James Week 11: A Different Novel
2025, February 7, twelve-forty in the afternoon, I checked out my copy of Everything I Never Told You with this expectation: it would be no different from any other APENG novel I had read.
5 hours and 30 minutes later, I knew I was wrong. This novel was different.
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| The Great Gatsby was a fascinating novel, but I think the characters seemed superficial and stereotypical. Source: The New York Times |
In a way, Everything I Never Told You is similar. The unsolved mysteries, the missing peoples, the scandalous love affairs, the dramatic life decisions; these aspects are all designed to place our heads in the clouds. Melodramatic storylines usually make the characters distant and the plot separate from reality.
In spite of this, the novel had a wonderful character development that made me see my life in a different light.
I understand how each character feels. I understand Nath’s eagerness to escape from his life, to fly far away from home and escape to college. I understand James’ desire to see his children fit in, and the regret he feels in believing he may have unwittingly hurt them. I understand Marilyn’s ambition, her commitment to achieve her dreams, first through her own actions and then through her children. I understand Lydia’s hope to please her parents, to complete their dreams and allow them to live through her.
Everything I Never Told You was powerful in that it managed to balance the tasks of creating an exciting plot while keeping the characters relatable and realistic, something that many stories fail to do. I truly enjoyed reading it.
Writing the reader responses, on the other hand, may be a different story.
Hi James! I find your blog quite interesting, as I had never thought of the Great Gatsby to be superficial. Now that I think about it, I see how it can be portrayed as shallow as it displays only a small portion of the valley of ashes, and mainly portrays the shallow problems of the upper class. The Great Gatsby shows a glimpse of how life was like in the 1920s, but it is hard for us to see the idealization of the characters and how historically accurate it actually is; your ability to notice the perfection and poise of the characters leading to the discrepancies in accuracy is greatly appreciated. Although I have not read all of EINTY yet, I also agree that it is quite different from the other books we have read, as it is one of the only books that is sent in a recent time that could still be relatable to use today. As a first generation student in America, I also relate to the weight of the expectations that are portrayed beautifully throughout the Lee family and the novel overall, and how even the nicest of characters have their own mistakes and secrets they keep from others. It was great to see another perspective on our curriculum, good job!
ReplyDeleteHey James, there couldn’t have been a better way to describe how I see so many novels (even if I love them): having characters bloated to fit so many stereotypes of the times they describe. Your examples of the characters of The Great Gatsby were perfect as well as the fact that Capote’s perfected and incredibly-close-to-the-crime prose was so eloquent that it didn’t seem real lol. However, EINTY was much different from those because these characters (Lydia, Marilyn, James, Nath, and even Hannah) seem like actual human beings, people you’d see in your neighbors, friend circles, family, or even yourself. You seem to understand the thoughts and values of each character, and even relate to a few of them, which was very different from the extravagance and parties of Jay Gatsby or the ruthless murders of In Cold Blood…
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ReplyDeleteHi James. I totally agree with your take on what makes Everything I Never Told You different from The Great Gatsby and In Cold Blood. Similar to what you said, I found the actions and words of the characters to be slightly exaggerated (maybe even comical). Though I do think there is realism behind it. But I think the reason behind why the characters are so odd is because of the time period it was written. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote this book about the Roaring 20s back in the 1900s. And if you hear and see some of the recordings back then, the way people act and talk with each other is a lot different from today. Furthermore, the book mainly covers the higher class people from back then, unlike EINTY. Higher class people generally acted a lot different from the lower class people, which could explain some of their characteristics. However, I do agree that the portrayal of the lower class was more stereotypical. Rather than try to create a realistic poor person, it felt like he was trying to convey something about them (something not very positive). As for In Cold Blood, Dick and Perry were real people, yet their portrayals were too biased. Dick was a villain and portrayed as bullying Perry,even though Perry stuck with Dick even after what he had done to others. However, Everything I Never Told You portrayed every character in a realistic manner. I could imagine these people existing in real life, with their rational and irrational actions being common amongst many people. I can relate to some of the characters too, and while I do not agree with all their actions, I could imagine doing some of them myself if I was in their situation. Ultimately, good job!
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