Down and Across (by Arvin Ahmadi)
A young adult book about crosswords! I didn't know this existed, but my friend Miriam sent it to me because I love both young adult novels and crosswords. Thank you, Miriam!
The downfall of being a young adult fan when you yourself are an adult is that sometimes you're on the side of the parents. Sakeet/Scott's parents are supposed to be unreasonable, overly strict Persian parents, but in the opening, the dad is like "We're going to Iran for a month. You can throw a party if you want. Just do this one internship you committed to." This not make me think he was unreasonable or overly strict at all, and Scott running away to Washington D.C. seemed like a bratty overreaction. #TeamDad.
(We find out later that Sakeett possibly has a mental health issue that they don't let him get assessed for, which is a much larger issue that is totally dropped after a single mention. I'm on team Scott for that one, but I think it could have paid off more in the narrative itself.)
As the novel progressed to Sakeett's D.C. adventures, I liked him more. But I still have many issues with the novel: not enough crossword puzzles, for a start. Fiora is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the nth power, and is kind of a less well-developed version of the Alaska character in Looking for Alaska. Ahmadi does have at least one cringey description of her, too. ("The skin of her hips jutted out above the waistline of her ripped jeans, rocking with a seductive rhythm as she moved." BLECH.)
Things I did enjoy: the diversity. The handling of gay characters. The quick pace. The unpredictability (as the blurb mentions). The fact that Sakeet's quest isn't that he wants something, but more that he is trying to figure out what he wants. The ambiguity of the ending.
Also there is something about this cover that I don't like, and I don't know what it is. I mean it's not like the cover of A Little Life, which I really, truly loathe. But I still kind of don't like it and thus am using this for the "book with a cover you hate" category of the Read Harder Challenge. (You can follow along on this year's progress here.). I may find a cover I dislike more later in the year, so I reserve the right to swap this out.
The downfall of being a young adult fan when you yourself are an adult is that sometimes you're on the side of the parents. Sakeet/Scott's parents are supposed to be unreasonable, overly strict Persian parents, but in the opening, the dad is like "We're going to Iran for a month. You can throw a party if you want. Just do this one internship you committed to." This not make me think he was unreasonable or overly strict at all, and Scott running away to Washington D.C. seemed like a bratty overreaction. #TeamDad.
(We find out later that Sakeett possibly has a mental health issue that they don't let him get assessed for, which is a much larger issue that is totally dropped after a single mention. I'm on team Scott for that one, but I think it could have paid off more in the narrative itself.)
As the novel progressed to Sakeett's D.C. adventures, I liked him more. But I still have many issues with the novel: not enough crossword puzzles, for a start. Fiora is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl to the nth power, and is kind of a less well-developed version of the Alaska character in Looking for Alaska. Ahmadi does have at least one cringey description of her, too. ("The skin of her hips jutted out above the waistline of her ripped jeans, rocking with a seductive rhythm as she moved." BLECH.)
Things I did enjoy: the diversity. The handling of gay characters. The quick pace. The unpredictability (as the blurb mentions). The fact that Sakeet's quest isn't that he wants something, but more that he is trying to figure out what he wants. The ambiguity of the ending.
Also there is something about this cover that I don't like, and I don't know what it is. I mean it's not like the cover of A Little Life, which I really, truly loathe. But I still kind of don't like it and thus am using this for the "book with a cover you hate" category of the Read Harder Challenge. (You can follow along on this year's progress here.). I may find a cover I dislike more later in the year, so I reserve the right to swap this out.
Labels: 2018 read harder challenge, young adult
posted by mo pie at 11:50 AM
2 Comments:
I haven't read it but can't help speculate why you hate the cover. I would guess it's because those squares look like hopscotch squares, not crossword squares. More guesses - the designer decided that a proper crossword grid was too sparse or lifeless and furthermore is signalling youth with the uneven squares they went with.
Yes! And black squares don't have letters in them. I don't even think it's a bad design, per se. I just dislike it!
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