I stand corrected...
by Catherine Toews - Saturday Aug 04 2007 6:30 pm
Posted in: Reviews, Discussions, buzz, Authors

'Gossip Girl' series is not that bad after all

Although my teenage years are behind me, I read an awful lot of teen literature. Granted, it's an important component of my job, but that's not the only reason why I read it. There's a wealth of great writing out there aimed at teenagers and young adults. Just like all the other novels in our store, some teen novels are better than others. Some are good, and some are bad.

Up until last week, Cecily Von Ziegesar's Gossip Girl series had been relegated to the "bad" column in my mind...

The series is, without a doubt, the hottest seller amongst teenage girls in our store. I've heard an endless stream of negative buzz about the series, much of which I accepted as truth, despite not having actually read a Gossip Girl novel.

Then, last week, I found myself stumbling across more and more positive (or at least open-minded) buzz about the series. Pam Spencer Holley, of the American Library Association, has an interesting take:

"Unless you read stuff that's perhaps not the most literary, you'll never understand what good works are. But when you get them hooked on reading, then you can lead them so many other places, as far as books go. Besides, what's the worst thing that can happen? Nobody complains about the adult women who read Harlequin romances."

Cecily Von Ziegesar, the woman behind the hit series, has a similiarly laid-back take on all the hubbub:

“It’s completely unrealistic to have a group of kids who are constantly reforming or who are being punished because they’re ‘naughty.' I always resented that quality in books I’d read. I was terrified that the grown-up world would be horrified by my books, but all the parents hug me because their girls are reading. I don’t know what it is that redeems the characters, exactly, but deep down, they’re still good kids. They’re not selling drugs to their little sisters.”

So, I decided to read the first installment in the series, so that I could finally speak to concerned parents and teenage fans from a somewhat knowledgeable position. And you know what? I liked it. I liked it so much, in fact, that I don't think I want to risk reading another one, for fear of becoming completely and totally hooked.

These are the facts:

• The books are fluffy, but the quality of the writing is not bad. In fact, Von Ziegesar is really quite witty.
• Although the characters talk endlessly about sex, they don't actually have sex all that often, and when they do, it's dealt with in a pretty realistic manner. The sex scenes aren't overly explicit, and innappropriate acts (such as a male character trying to take advantage of an intoxicated female character) are not glamorized or endorsed.
• The characters are not all exactly the same. One girl has a shaved head, another is desperately ashamed of her large chest. One guy reads Camus (in French, of course), another wears silk scarves. Even the bitchiest characters are quite well-developed and oddly likeable (despite their nasty, scheming ways). Most teenagers would be able to find at least some aspect of at least one of the characters that they could relate to.
• The characters have lots of money and minimal parental supervision.They drink and they smoke, kind of the way a lot of us "grown-ups" did when we were teenagers.

I don't claim to know what happens in the rest of the series. Maybe things get much worse, but I'm definitely not nearly as concered as I once was.

The best part of the whole phenomenon is that, thanks to these books (and other, similar series like Zooey Dean's A-List and Lisi Harrison's Clique), there's a lot of reading going on. Fans of the series simply cannot get enough. We're forever taking special orders from readers anxiously awaiting the next Gossip Girl installment. I've seen pairs of friends buying the series in its entirety (11 books so far) to read and discuss over the summer holidays. If you ask me, there's nothing better than seeing a young person who's head-over-heels excited about reading, no matter what it is they're choosing to read.

For the full interview with Cecily Von Ziegesar, click here
For the article featuring Pam Spencer Holley's opinions, click here

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