#322 Night at the Fiestas- Kirsten Valdez Quade

#322 Night at the Fiestas- Kirsten Valdez Quade

Frances is sixteen, coming of age and like most teenagers, she is ashamed of her parents. She rides the bus, the one her father drives, on her way to the Fiestas U.nil she gets there, she is still just her father’s daughter.

“Frances had found herself looking away from his sad, obsequious displays of friendliness, embarrassed.”

Frances is smart, but shy. She wishes she could be like her cousin, open, flirtatious and free. She wishes she could be like Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

“If Frances’s life was to be a novel—as Frances fully intended—then finally, finally, something might happen at the Fiestas that could constitute the first page.”

She has an exciting but dangerous interaction with a painter on the bus. She is uneasy about him and the package he accidently left behind. As her and her cousin dance and drink at the Fiesta, Frances is uneasy and can’t seem to fit in.

“She danced and laughed, but her rhythm was off, her voice false and harsh. She gulped the beer until she felt the disembodies sensation of drunkenness, but the feeling only made her less a part of the crowd, untouchable and remote.”

Growing up is messy and complicated, and if you’re not careful you could sell off your own innocence before you even know what’s happening.

Rating: 8-8-9-9 Total= 34

#319 The Discipline of Haircuts- Sandip Roy

#319 The Discipline of Haircuts- Sandip Roy

Looks make the man, or the boy too, I guess. Avinash hated getting haircuts, sitting outside his house for his neighbor friends to watch, afraid the barber was going to cut his ear. So when he turned seven his mother allowed him to go to a proper barber, thinking that the act of independence would make his feel older and not mind so much.

When he began attending private school, long hair was forbidden, it was for slobs, slackers and movie stars (meant as a negative). His short hair became a kind of status symbol he didn’t want:

“In his clean white school uniform with his striped school tie, Avinash felt like a creature from another planet. He was a mother’s boy without his mother to protect him.”

The story is about coming of age, or Avinash not quite being ready to come of age. The haircuts, drinking milk instead of tea, being scared by sudden sexual desire. There is also a theme of class and generation gaps.

Rating: 8-7-8-8 Total= 31