15 June 2009
Review: Linda Sue Park’s Project Mulberry
Filed under reading
Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park
My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars
Why I really, really like this book:
1.
Julia, a Korean-American seventh-grader, deals with a lot of issues common to Asians growing up in the United States. I immediately identified with some of her insecurities.
2.
Patrick, Julia’s best friend, becomes her friend mainly because he’s not put off by the smell of kim chee. I love how a simple thing like this can break through some of Julia’s hangups and lead to a real friendship. When you’re that age, sometimes little things like that do lead to the best and longest-lasting friendships.
3.
Julia has to deal with the very real possibility that her mother doesn’t like Black people until they’ve proven themselves, on an individual basis, to be trustworthy. She alternately thinks about this possibility and pushes these thoughts from her mind, because who wants to believe such a thing about her own mother? My mom, who is from Japan, had similar issues with members of other ethnicities. It’s not an easy thing to face.
4.
Friends sometimes fight. Linda Sue Park handles the fights deftly, in a manner that reminded me of my own disagreements with classmates when I was in intermediate school. The makeups are even better.
5.
The main character’s voice is so real and so believable, I found myself liking her instantly. I suspect the author is as fond of this character’s voice, and that’s probably one reason she indulges herself with the intercalary Q&A segments where she and Julia speak with each other.
Which brings us to that. Just about every reviewer so far has mentioned it; the grownups, overall, clearly do not like these little interviews between author and main character. It’s so obviously a bad idea for the narrative, which the author herself acknowledges in the text, that one struggles to think of reasons such a good writer would do it. Here’s what I came up with as possibilities.
1.
As I mention above, the author really likes the voice of this character and wants to give the reader an alternate context for experiencing it. I can understand this, but that really recommends a sequel more than it recommends this.
2.
The author, aware of the role writers play in the writing aspirations of young people who probably write to her with the same questions a million times a month, is giving readers a chance to see the writing process at work, a process that probably fascinates her and her adoring fans. This I can understand, too, but as other reviewers have suggested, this really recommends perhaps an author’s note at the back of the book, similar to what Piers Anthony does with his Incarnations of Immortality series.
3.
Project Mulberry isn’t really a novel about a girl, her friend, and some silkworms, but a novel about writing a novel. In this case, the intercalary segments ARE the book, the real skeleton of this book, while the narrative that surrounds it is the flesh and blood that emerges from this novel-writing process. This is the most intriguing possibility, but there’s not enough there to support it.
My conclusion is that the author, aware of how self-indulgent it seems, is trying to connect with her readers in the way that she probably longed to connect with her favorite writers when she was a young, book-loving reader. I can hardly blame her; while I resented the intrusion on the narrative and while I agree with seemingly everyone that it takes away from the story, I found myself connected with the writer in a way that reminded me of what it was like to be twelve years old and in love with books. Grown-up, English-teacher me thinks it’s lame. Twelve-year-old bookworm me? I think he likes it.
A look at the author’s website and her blog reveals a writer who is much more interested in connecting with her readers than a lot of writers, whose sites are little more than the kind of biographical press-guide stuff bookstores and libraries receive in the mail along with folded-up posters. I find this refreshing, and although I disagree with the method (in this novel), I applaud the intent.
I found myself in tears several times during this novel because I could relate to Julia, not just in her Asian-ness but in her kid-ness. In the same way, I think I related to the author, not just as someone writing a great little story, but as someone who grew up loving the characters of others’ books and wanting to connect somehow with the people who created them.
I would like to see a sequel, with or without the interrupting Q&A segments, because Julia is a character I want to spend more time with.
View all my reviews.
2009-06-15 :: me