CHALLENGER DEEP by Neal Shusterman (2015)

"Just because it's a long voyage, doesn't mean you're on it forever." - Neal Shusterman, Challenger Deep 

TRIGGER WARNING: MENTAL ILLNESS

Disclaimer: This review is constructed upon my personal reaction to the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

There are two things in life that are almost impossible to explain: the inexorable infrequency of human emotions (AKA why I feel like shit when my life is practically perfect), and why you love a certain book. Keep this in mind when I say it's going to be really difficult for me to articulate why I love Neal Shusterman’s 2015 novel Challenger Deep so much, but I’m going to have a crack at it anyway, so bear with me. I’ve read many a book on mental health and mental illness, so I know it’s not a topic that’s easy to talk about. Not all mental illness books are good mental illness books. Challenger Deep, however, is a very good mental illness book. I’ve known since I read Unwind in Year 11 English class how talented a writer Neal Shusterman is, and Challenger Deep only further confirmed that for me. This novel is simply exquisite. Challenging the archetypal representation of mental illness in literature, Challenger Deep manages to do the impossible: it puts the ‘hope’ in ‘hopeless’.

Admittedly, it took me a while to get into the novel -- the first hundred pages or so are a little disorienting, which is, I realise, the point -- but once the two parallel storylines start to weave, magic starts to happen. Now, let me set the record straight. Calling it ‘magic’ may give the impression that Shusterman’s take on mental illness has a whimsical, fairytale quality to it. That’s not what I mean at all. What's magical about it is how Shusterman has taken whimsy and fairytales and dragged the romance out of them kicking and screaming. Because that’s the problem: all too often, mental illness books romanticise the hell out of mental illness. Fortunately, Challenger Deep isn’t guilty of this at all. It uses whimsy and fairytales, but it distorts them, drags them through the mud, makes a monster out of them, giving the mental illness at hand -- in this case, schizophrenia -- a dream-like, but also nightmarish, quality. Because that’s what schizophrenia is, right? It’s so often mischaracterised as a multiple personality disorder, but it’s far from that. Schizophrenia is characterised by difficulty in distinguishing between what is real and what is unreal (helpguide.org), and can cause hallucinations, paranoia, and psychotic episodes. It fills your head with dreams, but fills real life with nightmares. This is why I think Challenger Deep is so important: it gives a realistic depiction of the disorder without making it seem quirky or cute. The storytelling in general did a fantastic job of illustrating how difficult people with schizophrenia find it to differentiate between what is and isn’t real; there’s a section I really liked where the POV changed from first to second person, so that You, the reader, were the one suffering psychotic delusions, rather than the protagonist, an excellent technique. However, it was Shusterman’s initially confusing, but ultimately highly rewarding, use of parallel plotlines that did the best demonstration. Featuring the same main character but in two opposite-end-of-the-spectrum scenarios, this plot device left the reader to try and distinguish between what was and wasn’t real. It forced us to empathise. It forced us to understand.

Yet not all is bleak. With mental illness fiction, there’s always a fine line between a hopeful ending and a hopeless one, and regrettably, most don’t walk it well. Challenger Deep is, again, an exception to this rule. One can’t call it a particularly cheery read after also calling it monstrous, but it’s not all a downwards spiral. What Shusterman seems to understand -- and has thus translated beautifully into Challenger Deep -- is that mental illness is, in almost all cases, incurable. It’s not the same as a headache or a stomach bug or even the flu, eradicated if you take the right dose of the right antibiotics for the right amount of time. Mental illness lurks. It can recess and retreat and recuperate for indefinite amounts of time, but eventually, it always comes crawling back. Like the tide, it comes and goes in waves -- but that’s the thing: it comes, but it also goes. You can’t cure it, but you can always fight it. You can always hold it back. You can always hold out hope. Challenger Deep is refreshingly grim, but also hesitantly hopeful. Shusterman acknowledges that although people suffering from mental illnesses will always be susceptible to them, it’s also always possible to part the storm clouds, find the sunlight, reach out and touch the hope that it’s not always going to be this bad. Mental illness is “always waiting… [it] will never go away. No sense in denying that such things happen.” Storm clouds are inevitable -- but so, too, is the sun.

I could wax poetic about this book for pages, but part of what I so greatly enjoyed about it was figuring it out as I went along, so I’ll leave the rest to the imagination. In parting, I’ll leave you with this. I was deeply touched by Challenger Deep. It moved me, affected me, educated me, and above all, resonated with me long after I closed the final page. If I haven’t done a good enough job of praising it in the last 800 words, I’ll chalk it all up to the impossibility of explaining human emotions, or maybe describing why you love a good book. All you need to know is this: a book that can render a writer speechless is a very good book indeed -- but a book that fills a writer up with things to say is a gift among gods and men alike.

TL;DR: Just a quick trigger warning: this novel does contain discussion of mental illness, self-harm, and suicide. My full review only mentions the first of the trio. I began Challenger Deep with no idea what it was about. I knew only that it was a mental illness book; I didn’t even know which mental illness it was. I’m so glad I went in blind, because part of what I loved about Challenger Deep was feeling my way through the dark. Among other things, this novel is dark. It’s not a happy story, but it’s not a hopeless one, either. It’s whimsical, but not in a fun, Disney™ Princess way; it’s more of a I-think-this-is-what-an-acid-trip-looks-like feeling. Mostly, however, it’s honest. It does not sugarcoat and it does not romanticise; mental illness is a monster, and Challenger Deep sees no reason not to show it as such. This book does not mess around. This book is straight with you, and I simply can’t articulate how thankful I am to have chanced across it. It is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, a masterpiece.

A GAME OF THRONES by George R. R. Martin (1996): Femininity and Feminism in 'A Song of Ice and Fire'

"When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground." - George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

DISCLAIMER: This analysis is constructed upon my personal reaction to the book. All thoughts and opinions are my own, and I reserve the right to defend said thoughts and opinions if they are challenged. That being said, feel free to disagree with me. I don’t own you. Just don’t try and challenge my views on Sansa Stark. She’s my baby, okay? I’ll protect her at all costs. Furthermore, if you decide to read this book because of this review and end up not enjoying it, I humbly apologise. I think the book is great, but that’s a matter of opinion.

I’ve just read A Game of Thrones. I know -- in literally my last post I said I didn’t like book series’ anymore, yet the first book I decided to read this year was the 800-page opening instalment in one of the heftiest series’ in popular culture -- and although I didn’t think I would, since high fantasy isn’t my thing, I loved it. Of course, as the neighbourhood feminist, one of the things I’m most enjoying about the A Song of Ice and Fire saga is the depiction of female characters. Probably the most famous thing to ever come out of author George R. R. Martin’s mouth is “I’ve always considered women to be people” (in response to “You write women really well and really different; where does that come from?”), which has marked him as a quasi-feminist writer ever since he said it. However, I was skeptical -- the quote, while poignant, has a rather Joss Whedon-esque, I-set-the-bar-for-feminism-so-low-I-could-walk-right-over-it vibe -- but upon embarking on the series, I’ve changed my tune. Men, women, and children are all treated equally by GRRM (that is, he kills them all off with equal disregard), so in that respect, I think it’s fair to say that A Song of Ice and Fire casts a respectable rotation of ‘strong female characters’.

Of course, this is feminism, so I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t controversy around this subject. Often, the trope of the ‘strong female character’ is misread; ‘strong’ is commonly interpreted as alluding to considerable physical strength, and if that were the case, A Game of Thrones would have almost no strong female characters at all. Here’s what I consider a ‘strong female character’: a woman or girl who demonstrates character development, emotional complexity, and realistic humanistic qualities, who is written justly and written well, who is not flawless but deeply flawed and who grows because of and in spite of these defects. Physical strength is not compulsory, but it is a bonus. TL;DR: if they’re a well-written female character, they’re a strong female character. Their strength is in their storyline. The misinterpretation of the definition of a strong female character, then, originates from a misunderstanding of the difference between character, and characterisation. As a writer myself, I can vouch for this: how the character is written is vastly different to how well the character is written. Take Arya Stark, for example. Like all of GRRM’s characters, she’s well-written, but she also fits into the typical ‘strong female character’ category because she defies societal norms by nonchalantly disregarding gender roles. She’s a ‘strong female character’ because, as a person, she refuses to conform to the regimented, traditional roles of women in the contextual society. If she were to be actively concerned about oppression -- which she isn’t, because she’s 10 -- and to comment on it occasionally in her inner monologues or in dialogue with other characters -- which she doesn’t, because, I repeat, she’s 10 -- she’d basically be a perfect Action Girl (TV Tropes). Rebellious, courageous, cocksure, and suffering from a severe case of stick-it-to-da-man-niosis, Arya is not only, I’m realising as I write this, a stock-standard Gryffindor; she’s the poster child for strong female characters. And she’s 10.

But what of Arya’s older sister, Sansa Stark? Sansa is my favourite character for reasons I can’t quite explain, but I know without having to Google it that many will have misread her as a weak female character, when, in my opinion, she’s one of the strongest. It’s crucially important that we remember the difference between character and characterisation here. On the whole, Sansa is of weak character. She is quite vapid, can be astonishingly selfish, has limited capacity for complex analysis, and, spoiler alert, sells her family out in petty revenge and resultingly contributes heavily to her father’s beheading. However, she is characterised extremely well. This makes her an incredibly strong female character in my eyes, as while as a person, Sansa sees herself as nothing more than Prince Joffrey’s betrothed, born to serve no other purpose than becoming the Baratheon boy’s future wife and babymaker, GRRM certainly doesn’t see her as such. She is characterised as more than just a piece on the Lannister chess board, because Sansa Stark is made of sterner stuff than that. She’s a crucial link between the Starks and the Lannisters/Baratheons. She’s obedient and disciplined and understands the importance of the traditions Arya shrugs off, even if her understanding is rather basic (because she’s 11, man. Let her live). She also functions really well under pressure and has excellent social skills, quite a schmoozer for a kid, and although she’s simple, she sees things as they are because of this. She has a true eye, and a true heart. Something else I find really interesting about Sansa’s character is her femininity, in juxtaposition with Arya’s masculinity (forgive my cisnormativity -- it’s suited to the contextual time period of A Song of Ice and Fire). Arya is a ‘masculine’ female character -- hates dresses, loves the outdoors, prefers to sword-fight rather than sew. Sansa, then, is in every way her polar opposite. She enjoys, and thrives in, ‘feminine’ activities: sewing, dancing, wandering in the meadow with the crown prince, daydreaming about marrying the crown prince, just admiring the crown prince in general. She prefers the “traditional pursuits of a noblewoman” (A Wiki of Ice and Fire), which I think adds to the excellence of her characterisation. What she wants is marriage and motherhood, which may seem anti-feminist, but feminism embodies the idea that you can be whatever you want, be that warrior or wife or neither or both. Plus, she just wants everything to be nice. Who can’t relate to that?

One can’t talk about female empowerment in A Game of Thrones without mentioning Daenerys Targaryen. There are two reasons why Dany is one of the most famous characters in A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones: Emilia Clark is unbelievably hot, and Dany’s character arc is quite honestly phenomenal. At the start of the book, she’s timid and docile, a young girl afraid of her psychotic brother’s unquenchable rage; by the end of the book, she’s still young and she’s still afraid, but her fear no longer controls her. If I look back, I am lost. Here, the characterisation is simply exquisite; in that sense alone, Dany is a strong female character, but wait, there’s more! Not only does Dany, like Arya, defy gender roles; she straight-up ignores them at the end of the book, in one of the most powerful and empowering scenes I’ve ever read. Yet similar to Sansa, Daenerys also places great value in being a wife and mother. She’s the middleground between the two Stark sisters, a perfect balance between masculine and feminine -- strong, confident, a loyal and just leader, but also sensitive and sentimental, even nurturing at times. She’s one of the most badass characters in the series so far, and also one of the strongest female characters because of her well-crafted character development and flawless blend of stereotypically male and female characters. To my little knowledge, she is one of GRRM’s finest works.

I don’t know if I made it obvious, but I loved A Game of Thrones. On all fronts it was a simply stunning experience, but I simply can’t get over how brilliantly executed the female characters are. Although George R. R. Martin writes most of his characters in roughly the same style, each individual narrative voice is distinctive and unique, each personality detailed and defined, and ever female character driven, whether that be by love or loathing or latent disrespect. Most importantly, the female characters are strong, both  of character and of characterisation.They all, especially those mentioned above, show character development. They’re all emotionally complex, conflicted at every turn. They react in the most human way to happiness, sadness, pain, fear, and most notably, grief. They are deeply, but not irrevocably, flawed, and their strength lies not in their sword arm, but in their storyline. I’m sorry I was skeptical, Mr. Martin. Your statement may have been pretentious as hell and more than a little self-congratulatory, but you really do write women just as they are: people.