After a season of home improvement projects, the cold weather has finally moved in, and I was able to enjoy a two-book weekend.  Absolute heaven (though it wouldn’t be so heavenly if I did this every weekend).

The first book was The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie; the second book was The Off Season by Catherine Gilbert Murdock.  Both books concern young adults who struggle with big life issues, teens who face deaths of loved ones, poverty, terrible accidents of loved ones, and school pressures.  I enjoyed both books, but Alexie’s novel rises to a far higher level than Murdock’s.  Far higher.

Alexie’s touch is lighter and cleaner, and the events of his story feel more genuine and less soap-operatic, while Murdock’s novel made me think of the show E.R. when it turned the corner from interesting to a bit over-the-top ridiculous.  Notably, Alexie’s novel is semi-autobiographic, while Murdock’s seems to be rather removed from her real life (her biography states that she grew up in Connecticut, lives now in suburban Philadelphia, and attended Bryn Mawr College – but The Off Season and its predecessor, Dairy Queen, take place on a family dairy farm in Wisconsin, with a main character who’s more jock than brain).  Does this prove true the old adage that an author should write what he or she knows?  According to the teen book group, who discussed Dairy Queen two weeks ago, that adage is indeed proved.  But I think that The Off Season is weak for another reason, since I did enjoy Dairy Queen: it suffers from sequel-itis. 

When I finished Dairy Queen two weeks ago, I was perfectly happy with it, and happy to imagine how D.J.’s life evolved after the conclusion of the book.  But in preparing for the book group discussion, I was reminded that there is a sequel, and the temptation was too strong: I read the sequel.  And the sequel answered all the unanswered questions from the previous book, and then continued on into new dramas and new difficulties in the life of D.J.  In reading the sequel, I became passive as a reader, since my thoughts and feelings on how D.J. might have matured and grown became moot in the face of the “real” answers.  My opinions didn’t matter any more, because the author, the real authority, had come through with what really happens to D.J.

And that, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with sequels.  Reading is joyful because it’s active, because the reader gets to take the author’s words and descriptions and use the author’s starting point to embellish and visualize the world of the novel.  Most wonderfully, readers get to close the book at the end and imagine what happens next – how the characters will age and change – how their lives will progress.  I love a book that leaves me with questions, and provides me with the space to answer those questions for myself.  Some sequels honor that space and that role of the reader, but too often sequels impinge on the reader’s right to be active.  And it’s dreadfully hard to avoid sequels in children’s and young adult literature, since a large proportion children’s and YA books today are published as part of a series.  Totally understandable from a marketing standpoint, and totally understandable from an educational standpoint (developing readers seek out series books, for a multitude of very good reasons), but totally sad from the standpoint of an adult reader like me who likes to have a significant role in the reading process.