Thursday, April 27, 2006

Talk, by Kathe Koja

Through alternating viewpoints, Kit and Lindsay tell the story of putting on a controversial play at their high school. But it's also a story of misplaced affections, as Lindsay falls in love with Kit. Kit meanwhile is in the process of coming out and taking the risks of how the school will react to him. In the midst of all this, is the text of the play itself which is about freedom and societal attempts to impose order.

Koja gets a lot of critical acclaim but I simply don't get her style. I had problems with The Blue Mirror for its incomprehensible narrative, but this one is far worse. If it wasn't for the plot synopsis on the jacket, I would have completely lost track of the characters or what they were up to. And the snippets of the play thrown in confuse matters more. They are there, of course, to underline parts of the main story, but they don't really perform that function. Skip this one.

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