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Like the Red Panda is debut author Andrea Seigel's brutal answer to the throngs of Chick Lit novels that have inundated book clubs and influenced the big screen over the past decade. Stella Parrish, Seigel's tragic heroine, is 17, extremely wise beyond her years, completely alienated from her peers and her foster family, and determined to kill herself before she arrives at Princeton's gates in the fall. Seigel's task here is difficult--she's created a character of extraordinary depth, given her an unpleasant (at best) mission, and attempted to make her amusing and interesting, all at the same time. In many ways, the author's success should be widely applauded, even if she falls short on occasion.
Like the Red Panda enjoys its greatest success when Stella is commenting on the people around her. Her wry observations about her cranky old grandfather, her pot-smoking classmates in AP English, and her brilliant, unmotivated drug-dealing ex-boyfriend paint an equally amusing and insightful portrait of suburban life in America. When describing the temple-going practices of her jumpy and awkward foster parents, Stella explains that services are held on Sunday morning instead of Saturday, "mostly so everyone could be on the same worship schedule as their Christian friends. This benefited cross-religion plan-making on the weekends." When Seigel strays from witty observations like these, the novel has a tendency to lose its quirky appeal and simply becomes a tale of disenchanted youth. Thankfully, Like the Red Panda delivers more laughs than tears, and rewards readers with a unique blend of one-part teenage angst mixed with two-parts comedic wit. --Gisele Toueg
From Publishers Weekly
Astute, confident and keenly articulated, 24-year-old Seigel's debut about the life and times of an intelligent, disaffected teen is bleak but sharply humorous, and even redemptive. It's the last two weeks of high school for Stella Parrish, whose parents died of a heroin overdose when she was 11; at 17 she is trying to decide between Princeton and oblivion. Despite her smarts and sense of humor, Stella has few friends, a strained relationship with her dazed, slightly inept foster parents and what most teachers would call a bad attitude. Through her sharp, perceptive first-person narration, she offers a Holdenesque view of her upper-middle-class Orange County, Calif., town and all its hypocrisy, the stupidities faced in classrooms and the absurdity of senior year rituals. About a class trip to the zoo, she scoffs, "Yesterday... the kids were spitting on the walls and flicking off people they couldn't wait to get away from, and today they're on the bus with the majority of their graduating class. Even the rebels show up...." In between, Stella visits her nihilistic grandfather, who entertains her with the problems of his own life and plots ways to do himself in. Thick with believable character and detail, though somewhat thin on dramatic momentum, Seigel's novel is a keen portrait of young American angst and all its ironic posturing. The result veers between an earnest critique of the Columbine era and Heathers-like parody, which leaves its conclusion half tragedy, half punch line.
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