Motherhood in a novel
Looking at "The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls"
By: Lindsey Gawlik
"The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls"
"The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls" by Julie Shumacher (2012) is a modern day, coming-of-age story about a girl named Adrienne Haus. Adrienne is a fifteen-year-old girl who is trapped at home for the summer in a small town in Delaware after suffering a serious knee injury that canceled her summer-long hiking trip with her best friend. As she is entering 11th grade, Adrienne has signed up to take an AP English course and will have to spend her summer reading AP novels. Adrienne's mother decides it would a fun idea to start a mother-daughter book club with other girls who will be in the class and their moms, and in doing so brings together many different mother-daughter dynamics under the same roof once a week for the entire summer. The novel is "formatted" as the English essay Adrienne is set to submit at the end of the summer and uses literary terms and references to foreshadow and allude to the pace of the plot. The book follows Adrienne as she goes through a rebellious streak, trying to find herself within the books she reads and amongst her fellow troubled teens. The book ends tragically, although realistically and aims to show what causes a teen to rebel. The book examines motherhood from the omniscient limited perspective of the daughters (or at least how Adrienne sees the daughters), and shows Adrienne struggle with her own relationship with her single-parent mother. Overall, I didn't like this book, as it left a lot of questions unanswered and felt like a surface-level teen book, but I appreciated the format of it.
Adrienne
Adrienne is the protagonist of the story. She starts the novel extremely close with her single-parent mother, but as the novel progresses she begins to fester the normal teen angst and frustrations toward her mother. Adrienne begins to question who she is and tries to talk to her mother about her father, a man her mother describes as "little more than a sperm donor." Restless for the summer, Adrienne regresses into teen rebellion through her friendship with the girls of the novel (especially CeeCee), dying her hair bright red, sneaking out, allowing CeeCee to pierce her upper ear, drinking and skinny dipping accordingly. These changes obviously spark anxiety in her mother, who tries to understand what Adrienne is going through but becomes obviously frustrated at times. She is shows as compassionate through the eyes of Wallis, brilliant through Adrienne's own eyes, and overall loving. Although at one point in the novel she tells her sister that getting pregnant was her greatest mistake (something Adrienne finds out and struggles with throughout the book), she also tells Adrienne she is her anchor and being a mother to Adrienne is who she is. Their dynamic is complicated due to the single-parent model, and Adrienne is often angry at her mother throughout the book, although this is because as a smart teen, she feels angry and frustrated when her mother evades her questions or ignores her feelings.
The daughters and the relationships with their mothers
Jill
Jill was adopted at infancy and is described as the goody-two-shoes of the book club/group of friends. Jill sells snacks at the local pool, and is the kind of girl who "grounds herself when she's bad, so her mother doesn't have to feel bad for doing it." Jill is a bit odd in the normal awkward teen way, and has planned out her whole life at just 15 years old. She is a vegetarian who eats meat at other people's houses, and loves the color pink. Jill describes her mother as emotional, but is very close with her. Jill said she always has felt wanted and loved because her parents fought hard to get her, and "chose her out of a million babies," which always has made her feel special. Jill is smart, and good at reading. At one point in the novel Jill's mother cannot find pills Jill's father needs and thinks one of the girls stole the pills, which causes the mothers to devolve one of the book club meetings into a yelling match about who's the best mother and why. Jill often serves as the voice of reason for the group, although she can be a bit judgemental and obviously feels superior to the other girls in the novel.
CeeCee
CeeCee is the hot, rich, popular girl that plagues any coming-of-age high school girl's story. CeeCee is a full out rebel, stealing, drinking, driving and — bored out of her mind being stuck in Deleware for the summer — peer pressuring Adrienne to join in her escapades. CeeCee keeps a blog throughout the summer (formatted similarly to this page) where she dubs the book club "The Unbearable Book Club" and makes fun of the girls in different ways throughout the novel. CeeCee calls her mom her father's trophy wife, calling her mother chilled and detached. CeeCee is always causing trouble, but hardly ever gets in any trouble for it, because her parents honestly don't really seem to care. CeeCee is dyslexic and mostly befriends Adrienne to not only have someone to push around but also to get her to read the books to her. CeeCee's mother's involvement in her life in this book begins and ends at her dropping and picking CeeCee up from places, and attending the book club meetings, where she later during the yelling match accuses the other mom's of being bad moms for simply being "inner-city" moms (a.k.a. just for being less wealthy). Although CeeCee always gives off the vibe she doesn't care, it's apparent from her desire to push others around and from her adrenaline addiction she wants attention she doesn't feel her parents provide.
Wallis
Wallis is the "weird girl" in the novel, who often stands as the group's punching bag. Wallis was also raised by a single mom, but her mother is flighty and is never even actually introduced in the book besides at one point where Adrienne briefly meets her while she is herself highly intoxicated. Wallis reads a novel per week and hopes to reach 3,000 books in her lifetime. She gets along tremendously with Adrienne's mother who also loves to read, and stays with Adrienne for a week in the book. Wallis is described as a couple years younger than the group, but ahead in school for her age, and is almost made out to be a victim of abuse — although this is never officially confirmed or denied before the book ends. Wallis never tells her mother about the book club, and her mother is seen as eccentric and bizarre the few times she's spotted around town. Their dynamic is seen as a mix between Adrienne's and CeeCee's, where Wallis' mother is detached from her day-to-day life, but there is a relationship established.