When their mother took off and their mentally fragile father started falling apart, they got through it because they stuck together. Cath always assumed they'd live out their lives together, in their hometown of Omaha or wherever else. Whatever came, whatever life threw at them, twins are forever.
Until Wren tells her that she doesn't want to share a college dorm room.
Cath knew they'd been growing apart - Wren hadn't even been interested in their joint fanfic efforts lately - but she always thought they'd overcome any gap between them. Now, she can only watch as Wren loses herself in boys and booze, and only struggle as, for the first time in her life, she must face the world and her social anxieties on her own. Not even the boy mage Simon Snow can help her now...

REVIEW: I admit I mostly read this because I heard that Rowell was writing stories based on the fictional Simon Snow fantasy series she invented for this book, and I prefer coming in at the start of any series, even a tangential start such as this one. (I also admit that the clearance price at Half Price Books influenced my decision.) I knew it involved fandom, though, and that can be a thorny subject to handle well: in popular media, fans often are portrayed as shallow or immature or otherwise worthy of mockery or pity. Here, however, it's clear that Rowell gets it. She gets what fandom is, what purposes fanfic serves, and what fans are. She gets the all-absorbing sense of wonder, the way the worlds and characters come alive in a fan's mind, the value of playing in someone else's backyard to grow one's own skills and imagination, even the validation that the fannish community can offer when the mundane world is too cold to tolerate alone. Cath uses Simon Snow and fanfic not just as crutches but as tools. They give her solace when she's down, a purpose when she's lost, and means to grow both as a writer and a person. As one with fannish tendencies myself, I could relate quite easily despite the generation gap.
Cath's anxieties and problems stem not from fandom or strict immaturity (though there is a trace of that: with Wren as the Bold One, she never had to step forward and develop social skills until dropped in the metaphoric deep end of the pool), but from a life scarred by an absentee mother and a mentally ill father, and perhaps an over-reliance on her twin. Those scars affect Wren, too, but differently, driving them apart in small ways long before college - and in bigger ways after they reach campus. The twins are more than their scars and flaws, though, as are all the characters. Cath's growth can be slow and at times painful, with some backslides now and again, but she's always worth rooting for - and, skirting spoilers, she learns that growing up doesn't mean having to give up everything that has ever brought her joy, even if she has to re-evaluate her relationship with them. The ending doesn't see wounds erased and perfection achieved, but rather offers hope that, even with our problems, we can move forward to find better places and maybe, just maybe, write a happier ending for ourselves.
I was utterly absorbed from start to finish - a rarity for a non-genre story - and, thinking back, I can't think of any significant downsides to shave even a half-star off a top rating. (It doesn't hurt that I enjoyed what we readers were shown of the Simon Snow series, clearly inspired by but not mimicking Harry Potter - both the "canon" excerpts and the fanfic. And I generally don't read slashfic, even of characters I know...) Fangirl is a great coming-of-age story for the fan in all of us, and one of the best depictions of fandom in general that I've read.

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