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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Courtesy of Teens Read Too, April 1, 2006
Sixteen-year old Gretchen Yee is a pretty typical teenager. Sort of. She attends the Manhattan High School for the Arts, otherwise known as Ma-Ha. There, she gets to take not only the normal, everyday classes of Literature and PE, but also Drawing and Sculpture. Gretchen is a great artist, and she's especially partial to the comic-book style of drawing. Not to mention that her personal hero is Spiderman. She has a best friend name Katya, who now seems to spend all her time either hanging out with the poseurs behind the school, smoking cigarettes, or babysitting her three younger sisters.
When it comes to the opposite sex, though, Gretchen has no idea what she's doing. Actually, she doesn't even know what they're doing half the time. Her parents are in the throes of a divorce, she has no close male friends, and her kind-of ex-boyfriend, Shane, now spends most of his time acting like an idiot. How can she ever know what goes on inside a guy's head when they act like such total morons most of the time?
After casually mentioning one day after school that she wished she could be a fly on the wall in the boy's locker room, something really, really strange happens. Gretchen wakes up the next morning as, you guessed it, a fly on the wall of the boy's locker room. Never mind the fact that she can't wrap her mind (her own mind, thank goodness, not a fly mind) around what's happened, now she spends several hours every day seeing high-school guys get naked! In front of her! Without clothes! And she can't close her eyes because her fly-body has no eyelids!
Needless to say, the things Gretchen sees and hears inside the boy's locker room at Ma-Ha are (ha!ha!) eye-opening, to say the least. Who knew that Titus, the object of her undying affections, gets tired of hearing his friends talk bad about homosexuals? Or that Malachy, a guy she'd never paid much attention to before, has secretly been dating her best friend? Or that one of the Art Poseurs is [..] Or that she'd spent so much time wondering if she was invisible, all the time being crushed on by a guy she'd never seen before?
FLY ON THE WALL is funny, honest, and a totally fun read. Who wouldn't wish, just once, to have a fly's-eye-view of the inner sanctum of the teenage male? For Gretchen, her time as a fly teaches her a lot about not only the male species, but her own wishes, desires, and needs. A real winner!
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
from missprint.wordpress.com, August 29, 2007
For Gretchen Yee life as an artificial redhead is anything but glamorous. A student at the Manhattan High School for the Arts (New Yorkers think: La Guardia) with girls wearing unitards or saris and cliques like the Art Rats, Gretchen feels too ordinary to belong. She stands out not because she's special or unique but because she's ordinary save for her stop-sign-red hair.
Gretchen is also lonely and confused. Her best friend is more and more distant and the boys at her school-like her crush the fantastically amazing and artistic and offbeat Titus? Well, they don't make any sense either.
Then Gretchen makes an idle wish to spend one week as a fly on the wall of the boy's locker room not expecting much to change.* But sometimes, wishes don't like to stay idle. Sometimes they like to come true.
Life as a vermin isn't much more glamorous than life as an artificial redhead. But it's certainly more informative. Gretchen gets to observe the boys as they come and go for each gym class. Lower classmen, acquaintances, friends, and even her crush, are all available to scrutinize. Instead of just learning, as she had expected, about what the boys really look like under those baggy jeans and t-shirts and what they really think and say behind closed doors-Gretchen also gets a chance to find out how she fits into the school.
When the week is over Gretchen might have even learned enough to live life not as an artificial redhead or a vermin but as a superhero.
I like Gretchen a lot as a character. She is also a comic book fan which almost always makes a character fun to read about. Excuse the pun, but after being a fly, Gretchen's metamorphosis from insecure to empowered girl really starts.
At times Lockhart's language seemed a little . . . unique. (You can tell me what you think after reading her segment on "gherkins.") I don't know if it's that she's using slang that I find weird and this is therefore only my problem, but it just made me hyper-aware that I was reading a book at certain points in the story.
As for the plot, it's a classic problem-resolution kind of story. Which I like. If you need to pick up something light and fun after a sad book I'd recommend this. Finally, even though you think the book is about a girl turning into a fly which is a fair assumption, it's really about more than that too. Specifically, it's about a girl learning to go after what she wants.
*Basically, Fly on the Wall takes Franz Kafka's plot from The Metamorphosis and brings it into the modern world and into a book that would appeal to teenage girls. And, for that reason, I almost didn't read it. I hated reading The Metamorphosis in high school and, to be honest, I still strongly dislike the book and avoid Kafka at all costs because of it. BUT, I am happy to say that the similarity to Kafka's novel begins and ends with Gretchen turning into a fly.
Possible Pairings: Girl Overboard by Justina Chen Headley, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl by Barry Lyga, The Superhero Handbook by Michael Powell, Vibes by Amy Kathleen Ryan, The Fly (movie)
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
E. Lockhart always delivers, November 24, 2008
I liked this book very much and while it wasn't my favorite by her, I still liked it.
It teaches us that appearances can be deceiving and that we should be more understanding of others. Also that the way other people see us is not the same as the way we see ourselves.
I am a teenager and I completely disagree with the parents who say this book is "pornographic". Trust me, if your kid goes to high school, he/ she already knows way more than you think.
Anyway, I recommend reading this book by E. but also the rest of her books because they are even better.
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