Wonder When You'll Miss Me (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
My local library lists this as both adult fiction and young adult fiction, so I wasn't sure what to expect from it. Young adult novels have come a long way since the days of Sweet Valley High, but I still wanted something that would hold my attention without coming across as juvenile. "Wonder When You'll Miss Me" was excellent, a great book for adults and, even though several parts hover near the edges of mature reading, I think a great story of young adults too, especially young women with image problems who may be able to relate to the main character. Faith returns from a several month long stay at a psychiatric hospital ready to no longer be the fat girl that everyone knew. Emerging back into the world of her peers, a newly thin Faith is still accompanied by her former self, a heavy version of herself that appears with varying frequencies. This "fat girl" is bent on revenge against the group of boys who sexually attacked Faith the year before, causing Faith to go between her feelings of hate and her strange crush on one of the boys. When she meets the brother of one of her friends in the hospital, she's brought into the strange world of the circus, where the brother's lover works in the sideshow. This meeting is the catalyst that drives Faith to run away and join the circus, her original hopes being to find her friend, and then to stay in a place where no one can find her. As Faith becomes "Annabelle", a cleaner and groomer of the elephants and horses of the circus, she becomes her own person, meeting new people and allowing herself to develop without having to think about her school, the boys who hurt her, or her mother who has always demanded perfection from her. But things even change inside the circus, and she finds that no matter where she goes, she will have to learn to adapt and change with the rest of the world. Faith's ideas seem to be so at odds with those of the "fat girl" that it's often hard to remember that they are one in the same person. But as her other self and the self that she hasn't yet been able to let go of, it is the "fat girl" that continuously pushes her into doing things that will progress her and warns her against the dangers of trusting certain people. This book is told with a mix of sadness and hope. As the reader, I wanted Faith to enact her revenge, at the same time wanting her to just heal herself. The characters are charming, the circus folk brought to life. As someone who never really wanted to run away with the circus as a child, this story made me see the appeal. Though a little slow starting, this book ended on a very high note and is definitely a recommended read.
I liked this well enough, but was not wowed by it. It definitely transcends its plot outline: fat teen Faith is sexually assaulted by a group of high school boys, spends time in the psych ward, loses weight, returns to high school, seeks revenge, runs away from home, joins the circus. Along the way the author sprinkles in a number of other overused tropes - the emotionally distant mother, suicidal roommate, and most irritatingly, the personification of Faith's unresolved issues as an alter ego fat girl who won't go away. Until she does. Given the heavy-handedness of some of these devices, the surprise is that the novel works as well as it does. But Davis does a good job with the main character, for the most part (the inner fat girl wore out her welcome well before the book ended). She also did a pretty good job in overcoming the triteness of the whole "run away to join the circus" trope, but this seems like a case of proving that she could write her way out of a trap of her own making. The story is well-written, if occasionally a little far-fetched; the ending seemed perfunctory and I found it unsatisfying, in the sense that the whole last section of the book is building towards a final resolution, which the author then kind of sidestepsAmanda Davis died in a plane crash during the book tour that followed this novel's publication. Michael Chabon has written an afterword to honor her in which he says, among other things, that he considered her an author with great promise. I think that's a fair assessment. This is an accomplished first novel; though it had its flaws, there was enough of a spark, and the author's voice was compelling enough to make you want to read more of her work. It is a shame that her career was cut short so early.
What do You think about Wonder When You'll Miss Me (2004)?
I first heard of Amanda Davis and her tragic death when I was obsessively reading [http://www.mcsweeneys.net/] and found their online memorial ([http://www.mcsweeneys.net/davis.html]). Her career, cut so tragically short, piqued my interest and I sought out the two books she had written: Wonder When You'll Miss Me: A Novel and Circling the Drain: Stories. I began reading the novel but got distracted and it was shoved on my bookshelf to wait until I thought of it again.Friday night, that time came. We had preordered Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from amazon so no 12:01am reading for me. I was avoiding the internet due to the proliferation of spoilers and was restless before bed. I went to the bookcase and selected a few titles I hadn't yet read and brought them to the bedroom to see which one held my interest. Wonder When You'll Miss Me: A Novel was the first one I picked up and I was drawn in immediately. I don't know what changed between my first attempt and this reading but I couldn't put it down. I forgot all about Harry and his impending arrival. But I can't help but think that maybe I wasn't meant to read it until now, poised as I am to take my own leap of faith.At its heart, this book is about bouncing back from trusting the wrong people, letting the right people in, and taking that first terrifyingly beautiful leap of faith. It's set in the context of a confused sixteen-year-old girl who is brutally attacked at her high school homecoming dance. She attempts suicide and spends 7 months away in an institution and then at home recovering. When she returns to school she has lost all her fat and looks like a new person, but is the same scared girl inside. She has an imaginary friend of sorts, "the fat girl" who follows her around, always eating, offering advice and cruel taunts alike.The girl, incidentally named Faith, retaliates against one of her attackers with matched brutality and finds herself on the run. She falls into a circus where she finds a place to belong and begin anew as Annabelle. Most of the circus people have dropped out of society in their own way for one reason or another so no one questions her reluctance to talk about her past. In that, she finds the strength to confront it and move on.I just hope I'm so lucky to have someone there to catch my safety cables if I should be heading toward landing at the wrong angle.
—Flannery
This tale of a troubled runaway teen has some promising features - the experience of struggling with mental illness is depicted in an intriguing way, the settings of small Southern towns and eventually a traveling circus provide colorful scenery. Unfortunately, this book still fell flat for me. The characters still seemed broadly drawn, the action was sometimes slow and motivations were hard to decipher. I was particularly surprised to learn that this was a book targeted at young adults. I would think only a mature teenager would be able to appreciate this journey of familial neglect, living on the streets, sexual abuse and drug use.The unusual backdrop of a traveling circus might draw some readers in, younger or not. If you're looking for tales about the inner-workings of the circus, I would recommend the far superior Geek Love.
—Betsy
It's taken me a while to come up with a way to articulate why I enjoyed this book. I still don't have a definitive reason, but I think a large factor was the multidimensional lead character. This sort of theme, of a somehow damaged narrator, is pretty common (just look through my recent reads and you'll notice that as a recurring theme), but this one did possibly the best job of inserting the reader into her perspective. I wasn't expecting to enjoy the circus plot as much as I did, either. Definitely wasn't expecting the plane crash (thanks, Michael Chabon!) and it legitimately saddens me that this author will not be producing more fiction.
—Lesley
