Poetry Friday: Getting the Girl

Getting the Girl

 by Markus Zusak

I always have to think awhile after closing a Zusak book. He socks me so hard in the gut it's hard to formulate a coherent "review" of the experience.

Getting the Girl is a continuation of the story of the Wolfe brothers begun in Fighting Ruben Wolfe. (My review here.) Zusak writes close to the bone, exposing the marrow of what love is---between a boy and a girl, and between brothers. It's also about Cameron defining himself, as he is ripped away from all the safe places he used to hide, including his identity as Ruben's inferior brother.

And once again, Zusak takes artistic risks within his story, risks which could've easily gone horribly awry. This time, he includes Cameron's stumbling and raw words as he puts who he is on paper, foreshadowing this almost mute boy's emergence as a writer/poet. These sections work, thank God, because Zusak doesn't try to underwrite them. He lets Cameron be over-the-top and angsty and "poetical" so his words read like the rough drafts of poetry before it's shaped by time and practice. They sound wincingly authentic, of the sort you'd want to hide if only they didn't demand such attention for their pure gutsy-ness and flashes of stabbingly accurate emotional insight.

The Charcoal Sky

Sometimes you go to the wrong place, but the right way comes and finds you. It might make you trip over it or speak to it. Or it might come to you when a day is stripped apart by night and ask you to take its hand and forget this wrong place, this illusion where you stand. 

I think of the mess in my mind and the girl who walked through it to stand before me and let her voice come close.

The rest of Getting the Girl is unflinching, too, as no one "gets" anyone. Instead, we wrestle with the dual meaning of "get": 1) to obtain or take and 2) to understand. When we love someone, which is it?

And most brilliantly, even though the book is a slim, short read, and we may think we already know we can't truly "have" another person, Zusak takes us on a long, slow walk through the conflicting desires that make it so difficult to let go of that need, so we can, like Cameron, chose how to love with open eyes.

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Karen Edmisten at The Blog With the Shockingly Clever Title

What I'm Reading Now: Fighting Ruben Wolfe

This post should be titled: What I got up at 6:00 this morning to finish reading and will now be thinking about all day.

After closing the cover, I sat staring at the screen over at Goodreads, trying not to embarrass myself by gushing yet again about a Zusak book.

Fighting Ruben Wolfe is about brothers, boxing (which you know I have a fascination with), pride, winning, losing, fighting. And it reads like poetry.

I finally wrote this:

A lean novel that doesn't swagger or swing blunt punches; I loved it from the dog races to the one-gloved fights to the awkward, longing-filled bouts of not-talking with girls. The family is imperfect but loving; the bond between the brothers exquisitely written; and the theme of struggling to be a worthy person is a non-sentimental lifeline to anyone dealing with rough blows in life. Highly recommended for teens, even reluctant readers.

Zusak's writing makes me want to get up again, and try harder.