Customer Reviews

Special: A Novel

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After reading a review in EW I picked up this book out of curiosity and was not disappointed. Special follows a group of English school girls who in between tests and the end of the school year are dropped off at a manor. Bella Bathurst quickly lays down the caste system of the girls. There's the three popular girls, Hen a sick Scottish girl, Jules desperate for love, and Caz, a girl who seems void of any kind of feelings or conscience. There are the wannabes, and then there are the outcasts; Izzy a sickly fat girl and Ally, who's role is summed up in the first chapter when she extends her hand for a man to shake and he walks by her, unaware of her existence.
A lot happens in the week that the girls are at the manor. The girls get drunk, fight, excercise, meet boys (some men) and are taken advantaged and take advantage. Bathurst has a way with description, noting people and surroundings down to the last detail without overburdening us. When the girls talk to each other it seems like something real 13 year olds would say to each other. The end is jarring, completly coming out of left field. It's comparisons to LORD OF THE FLIES is justified. I thought about this book for days after finishing it. Highly recommended.

The back of this book promises "a fierce, subversive, darkly probing exploration of female adolescence", and while it might be considered fierce, only the very naive reader is going to find it subversive or darkly probing. Instead, this story of a two week school trip by a group of 13-year-old English schoolgirls, is more of a catalogue of female teen issues, such as anorexia, cutting, drinking, date rape, divorced parents, absent parents, running away, anger, sexual identity confusion, and so on. The core protagonists of the book are all set up as types: Caz is the beautiful alpha female, Jules is her jealous and caustic sidekick, Hen is the Scottish outsider trying to join the A-list, Ali is the quiet wallflower , Izzy is the gross fat and annoying hypochondriac, Mel and Vicky hang out in the background, Ms. Naylor is the sadistic spinster school marm, and Jaws is the understanding younger teacher.

Unless one believes that girls heading into teenagerdom are sweet little angels, there's little new here: They are cruel to each other-some more than others. They are jealous of each other-some more than others. They are terrified of being cast out-some more than others. And so on. Although Bathurst does a decent job of bringing the characters to life, none ever really rises above the level of cliché. More problematically, they often display levels of introspection and sophistication beyond their years. I had to keep reminding myself that these girls were supposed to be thirteen and not sixteen or seventeen. Some have likened it to Lord of the Flies, which is a rather lazy analysis, since the only theme the two books share is the ability of children to be cruel to one another. But while Lord of the Flies was making a much larger point above the nature of man, Bathurst's book is about the banal horror of everyday life as a teenage girl with no strong role models or support systems. In short, nothing special.

~In the book, Special, by Bella Bathurst she expresses the reality of the life of teenage girls. She also focuses on the physical and emotional struggles that teenage girls go through in this day and age. A group of high school girls and a few of their teachers go off on a two-week overnight field trip to the countryside of England. Each day of the two weeks the stories about each girl are told. Their emotions, concerns, and thought processes are expressed each day. The girls are Izzy, Hen,~~ Jules, Mina, Caz and Mel. They all have different personalities on this trip and express them in very different ways. Throughout their two-week stay at the house, which was once an Insane Asylum, they learn the little problems about themselves and the big problems they have with one another.
Daily they are fighting and putting each other down but at the same time they are experiencing the peer pressure of being a teenager with drugs, alcohol and sex. A few of the girls already smoke and~~ find out that at a town nearby they have easy access to other types of drugs and such things. So they are easily tempted to sneak out of their house and go around the town to explore the different pressures and activities that are set before them. They are really just problematic girls who are very depressed and have nowhere to turn to, not even each other because they don~{!/~}t rely on each other. I think this book truly does express the typical teenage girls life and the author does a~~ very good job of describing the lifestyle. It was an interesting book to read.~

When I first got the book to read, I had no idea how strange it would be. After a few pages, I had fair warning, but I couldn't put it down. Their life at the manor house is depressing, and their attitudes toward each other are competetive and confusing. My life at 13 compared to theirs was tame. While I was reading, I could not believe they are only three years younger than me! It is unsettling, how wild they are.
The descriptions of their lives and of their confrontations are disturbingly realistic. A book both touching and frightening, it gives a new view to the term "teen angst," and a new eye to the outcast girls. The ending is one of complete suprise and horror, so prepare yourself. I give this book 4 stars.

I picked up this book absolutely clueless to what I was about to read. I had read the back cover, and it seemed intriguing so I gave it a chance. I think that my use of the word intriguing is an understatement, becasue Special is so much more than that. Although I think that the characters are very mature for their age, I think that Bathurst captures the cruelty that teenage girls enflict upon one another. I highly reccommend this book for those girls 14 and up. The graphic descriptions might be a little too graphic for those who aren't mature enough to handle it. However, be prepared for an intense, and shocking ending. Also be prepared for a cliffhanger that leaves the actual events up to your imagination.

A group of thirteen year old British girls is incarcerated for two weeks in a kind of boot camp, being subjected to hiking, biking, swimming and gym under the supervision of two remarkably incompetent and unsympathetic teachers. They experience smoking, drinking, sex, anorexia, self-mutilation, anaphylactic shock and accidental death.

They form friendships and enmities (mostly the latter) and play cruel tricks on each other. Nobody is ever happy.

Much of the writing is excellent, and I got hooked into reading it by the vivid opening description of a long monotonous drive in a bumpy van.

It's been compared to Lord of the Flies, but LOTF raises the interesting question of what society children would make without adult intervention and marches relentlessly to a gripping climax. These children have adults around, but all of them are stupid or malevolent or unperceptive. Such teachers and parents do exist of course, but these are never made plausible because we are never shown why they behave as they do. The story is told from the POV of four of the girls and the adults are only described from the children's perspective. It's rather like reading a series of those blogs and chat groups that infest the Internet. The result is that ultimately it's rather plotless, without over-riding conflict or resolution.