Dana Reinhardt, on This Is the Story of You

“A powerful, gorgeous novel that, like the storm itself, sneaks up on you, breaks hearts and bones, turns the world upside down, and leaves light and hope among its ruins.” 

–Dana Reinhardt, award winning author of The Things A Brother Knows and We Are the Goldens


(with gratitude toward a writer whose work and whole spirit I adore)

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Tell Us Something True/Dana Reinhardt (you're. going. to. love. it.)

We returned from a rain-soaked Shenandoah Valley to a nor'easter being chased by a possible Category 4. But I had places to be. Third and Spruce, for a conversation. Up near the Art Museum, to visit with a friend.

I had places to be, and I was saturated. I was a walking puddle, a character from a Peanuts cartoon.

I had two things in my bag, in my long walk from damp to embarrassing. One of them was Dana Reinhardt's oh-so-perfect forthcoming novel (I apologize in advance that you will have to wait for it until next spring), Tell Us Something True (Wendy Lamb Books, Random House Children's Books).

May I preface this by saying that I have enormous respect for Dana Reinhardt—as a writer, as a person. Despite her impressive breadth as an author, her astonishing talent with character, story, and sentences, and her cache of awards, you will not find her out there on the circuit showboating. You will not hear her raising toasts to herself.

So 1)  I'm predisposed to love Dana Reinhardt, and 2) I felt hugely blessed to receive an early copy of her book. But 3) Even I could not imagine how utterly un-put-downable this new novel is. About a teenage boy who is dumped by a girl and finds himself (on his long walk home) standing before a fading sign—black words on white: A SECOND CHANCE.

This dumped kid, River: He feels he needs a second chance.

And so he enters into this community of teens who are struggling to break free of one kind of addiction or another. He feels at peace. It's his turn to talk and he fables up something. He confesses that he is addicted to weed. It's not true. It's not even close to true. But if River holds onto (then embellishes) this ready myth, he'll always have a chair in this circle.

He wants a chair in that circle.

This is the premise of Dana's book. But Dana never barters with mere premise. She is a storyteller with a heart, a writer (and a mom) who understands that characters make for story, not theses. That the honorable thing to do with a novelistic set-up is to find out who lives inside the chosen frame. Who really lives there. What they think. How they hope. How they screw up. How they take first steps toward forgiveness. How they continually readjust the way they see the world and themselves.

There's not a single throw-away character in Tell Us Something True. No cardboard constructions representing An Idea. There are best friends, an adorable half sister, good parents, white neighborhoods, Mexican ones, missed buses, the romance of imagination. There's humor and infinite humanity. There's line after line of prose so good I kept pumping my fist, and let me tell you something: I didn't want this book to end.

I despair, sometimes, at the YA category. At trends that suffocate original impulses. At books that sell on the basis of a hook and authorial ambition (and little else). At copy cat voices. At plot-point checklists. At self-serving declarations. At marketing machines.

But then along comes Dana Reinhardt, who writes character and considered plots, who quietly, then boldly escalates her ideas, who gets you all caught up inside the family of action, who leaves you running from place to place in a storm, desperate to return to her story.

Tell Us Something True is hope; it is humanity; it offers a master class in ultimately accepting our own impossible imperfections. Original, funny, wrenching, real, and intelligently surprising, it's bound to endure. It might even heal the many cracks between us.

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We are the Goldens/Dana Reinhardt: Reflections

Dana Reinhardt's new novel, We are the Goldens, arrives, and I'm already predisposed to love. I'd shared a panel with Dana in Texas not long ago. I'd sensed, at once, that she was a serious writer—which is not to say unfunny. Just the sort of writer who cares about the quality of her work first, and about all the hubbub (if indeed she cares about the hubbub) later. Writing to be read, not writing to be famous. This was my sense of Dana.

Having closed one overly hyped book earlier in the week with a deep sense of disappointment, even despair, I opened Dana's this morning with a few nerves. I needed this book to be good. I needed to be restored. I needed to shut down all the voices in my head that were saying, Quality no longer counts.

I wanted to be able to write right here that I'd encountered a book lovely and right.

I'm writing that here. Lovely. Right.

We are the Goldens is the story of two sisters living intertwined lives. Two teens trusted by their divorced parents to make smart decisions. Two girls who always turn to each other first. But now one has a terrible secret and the other is being locked out. Nell presses. Layla retreats. Nell gets into some trouble of her own. Maybe parental supervision is necessary after all. Maybe teens don't in fact know everything, could use a little help when life gets messy.

We are in San Francisco, and the city is beautifully drawn. We are inside a family where love lives, but some messages get bungled. Nell has a best friend named Felix. Layla has a lover she can't name. There is a private school that is full of privileges and projects—art, a play—that are typical teen fare, and teen danger.

We see all this because Dana takes the time to show us. To build the family. To establish a reliable voice (Nell's, who speaks over all 199 pages, directly to Layla). To fully establish scenes. To not assume that brand names tell the reader everything, or that characters are adjectives, or that clever is the only form of conversation. Teens live complex lives. Their communities are entangled. There's more at stake than high school gossip. Adults (I repeat myself) can make a difference.

It's all here, in this slender novel. And so is Dana's immaculate voice. Clear. Consistent. Ever intensifying as the story unfolds.

And real.

I leave you with this example:

I feel bad that Mom hasn't remarried. She wants to, and I know that the reason she hasn't has something to do with us. It's not like we've tried to sabotage any of her relationships; it's just that even though we spend three out of every seven days with Dad, we take up a lot of space. Mom is tirelessly devoted to us. We are her north, her south, her east, her west, to quote that W.H. Auden poem. I know it's about a death, but to Mom we're her compass, even if sometimes that's not how it feels.

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when we are not writing we are living: the kitchen, five months later, is done

In San Antonio, on the TAYSHAS panel, Susan Schilling asked what we do when we are not writing.

We are, in our own ways, living.

Nina LaCour remakes whole rooms, top to bottom. Dana Reinhardt pursues the immediate results—the appreciable outcomes—of cooking. Andrew Smith has not, in fifteen years, missed a day of running—wherever he is, wherever he goes, he heads out into the weather. Blake Nelson learns as much as he can (in sometimes funny ways) about people.

When I am not writing (and most of the time, I am not writing), I do many things that I am not particularly good at. Building objects out of clay. Raising seedlings into buds. Dancing the tango with my husband. And, also, sometimes all-consumingly, turning my nearly 100-year-old house into a home.

This past November, I began a quest to refinish my kitchen. To replace the broken things. To up the ante on the colors. To generate new light and life. It was a fraught proposition from the get-go—famously horrific weather, disappointing contractors, a leaking roof, delays, unforeseen expenses.

This morning she stands. Whole at last, complete.

I am, when I am not writing, living.

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Grasshopper Jungle/Andrew Smith: Reflections

Andrew Smith.

They talk about him. They say, He's one of the smartest guys in the room. They say, He's one of the most charming. They say, Have you read? You've got to read. Here, they say. Is Grasshopper Jungle.

My friends, I've now had the privilege of reading this bright lime green marvel of a book, too. Plot synopsis, as provided by the flap copy:

In the small town of Ealing, Iowa, Austin and his best friend, Robby, have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable army. An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things.

This is the truth. This is history.

It's the end of the world. And nobody knows anything about it.

You know what I mean.

There, in those lines, is the confident craziness of the scheme, the rhythm of the tale, the sounds-convincingly-like-a-teen-but-is-written-by-a-guy-who-studied-Political-Science,-Journalism,-and-Literature-at-college-ness. This book is big, jammed with the promised promiscuity, the necessary confusions, and the wild what if's of a world that has turned terrible toxins on itself. One reads to see what will happen next, what can happen next, what these likable, mixed-up, also truly human characters are going to fumble upon next. It's sci fi. It's something else. It's Drew Smith.

Usually I quote from the pages of the stories themselves. But I just read the final final words, which happen to sit in the acknowledgments. There's a paragraph I really like, I really get, I really jive with. There's a paragraph that reminds all writers everywhere of how so much of our lives is predicated on finding just the right reader at the right time. Drew Smith now has a world full of readers. But this book all began with an agent who cared.

About two years ago, I decided to stop writing. Well, to be honest, not the verb writing, but I decided to get out of the business aspect of it, for which I have absolutely no backbone. I never felt so free as when I wrote things that I believed nobody would ever see. Grasshopper Jungle was one of those things. It was more-or-less fortune, then, that I happened to show the first portion of the novel to my friend Michael Bourret. He talked me into not quitting.

I'll be joining Drew Smith as well as Nina LaCour, Black Nelson, and Dana Reinhardt on the Tayshas Reading List and Authors next Thursday in San Antonio, TX. I can't wait to meet all the panelists and our moderator. Maybe we'll see you there.

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oh, my! headed to Texas to do time with Nina LaCour, Andrew Smith, Blake Nelson, Dana Reinhardt, and the Good TAYSHAS and Texas Teens and Texas Tea Folks

I love when this sort of thing pops up on Facebook. Me and the Real Writers. Headed to Texas. Here's the caption, in case you are going to be near:

Join Nina LaCour, Andrew Smith, Blake Nelson, Dana Reinhardt, and Beth Kephart for Tayshas Reading List & Authors on Thurs, April 10th, 10am in 103 AB, Street Level at #txla14

I'll be at other events as well, in dear San Antonio with dear Chronicle. My schedule:

April 9:
3:00pm  
Going Over Book Signing

April 10:

9:30am

Texas Teens 4 Libraries (TT4L) ARC signing

Grand Hyatt Hotel

10:00am                   

PANEL: “Tayshas Reading List and Authors”

Moderator Susan Schilling, Chair, Tayshas Committee 2012-2013

12:00pm

Texas Tea with YA Authors

Good Glory. I'm going to also make some time for some barbeque, even if that occurs at 4 AM in the morning. All thanks to Tayshas, Texas Teens 4 Libraries, Texas Tea, and Chronicle Books!

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