Medium – Book
About the Book – Viv Carter is a student at an American High School. And she’s fed up. She’s fed up of the sexist comments from boys at the school, fed up of the school football team getting all the funding and attention, fed up of the teachers taking no notice, and fed up of the perpetuation of ‘Texas Womanhood’ that she gets fed from other girls at the school. One day, it all gets too much, and taking inspiration from her mother’s punk rock history, she decides to publish a zine, called Moxie. Moxie calls out the inequalities and aims to bring the girls in the school together. The fight is on for Viv and her friends, but soon Moxie is brought to the attention of the boys and the school administrators, who are determined to shut it down.
My Rating – 3.5/5
My Thoughts – I loved the premise of this book, but it fell a little short on the actual delivery of what was promised. The first part of the book was quite slow and took me ages to get through. It was kind of your average ‘girly’ high school book – all the cliques, our heroine fitting into the nice, quiet girl one; going along to football games. The part with the first issue of Moxie was good, and then the book got better, although it should be noted that it was really in the last 50-100 pages that the story got good. The ending was fabulous, and I am glad I persevered with reading as I was so close to giving up on it.
The characters were interesting – I really liked Viv and her punky, feminist ally boyfriend, Seth. The rest of the characters were OK – Claudia and Lucy, Viv’s friends, stand out as being sort of memorable, along with Viv’s mum. The nastier characters, such as the headmaster and his horrible football-playing son were well drawn, and they were definitely unlikeable. But really, I think the book was missing something – something which was seen in the last pages but not up to this point.
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