'Jumpstart the World' - Catherine Ryan Hyde

A review of one of the books shortlisted in the GLBTQ category of the Indie Lit Awards.

'Jumpstart the World' - Catherine Ryan Hyde

Elle’s mother forces Elle to move out of her house and gets her an apartment. Elle is sixteen, her mother talks about this move as if it’s a great adventure, but Elle knows she has to move out because her mother’s new boyfriend doesn’t want her around. The only comfort she has is that she’s not moving in alone, she’s moving in with her new cat Toto. Unfortunately Toto is the most emotionally disturbed cat in the world and Elle can’t help but envy the simple, friendly cats her neighbours have.

Elle bonds with her next door neighbours Frank and Molly, as they seem to care about her. She soon feels attracted to Frank. At the same time she begins to make friends with a group of teenagers, most of whom are gay or lesbian. When her school friends meet Frank they tell Elle that he’s a trans-man, which Elle doesn’t really understand, but when she does she refuses to believe her friends. As her awareness grows she initially shuts out Frank, but when a terrible accident occurs Elle finds her prejudice corrected by affection.

One thing I liked

The style of Elle’s first person narrative voice is just to my taste. Elle strikes this uneasy balance between being incredibly self-aware, but emotionally inexpressive, so she analyses why she does things but she expresses that analysis to the reader (and I guess we’re supposed to assume, to herself as this is a first person narrative with no framing device for why it’s being provided to us) in simple, unsure language, like she has to work out what she means as she goes along and she wants to be really careful to use the right wording but it doesn’t come easily to her. I always think of that as a pretty realistic way to represent how a lot of us think and speak, although this kind of thought and speech can sound highly stylised when it’s written down.

One thing I didn’t like

There are a few under used characters that seem to be in the book for little reason. Two of Elle’s new friends, Annabel and Shane pop up and disappear. The fact that they’re not consistently present means that their personalities never get developed, so they don’t really exist as people.

Instead of a discussion question I’d like to highlight the fact that Catherine Ryan Hyde is biologically related to Leslie Feinberg, someone who Bonjour Cass (who knows way more about this than me) describes as a very big deal in the trans community. Feinberg has posted explaining that ze is extremely upset about Hyde’s book.

Any opinion mentioned here is my opinion and not the opinion of the whole panel, or the organisers of the Indie Lit Awards.