Reader with a Cause discussion

I think we could talk all day about relationships and Gone Girl.

We weren’t sure what to think about “just one olive though.” Was there love there at the beginning? Did Nick & Amy have a desire for a “regular,” loving relationship? Or was it manufactured from the beginning?

Amy’s fixation on the “Just one olive though” concept seemed to be fraught with a desire for true love and perfection from the start that we see so often in popular culture (the current spate of YA novels would have you believe that if you haven’t met The One by graduation/ initiation/ whatever-coming-of-age-ritual-is-appropriate-for-the-story, You’re Doing It Wrong). This is a troubling and damaging concept for adults as well – not to mention the difficult [impossible?] expectations it dredges up for each partner to try to live up to.

We think Tamora Pierce, a prominent YA author, would agree – she has talked about the dangerous concepts currently being sold to young adults in glittering packages: “[While] there are people who have met their first love, and it has worked out for the rest of their lives, they are a lot more rare than the current spate of novels would have you believe. A lot of us don't find a really good love…until we've been through quite a few other false starts and some other fun times first…It frightens me that girls are growing up reading books that say, ‘You'll meet him in high school, and you'll live together forever, and ever, and ever.’”*

What do you think about the state of relationship and the search for love in our modern world? In popular culture?


* Tamora Pierce, National Book Festival http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feat... (September 22, 2013)

This is a something I have really recently began to notice -- I'm in the midst of the Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare right now and this is something that happens a lot. The main characters are all between 16 - 18 and are beginning to pair off. The expectation is for life. One character, 18, is seeking a forever kind of commitment from his 700+-yr-old immortal partner. The main character talks about her love for her partner with a sort of transcendent euphoria that "no one else understands," and she eschews her mother's concerns ("ugh, old people don't get stuff!"). When I get to these sections of the book, I can't help feeling like, were I much younger right now, I might be looking at these portrayals as the norm - or something to strive for. And that terrifies me.

Anyone else see this trend? I think it might be reaching to identify it in Gone Girl since the characters were a bit older - and it seems like it would be impossible to know what Amy or Nick was actually thinking since (I think?) we only learn about their first meeting from Diary Amy. And we know (view spoiler)[she's an unreliable witness (hide spoiler)].

I think that "love" is inaccurately portrayed in a lot of books. If we look at the relationship between Bella and Edward in Twilight they have a very unhealhty relationship but one that young girls seem to idolize. If an author is going to be writing for the teenage audience they need to be careful about the portrayal of characters like/love for each other. The obsessive nature that is seen in many books is unhealthy and should not become the norm.