I just finished the book, and I have to admit that I desperately flipped through the last few blank pages hoping to find more. I warn you all now, the latter half of this review may end up with spoilers. If it does, I'll let you know with asterisks and pretty little caps.
First of all, I'm not an experienced Hopkins reader. I read another one of her books from my library (I'm pretty sure it was Impulse? Staring Tony, and two others in a suicide rehab clinic)
So going in to Tricks I sort of knew what to expect. Gritty, honest writing, emotion, and heartbreak.
Lots of people complain about two things in this book. One, universal with Hopkins it seems, it the writing style. I will admit I was also victim to the old mistake of opening it up, assuming it was poetry, and putting it down. Please, if You pick this book up, give it a chance! It's written in verse, but outside the "A Poem By ___" openers it's all straight prose divided in crafty line breaks that drive subtle points home.
Another thing is that people complain it's just too graphic. I'm sorry, but you're reading about love, heartbreak, and eventual prostitution. People say it's too detailed, and it disturbs them. Imagine how the ones who LIVE this kind of thing feel. When you're being raped there is no neat way to avoid the gritty truth and details. There's no way to forget the smell of sex or scrape away enough skin in the shower to ever feel clean. Hopkins takes that feeling of desperation, fear, and the thoughts of "who will want me now" and instills this into her book.
So if you don't want to feel like someone's gripping your heart with cold fingers, don't read this. If you're light stomached or can't take the truth of what's really happening in this world, this book isn't for you. But I urge anyone else. EVERYONE else to give it a chance. This book unveils the topics people skirt around. Too many people refuse to talk about this. About sex, teenagers, choices. Perhaps that's the cause of half the situations that lead down roads ending in heroine and prostitution? Read this. Parents and teenagers alike. Read it together, even. It's powerful. Honest. It will strike you at your core, pry you open, and place every heart-wrenching line into your deepest corners.
Even the opening poems in this story had me in tears at some points.
Overall I think the entire book is a work of true art. It shines light on the dark corners of reality and opens -at least for me- your soul up to the pain of people. Sometimes, people who will never even know someone cares about them.
*SPOILERS AHOY*
I swear, after this, the next time I see someone tripped out on a street corner looking to score, I'll think of Whitney. When I see strippers at a club I'll be thinking of Ginger. When I see that girl being preached at by her parents, my heart will return to Eden.
To Cody, and Seth, and even the minor characters. Andrew, Alex, even Gram and all her love. My heart goes out not only to these fictional characters, but to people I've never met before. It's simple stunning that something as simple as a book has me in tears, wanting to run outside down the street and find someone. Hug someone. Let a stranger cry on my shoulder.
Ellen Hopkins, if you ever somehow read this by a freaky miracle, I want you to know you've touched a very personal part of me. I wept, and smiled, and cheered, and cursed at every page of your hard work. Message delivered. Thank you.
My one, and only meager complaint is that it felt like it ended all too soon. I'm so used to books that reach the end and keep going, wrapping everything up with a tidy bow. I actually had to go back, reading some of the last entries from characters over and over, having to drill into myself "this is it. This is the last time you'll see this person in writing". Honestly, that just broke my heart. I wanted to find these people, five, ten, fifteen years down the road and see where they were. How they were. Some endings, like Whitney's, I just was left with questions.
But really, I think that's a good thing. Life doesn't ever just happily wrap up with a ribbon. It goes on, changes, and shifts. Any happy ending is only temporary after all, and things will always move forward.
Just like you said Cody, "Life is a gamble after all".
