"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Tangerine (1997)

Ages back, I did a Top Five post on my favorite childhood rereads, and this youth novel made the list.  I picked it up as a kid all but sight unseen and wound up absolutely loving it.  I’ve revisited it multiple times over the years.  My latest reading of the book was the first since I started blogging about stuff I like, so it was only natural that it’d end up here.

12-year-old Paul Fisher is used to living in the shadow of his older brother and the Erik Fisher Football Dream.  Erik’s achievements have always mattered more than Paul’s, and now that his family has moved from Texas to Tangerine, Florida, he expects more of the same.  But even though Paul is legally blind due to an early childhood incident he can’t remember, he sees what his parents can’t:  he sees the real Erik, who fools everyone with his smiling all-American act but gets off on cruelty and manipulation in his free time.  While the rest of his family settles into their new development, where the football uniforms are crisp and neat and the houses are perfectly symmetrical, Paul winds up gravitating more to the real Tangerine outside the development, the rural town populated by citrus growers.  There, he chases his own dreams of glory on the soccer field and works on gaining the fortitude needed to hold his own against Erik.

That was a lengthy summary, but it still feels lacking in terms of explaining what this book is really like.  There’s so much going on here.  I love the characterization of both Tangerine and Lake Windsor Downs (the housing development,) both Paul’s gradual recognition of the class disparities between the two and the ongoing theme of the way nature “fights back” against the development itself, ie, numerous houses having termite problems because groves were mowed down and chipped to build up the land, or lightning repeatedly striking the house where the tallest trees used to stand.  Everyone in Paul’s family is also really well done.  There’s Erik, whose psychopathy is portrayed in a really chilling way, as well as Paul’s dad, who’s been consumed by his dreams of Erik’s football stardom, and Paul’s mom, who’s just trying to hold everything together in a new town that seems to be actively resisting human habitation.

But for me, things really get cooking when Paul starts getting more involved with Tangerine than Lake Windsor Downs.  I like the theme of Paul not fitting in there and yet still feeling so much more at home among the Tangerine kids than he’s ever been.  I love the soccer stuff, the games that play out more like war and Paul’s vividly-written teammates (Victor is my favorite, for obvious reasons.)  I also like Paul’s introduction to the world of tangerine growers; it’s cool, because it’s so much about class and race, but it’s handled in a pretty understated way, with Paul’s realizations rising slowly like a tide instead of washing over him.

One thing, though:  this is the first time I’ve read the book since becoming an interpreter in a public school, and the IEP stuff is ridiculous.  Paul’s mom mentions to the principal a few days before school starts that Paul is legally blind, the guidance counselor asks her to “fill out an IEP,” and less than a week later, Paul starts school with all sorts of accommodations he doesn’t want?  Ridiculous.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, language, and a few scenes of violence.

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