So two weeks ago, I went in for surgery (fear not, nothing major) and I read this book as I lay in the hospital bed, sore and whacked out on painkillers. Then I spent the next few days staring at people strangely, not able to concentrate on anything, laughing really hard at things like pretzels and doorframes. Yeah, painkillers. A few days later when I grabbed the book to read the last 40 pages, I realized that I didn't remember any of it.
And after I looked through it again, I decided that was probably okay.
Confessions is the story of Jan Miller, a high-school senior with a big butt and an even bigger crush on hottie Josh Gardner. She accepts a job babysitting Josh's little sister, then calls her "it girl" best friend Rebecca to get some advice on clothing for the occasion. And we're talking It Girl, as in Rebecca's been featured in Chic magazine because of her dynamic it-ness.
Awkwardly enough, that very day, Josh and Jan are asked to act out the death scene of Romeo in Juliet during English class. Jan is all prepared to actually kiss the boy, but he's got nothing like that on his mind. Well, he probably does, because according to these girls, there's really just one thing on every guy's mind. In the meantime, Jan's mind is going crazy, formulating imaginary scenes in her mind with Josh in the lead role. Kiss just before the curtain. But the only kiss she's getting is from bottom-of-the-food-chain Tom.
Then she has a few good conversations with Josh, he asks for homework help, then he asks if his cousin Henry could talk to her dad, a professor, about Columbia University. Josh's mom offers to make supper for the occasion, but Josh isn't even there, leaving Jan to make friends with creepy Henry. She doesn't want him. She doesn't want Tom, either. She tells him her parents don't allow her to date. And she doesn't want to accept the idea that Josh is probably falling in love with some girl named Leslie.
Meanwhile, Rebecca is getting friendly with one of her father's coworkers. They go to parties and hotels, making Jan feel even more rejected. She turns down Henry, then decides to hate Josh. After she sees him with Leslie at a restaurant, she wants to hate him even more, but she can't, because she knows she likes him. And on and on the web of romance wraps around her, until she has spurned and been spurned a million times in her mind.
But all the world's a stage, after all, and maybe someday the drama will play out like she expects. Maybe.
Confessions is, to be honestly, slightly entertaining and entirely shallow. To give author Melissa Kantor a little credit, I'll admit that some of Jan's thoughts capture exactly the process girls go through as they freak out over boys. During one of Jan's babysitting jobs, Josh tells her, "I'll see you in a bit." She spends the next minutes tearing the statement apart to find its real meaning. Was he saying he'd come upstairs after the movie? she should come downstairs? he'll see her in class next week? Jan is self-depricating and witty, spouting off lines like, "Who knew flirting could be more complex than charting the course of US foreign policy?" Entertaining, yes. But only for awhile.
The problem is that Jan and Rebecca have no depth. Jan tries so hard to be clever, but it falls through. When the friends are together, they talk about clothes and seduction techniques. They're a quiz from Seventeen, an encyclopedia of mind games, wannabe sex toys who try to find meaningful relationships by wearing tight shirts. They talk about being in love.
For Rebecca, this means lying to her boyfriend about her age, then plotting to have sex with him because "don't you want to lose your virginity before you go to college?" For Jan, it means freaking out when Josh looks at her, freaking out again when he looks away, and finally deciding that hating him is the way to solve her problems. I can appreciate them in a sad way, because there are girls like this and I know a few of them, but I just can't make myself like them. I want to ask them, "Um, do you ever think about who you are or who you're becoming? Get real lives, get real problems!" Jan and Rebecca don't really change. They don't really learn anything. Not even strategies for attracting guys. Life just happens to them, and they cry or exclaim about it later.
This story really lacks a plot. As a chronicle of one girl's life, it's allowed to slip a little in this department. No one's life, no one's diary, is going to follow the structure of a novel all the time. The problem is, none of the events lead up to anything great. There's a happy ending, but it's a strange happy: things just kinda happen, and the story's over. Basically, the book is a string of worrying and wishing, tied together with conversations about sex.
And oh, sex, it's everywhere. There are no graphic descriptions, but Rebecca describes a few of her makeout sessions. The rest of the book is littered with innuendo. The language, also, is not impressive. I don't mean the writing style, because admittedly, Kantor can put a sentence together correctly. But there's inappropriate language sprinkled across the pages, and that's how it sounds: scattered. Flippant. Okay, I'm not going to condone swearing in literature, because I believe good things can be written without bad words, but if you're going to use them, at least do it artfully.
It's hard for me to respect someone whose life hinges on this statement: [My parents have] always been vaguely suspicious of high-school parties, and now that I'm a senior they're completely convinced that every social gathering is destined to be a den of iniquity, complete with alcohol, illicit drugs, and sexually experienced guys eager to do unmentionable things to my body. Here's hoping. Okay. If a friend emailed that to me, and she was completely honest, I'd be a little disturbed but thankful that she wasn't lying to me about her true feelings. With Jan, though, I feel like she says a lot of things she doesn't really mean. And it's not that she's trying to be deceptive; she just doesn't think about them before she lets them out.
I'm searching for depth, I really am. I want to believe there's more to these girls than looks and relationships, but I can't find it. They never pause to reflect, never ask, "How is this changing me? How might this affect me? How could I be different?" Not even, "Why is Josh not talking to me?" Jan analyzes his words, but she doesn't analyze herself. Instead of being realistic, she assumes that since he didn't ask her out as soon as he dumped his girlfriend, there's something wrong.
I've read other girl books I didn't like. I've read books I didn't agree with. I've read Sarah Dessen, and I've had a hard time identifying with her party-hard characters that see things oppositely from me. But at least they think. No matter how much I don't get them, I like them because they know what they're doing and how they're reacting to it. Jan and Rebecca, in comparison (and even without comparison) are about as shallow as a lake that dried up ten thousand years ago. I know that's a bad comparison. This is a bad book.
Okay, some redeeming factors: It's well-written, it's true to life in some respects, and it's kind of interesting. Mostly, though, I feel like I got nothing from this book, other than ideas of how not to be. Confessions would wilt on the shelf next to Princess Diaries, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, or Flipped. It's not that classic. There are probably a lot of junior high and high school students who would enjoy the book, but there are dozens of other books that would be more entertaining, thought-provoking, and decent. Apologies to Melissa Kantor, but now all our confessions are out.
Recommended:
