Customer Reviews

Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(4)

 

 

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!

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)

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.

Gretchen Kaufman Yee is an artist--mainly of the comic book variety--and a student at the Manhattan High School for the Arts (Ma-Ha). In a school full of creative, artistic types she feels like the only "normal" person there--which makes her a total outsider. She has one friend (who has been scarce lately) and one ex-boyfriend (who is now to the king of the group of Art Rats that includes her all-consuming crush, Titus Antonakos). Boys are a foreign concept. When she makes an offhand wish to be a fly on the wall of the boys' locker room--so she can, for once, really know what they're talking about--she never expects it to happen.

But it does. Gretchen spends a week as a fly, trapped in the stinky, sweaty locker room, bearing witness to the interactions, secrets, and--of course--nekkidness of the boys of Ma-Ha.

It is a testament to Lockhart's undeniable talent that her heroine turning into a fly seems like a completely natural occurrence. The metamorphosis is smooth and completely believable. Gretchen's voice is so strong, that you can completely forget that she has six legs and a pair of wings. And when she inevitably returns to sixteen-year-old-girl form, her internal metamorphosis is equally smooth and believable, and emotionally satisfying. (I don't usually stoop to those catch phrases of literary criticism, but in this case I can't seem to help myself.)

If you haven't gathered from everything mentioned so far, you should totally read this book.

At Manhattan School for the Arts, where Gretchen Yee is a sophomore, "normal" is out. Even her stop-sign-red hair isn't nonconformist enough. (But if everyone is a nonconformist, aren't they really all conformists?) Her drawing style is all wrong too -- it looks too much like a comic book (duh! Spider-man IS a comic book). If that's not enough, she has to eat lunch by herself, because her best friend, Katya, is too busy smoking with the Art Rats; her parents just announced; and she's in love with Titus, but is too chicken to do anything about it. Gretchen wishes she could be a fly in the boys' locker room, just to learn more about them. Inexplicably, she wakes up the next morning to find that her wish has been granted. Over the next week, she learns a lot -- and not just what an A+ booty looks like. She learns that boys are all different: that they have feelings, too; that they can feel insecure and bullied. She learns that everone's perception of other people is different -- and some perceptions of her are quite surprising. And she learns something about her friendship with Katya that shocks her. Though the circumstances are implausible, Gretchen's thoughts and the things she learns are quite typical, and keep the story realistic. Gretchen is quite a likeable character, and the reader will be eager for her to put her new knowledge to good use.

In E. Lockhart's FLY ON THE WALL, 16 year old Gretchen Yee doesn't feel like she belongs. In fact, she's feeling a bit like a Vermin, just one of the hundreds of ordinary students attending the Manhattan High School for the Arts. She doesn't play any sports. She loves to draw Spiderman, muscles and everything. And she'll never pick up smoking like her best friend Katya, who's abandoned her to hang out with the Art Rats.

But when her mom takes off on vacation, the strangest thing happens to Gretchen--she wakes up as a fly on the wall in the boy's locker room. Of all places! Gross, right? Yet some might call it the opportunity of a lifetime. In this modern day adaptation of Franz Kafka's METAMORPHOSIS, Lockhart gives us a glimpse into the world as Gretchen sees it, no interruptions, no interactions, just eyes, eyes, eyes and everything they're able to see.

With spot-on accuracy and cutthroat humor, Lockhart takes advantage of a young girl's inability to speak and takes us straight into her thoughts about a world she, like many girls, has never experienced. Her stream of consciousness takes her down a road she'd never imagined possible, one which scares her to death while at the same time giving her the perfect chance to think about boys, her desires, her life, and what exactly it is that she loves most in this world.

Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

The idea that a simple wish will transform you into an insect stuck in the boy's locker room is the premise behind E. Lockhart's book, Fly on the Wall. But the story goes well beyond that concept. The writing is engaging, truthful, and funny. Gretchen Kaufman Yee starts off as a self-described ordinary girl. She attends an artsy public school in Manhattan where most of her classmates are trying to be anything but ordinary. Her mother is Jewish, her dad Chinese-American. When they haphazardly announce their impending divorce, Gretchen becomes furious and suspicious that her dad is a cheater and her mom too self-involved to hold the marriage together. Gretchen's only consolation are her collections of picture books, Japanese dolls, comic book collectibles, and her incessant drawing of Spider-man and other favorite Marvel® Comic Book characters. At school things aren't any better. Her best friend Katya has recently begun to avoid her, her crush Titus isn't giving her any signs of liking her back, her kind-of ex-boyfriend Shane is tongue-tied with his new girlfriend, and her teachers are constantly asking that she explore her drawing beyond the comic book style of Spidey and his arch-nemesis Venom. When her parents go away for a week on a vacation and a business trip, respectively, Gretchen is left on her own, and a simple wish to become a fly on the wall in the boy's locker room suddenly befits her with tiny, flimsy transparent wings and eyes in the back of her head. All she wants is to better understand what boys are truly like. During her week as a fly she gets to see which boys are bullies, which are insecure, which don't care and are insensitive, and which haven't come out of the closet. She also gets to study the mysterious male anatomy. Although this part of the book is highly-descriptive, Gretchen's character gets beyond this new revelation and she finds out that although she can't change the entire world like her comic book heroes, she can make the lives of those she loves a lot brighter. Once she returns to her life Gretchen becomes a superhero in her own right and she understands and accepts herself a lot better than before becoming a fly. Young readers will enjoy the humor, honesty, and bravery with which Gretchen tells her story. She is truly a character that many will identify with, and that most will not easily forget.

At Manhattan High School for the Art and Music, everyone thrives on being different. They dress in outrageous clothes and they're all "a budding genius of the art scene" and "on the verge of a breakthrough." Everyone, that is, except 16-year-old "ordinary girl" Gretchen Yee. Not even dying her hair stop-sign red helps. She feels like she doesn't fit in. Plus she thinks she's far from an artistic genius, especially since her art teacher doesn't appreciate her comic book-style drawing skills.

Gretchen would rather spend her lunch period alone drawing pictures of Spider-Man than hanging out with her best friend Katya and the Art Rats. Gretchen has a crush on Titus, but she won't do anything about it. She's horribly self-conscious about what people think of her and feels more and more alone as Katya, her only friend, suddenly becomes busy all the time.

One day Gretchen wishes to be a fly on the wall of the boys' locker room. If she was a fly, maybe she could finally figure out what boys were thinking. The next day, she gets her wish. Gretchen turns into a fly and spends a week observing the behavior of her classmates in none other than the boy's locker room.

In her life as a fly, Gretchen discovers the mysteries of the male anatomy (remember, she's in a locker room!). Plus, she realizes that the people she knows are not who she thought. They have insecurities like her, and secrets too. Her week as a fly gives her a new perspective on her life. In the end, she gains confidence and learns to take risks. Turning into a fly could be the best thing that ever happened to her!

E. Lockhart, author of THE BOYFRIEND LIST, proves her talents once again. Her writing style is extremely engaging through the use of the unique and quirky voice of her main character. The scenes where teen Gretchen is exploring her new world as a fly are hilarious. She learns to use her wings and gets a frightening up-close look of herself in the mirror and thinks, "I'll never get a boyfriend looking like this." For a topic that could come off as cheesy and unbelievable, Lockhart comes through. Her teen-turning-into-a-fly book works...and it works well. The novel is fast paced, hysterically funny, and a pleasure to read. It's also refreshing to see a female comic book geek in today's teen fiction.

--- Reviewed by Kristi Olson

I was reading through the reviews and I thought some of the negative ones were unreasonable. Yes, the main character is turned into a fly without an explanation, but really, in a 125 page novel, how do you expect something like that to be explained? That wasn't the point of the book. Also, parents seemed to be highly alarmed by this work, well, truth be told, it does discuss the male genital for quite some time. However, it goes nowhere near pornographic. It's more like the thought process of a girl seeing the 'gherkin' for the first time.

I actually really enjoyed this book. I thought it was funny, original, and I found Gretchen Yee highly relatable. However, while I'm a teenager, I would recommend this book to my friends, but not to my little sister.

I am a huge fan of E. Lockharts, but I have to admit, at first I couldn't quite get into this book. Maybe because of its artsy-ish tone - the heroine Gretchen Yee is a student at the Manhattan Art School, so everything about her (and for that matter everybody in the school) is art orientated and I can't quite identify with imaginative and artistic types. Maybe because of a bizarre twist in the middle, when the story becomes somewhat fantasy-like - Gretchen finds that her wish of becoming a fly on the wall a boys locker room, quite literally comes true.

However the story really takes off (at least in my opinion) when we start learning about the world of male relationships, insecurities, secrets - the world which is a mystery to me up to this day. From then on the book is very hard to put down.

The major themes of all Lockhart's creations - facing difficulties instead of hiding from them, taking charge of ones life, and women empowerment - are very present in this book and delivered very well.

Another great book by E. Lockhart. Not the best written by her, but still worth your attention.

P.S. For those parents who monitor their kids' reading, this book has some mature content - male "attributes" are discussed quite openly, but without being inappropriate in my opinion. Accusations by some Amazon reviewers of it being "pornographic" are unreasonable.