The Shelf Discovery Project: Tiger Eyes

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Girl Detective's "The Shelf Discovery Project" began June 4.
Judy Blume looms large in the imaginations of many forty-something women, doesn't she? Four of her titles are featured in Chapter 2: "She’s at That Age: Girls on the Verge": Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, Blubber, Tiger Eyes, and Then Again, Maybe I Won’t. The only book of Blume's I didn't recall having read when I was "at that age" was Tiger Eyes (and for good reason: It was published in 1981, when I was no longer "on the verge" but rather "on my way to college soon"). This slim novel immediately absorbed me -- for all of the reasons Blume always did: a compelling protagonist, "true" narrative tone, and a situation to which I could relate, in this case, the recent and sudden death of an immediate family member.

But.

Revisiting childhood via favorite books or, as in this case, favorite authors sometimes feels like a Thomas Wolfe moment -- You Can't Go Home Again -- doesn't it? As thoroughly invested in Davey's story as I was, I couldn't help but feel that the plot skimmed along the surface of a deeper, more difficult story like a stone inexpertly skipped from shore. Perhaps like other participants in the Project, I find myself regularly reminding my inner reader that the nearly fifty-year-old me is not Blume's intended audience, but you know what? I am not the intended audience of, say, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, either, yet there's a YA book about which I have no such complaints; it most decidedly delves into the difficult story, expertly.

In my last semester of grad school, I had to choose which projects would get most of my time and talent. My son was two, my parttime gigs as a teacher in a correctional facility and a grad assistant were demanding, and I was carrying a fulltime course load. Something had to give, and so the seminar on Joyce landed at the bottom of the list. I submitted a competent and well phrased final paper, but it met the minimum length requirement only barely, a ten-page essay in a towering pile of amply footnoted tomes. On returning the only "not A" I received on the road to my MA, Marty said, "It was just a little... thin." So was Tiger Eyes. For so large and complex a subject, it was just a little... thin. A little inadequate to the task, no matter what one's age when she reads it.

Next up is I Am the Cheese. And, yes, I skipped Chapter 1, but I will come back to Dahl's wonderful Danny the Champion of the World. No worries.