Skip to main content

"The Thing About Jellyfish" by Ali Benjamin



The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin is at top of many lists as a contender for the next Newbery award. That’s understandable. It is, at times, a very good book. But there is something about the tale that seems a bit off to me. It’s as if it’s the author tried to write two stories in one. Warning: Spoilers ahead!

The book alternates between the present time and the past. Almost from the get-go we know that Suzy’s former best friend Franny has drowned over the summer vacation. And Suzy’s grief seems to have made her selectively mute. 

Suzy and Franny were friends since preschool days and guppy swimming lessons. Both were outsiders and often got teased. So they stuck together and vowed never to be like the popular mean kids. But then Franny starts to change (puberty! boys!). Suzy, meanwhile, basically stays the same. Note that this a common plot development in tween lit. One nerdy girl becomes one of the cool kids and her dear old friend doesn’t.

Make no mistake, Suzy is a nerd. But she’s also has other problems that aren’t fully developed. Her mom calls her a constant-talker. Once she grabs hold of a subject, she’ll research the bejebus out of it and tell you all there is to know. She holds on to facts like a Queen Elizabeth holds on to her purse. And she often doesn’t know when to stop talking. Some people might say that places her on the autism spectrum. But her parents seem clueless to this and the author doesn’t delve deeper. Why has no adult picked up on this? I think the author wants Suzy to be a sympathetic character, but she instead comes across as immature and selfish. Also, if Suzy were a boy, would he have gotten a diagnosis? 

(NB: When I lead book analysis discussions with other librarians, I like to ask them to imagine the book with a protagonist of the opposite gender and consider how the book would have been different. It’s interesting to note what actions and emotions we associate with boys and with girls.)

After Franny completely goes over to the dark side, even laughs when a cute boy deliberately throws a frog against a tree to impress her (who does that??), and bullies Suzy with the rest of them (perhaps even spitting on her), Suzy realizes that she has to send Franny a message. Years ago, they agreed that if either of them acted as badly as the popular girls, the other would send a message loud and clear as a warning. Suzy’s solution is to slip frozen disks of her own urine into Franny’s locker. Surely that’s a clear message.

Um, can you say “sociopath”? (Now imagine a boy doing that. Would our reactions to the book be the same?)

No one discovers who placed the urine into Franny’s locker and Suzy is disappointed. She feels that she must have done something wrong because Franny didn’t understand the message. Later… later… Suzy realizes what she did was hurtful because Franny was crying. 

Franny dies the summer following the incident. So Suzy doesn’t get to explain why she did it. Suzy is overcome with guilt. Or maybe grief? The publisher’s blurbs and other book descriptions would have us believe the book is a story about Suzy getting over her friend’s death, but even Suzy realizes that’s not all there is to it. She is grieving – and angry other people are crying at Franny’s funeral when she should be the one crying. But she’s also feeling guilty. 

I think Suzy doesn’t have the maturity (yet) to cope with what she did and this book shows her, in some way, gaining a bit of maturity. She is definitely overcome with guilt because she didn’t get to talk to Franny after the incident. Her guilt and her grief are tied together in a confusing manner for her. Suzy also has really big social problems. And I wish this was addressed further. The semi-happy ending felt too tidy because of this. 

It sounds like I don’t like this book. That’s not exactly true. It just has some oddities that rub me the wrong way. The plotting is very good. I had thought that the ending would come with Suzy’s report on jellyfish (she believes that perhaps Franny was stung by a jellyfish and therefore the worst thing that happened before her death was not what Suzy did, but the jellyfish sting). Instead, though, the story goes on with a neat little twist that has Suzy trying to run away. 

This book will give you a lot to talk about. But for me, anyway, it’s not a clear-cut Newbery winner.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"The Fifth Season" by N.K. Jemisin

I’m a horrible blogger. Several times this past year, I thought I should just quit this. But I keep being drawn back. So, I’m going to do a little catching up and see how well I remember some of the books I read much earlier this year. Stay tuned. Today, however, I’m just going to write about one. I’ve been singing the praises of The Fifth Season all year even though I’m late to the party: It was published in 2015, and Jemisin is well-known as a gifted writer in the sci-fi and fantasy world. Since then, she has come out with the next two books in The Broken Earth trilogy and has won the Hugo Award three years running. No author has ever done that, let alone a black, female author. Back in 2015 she was the first African-American to win the Hugo for Best Novel. Actually, this year’s Hugos were dominated by women as female authors won in all the major categories. This is important. I’ve been noticing odd twitter posts lately about how women really don’t play video games or ar

"Beartown" by Fredrik Backman

I’m about to be overly effusive: I loved Beartown by Fredrik Backman and I think it is one of the best books I’ve ever read. (See Tangent 1.) I even love the cover. Backman lured us into his Swedish world of curmudgeons and the neighbors who love them with A Man Called Ove and his other novellas. But this isn’t A Man Called Ove . This book has a much larger scope. This feels like the book Backman has always wanted to write but had to wait to give to us until he developed an audience. You got it, bro. I will read whatever else you write in the future. This book more deeply develops his ideas about communities. It is also about parenthood and all the responsibilities that go along with it. It’s about family and best friends who are like family. It’s about belonging. It’s about sorrow and happiness. And there’s some hockey. (Tangent 2.) You will hate some of the parents (Kevin’s, William’s). You will love some of the teens (Amat, Maya, Ana, Benji, Bobo, Leo...). Be prepared

"The Boy at the End of the World," by Greg van Eekhout

I’m very grateful for The Boy at the End of the World , by Greg Van Eekhout. It’s a good, though not outstanding, book. More important, it fills a gap: science fiction for 3 rd -5 th graders. Because at some point during the school year, a teacher will assign a science fiction book report and I will have a hard time recommending books. I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy. And we know how much I like dystopian fiction (a lot). I have no problem finding good science fiction books for teens. In fact, some of the other librarians are tired of me telling teens (regardless of the assignment), “You must read Feed . Everyone should.” Or “You have to read Ender’s Game . You'll love it.” But younger kids come into the library looking for science fiction and it feels like there’s nothing very good. Most of them balk at the length of The True Meaning of Smekday (by Adam Rex), no matter how hard I sell it. They shrug their shoulders at The City of Ember (Jean DuPrau), even when I