Trouble: A memoir

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And how might you feel if you'd had a life like Chay's and found yourself behind the wheel in such circumstances?

Most importantly, for a story with a pregnant 15-yr-old, no adult ever shames her for having had sex, or getting pregnant, even if they judge her for choosing to have the baby. There's a culture of slut shaming from some of the douchebag teenage characters, but it is not universal, and Aaron (the male lead) calls them on it, if not out loud, then in his head/narration. I have been waiting to read trouble for a long time and I am delighted to say it didn't disappoint. Trouble is the story of Hannah and Aaron. Hannah is 15 and pregnant and Aaron is the new boy at school who pretends to be the father of her child. It was the perfect read for me for several reasons. I don’t know if I can pinpoint what exactly it was about this story that hooked me… but I found that I couldn’t put this book down once I started it, staying up all night to read. There are no huge moments filled with action and suspense, but what you will find here is a lovely story about family… both the family you are born with, and the family that ends up choosing you. And life with them is messy and confusing and frustrating and sad but ultimately filled with love, and that’s what shines through. Mistakes may be made, and there is definitely some disappointment, but the love is always there. They slept together on Jay's last night before going to college. Hannah was really in love with him. At first, i got really mad because HOW CAN YOU SLEEP WITH YOUR STEP-BROTHER? but she really loved him, she got fooled to see someone who wans't there. The book piles on further down the oppressive white man path when we come across a ‘‘print’’ of an Indian slave ship. (A super unlikely coincidence in a series of unlikely events.) From the Captains face we are to infer some specifics about history and the print has “captured’’ this, implying it’s a photo? (Not possible but we are inferring a lot from what is described as if it were a photo.) Or are we to assume the artists was close to these events? What we do learn is that hero’s daddy’s money is dirty, as all old money must be.

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It was weird about consent. The line about ‘no-one can make me do anything. Least of all that’ fell squarely into victim-blaming territory. It was weird about promiscuity. It was sometimes ok for people to badmouth it and other times it wasn’t. Then we find out that Jay was the first guy Hannah slept with it and there was only what, two, others after. So she wasn’t actually that fond of sleeping around? And somehow that changed how people saw her situation? Idk it was weird. Ultimately for me the best part of the book was the relationship between Hannah and Aaron and seeing how it develops over the course of the book. I loved how they bonded but still fell out and argued like proper teenagers. I loved seeing Hannah through Aaron's eyes and I loved seeing how they supported one another through some really though situations. I truly loved the eventual rallying of Hannah’s family upon hearing her news. Her relationship with her grandmother was such a wonderful part of her story. And Aaron’s relationship with the cranky Neville added some necessary levity to the overall story. However, I think it does everyone a dis-service when authors are straight up unthinking and irresponsible with how they write teens. The kids can be blindly ignorant but if you’re portraying parental figures as caring and involved and responsible, then you know, they should actually act that way.

However, with out spoiling it, I didn't like who the father turned out to be or how it was dealt with. Technically, Hannah falling pregnant at fifteen would be statutory rape, combine this with the father, would this realistically be ignored by the parents and not perused any further? There was, to my recollection, no mention of how the parents dealt with who the father was. For me, it took a book that could have been very realistic and made it less so. In the dark, in the light, always imagining her face, remembering her face in the moments before the accident. Her laugh. Her easy wave. How her wave had been the first thing about her that told him all he needed to know. And there ISN'T A ROMANCE, because Hannah has bigger things going on, you know. There are characters in relationships, there are 'in love with you' moments, there is deep love between characters, but there is never any moments where a romantic choice becomes greater or more meaningful than a platonic love. This is really about families of birth, families of choice, and the adaptation of characters to new situations. There are step families, and half siblings, and absent parents, and nuclear families. And these are all as valid as who chooses you, if you choose them. I think I built this book up in my mind too much. I saw that it was about underage pregnancy and that it was all acclaimed and everything and I thought that it would be raising some really interesting moral questions and shining a light on teen and underage pregnancies, which is a perennially hot topic. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out for me.The book also reveals that the highly educated, who are supposed to be more enlightened, are as human as the working classes and have darker attitudes toward immigration than perhaps even they would like to accept. Its fine for Those people to live in That place away from us, but not to go to our schools or date our children. Or participate in Our Sports like crew. America is not a very welcoming place, though it is so often the destination of those without hope.

The driver of the vehicle is Chay Chouan. Chay and his parents are survivors of the Cambodian massacres that took place under the Khmer Rouge; Chay has experienced his sister being shot in front of him and his brother being taken by force. Having barely survived, and having made their way out of Cambodia to the United States, Chay's family has settled into Merton, a formerly-abandoned mill town that has been revitalized by an influx of Cambodian refugees. Chay's parents, who have founded a family masonry and stonework business, want the best for Chay. And so it is -- we learn during the pretrial hearing -- that Chay's parents had gotten him enrolled at Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Preparatory High School in Blythbury-by-the-Sea, where Chay has been repeatedly beat up and had his property destroyed by a group of students led by golden boy Franklin Smith. The first let me see what the author was describing, the second is just a lovely way to say what is true. And comparing a book to a painting is a wonderful way to provide a visual image of what can be difficult to describe. Van Gogh's bright colors can still look freshly painted, but he never paints light without darkness, and this book is about learning to live with the darkness that is Trouble and discovering the light that is Grace. I got about halfway through the book and looked at this blurb again, wondering what I’d missed. Hannah complains and gripes and puts people down and snaps, but no, I really wasn’t seeing the funny. And I certainly didn’t think she was smart. In any sense of the word. Smart people don’t: I'll be very honest now and say that the main reason I bought this one is because the cover really caught my attention. I feel like having the sperms in there made the book stands out and it makes the book more intriguing. My one little issue with Trouble is the ending came way too fast. I really wanted more and I as left with so many questions. What happened with Katie? What happened to Aaron and Hannah afterwards? What happened to Jay? I felt the ending was a tad bit rushed but I still loved it and it does not take away from the beauty of this masterpiece. I would love to see a sequel to see what happened to everyone after the end of the book.Marcy. There were other characters that I disliked more than her but she was the most underdeveloped. She embodied that typical villainess-queen-of-the-school-out-to-ruin-people's-lives-for-little-to-no-reason mean girl trope. She was even a model. Cliche much? That was kind of lazy writing on her part because Marcy was portrayed as basically all bad. There is not a single (sympathetic) mention of her being a victim of cheating, which she very much was. The dual perspectives are a perfect juxtaposition. Both Hannah and Aaron are fallible human beings. They are foils for each other, calling each other out when the other is being an idiot, and generally supporting each other through some of the worst moments of their lives thus far. Although Pratt leaves the romantic status of their relationship up in the air, she establishes vehemently that whatever their feelings for one another, Hannah and Aaron are at the very least true friends. And I like that. The classic – groundbreaking – fictional account of The Troubles (and so much more) based on the reign of terror of Protestant paramilitaries the Shankhill Butchers and written in a high, hallucinatory style that works to transform the being of Belfast itself. Published in 1994 as events were still unravelling, it’s an evisceration of the self-perpetuating nature of violence, and how it can become a performance, almost, in both the communities that foster it and in the way the media reports it. A profoundly important book.