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Todd Mitchell
Written by Charlie Malone
Monday, 27 December 2010
“The geeks let me be whatever I imagined.”
This realization gives teen-aged James Turner permission to become anyone he wants at his new high school. At any moment it seems James might get lost, damaged, or destroyed by his reinvention of himself. Young adulthood can be terminal. This truth gives The Secret to Lying its drive.
Aiming this book at high school-aged young adults, author Todd Mitchell has the vision to infuse the novel with mischief and humor. As James and his classmates at ASMA, the American Science and Mathematics Academy (cough, wheeze), awaken sexually, stage dramatic protests against cafeteria food, live with eating disorders unrelated to the quality of the cafeteria, cut themselves, struggle to shape their own identities, prank their dorm neighbors, experiment with alcohol or over-the-counter medications, and encounter very serious questions of when to ask for help, and how to get through stigmas associated with counseling, Mitchell balances the mood of the book carefully.
As the risks facing James grow more tangible, and more menacing, his own humor takes on a deliberately hollow sense. Meanwhile, other characters worry and distance themselves. Issues of mental health and identity development for young people are often the subjects parents and teachers struggle to talk about. Our best novels for young adults take risks and give these themes truthful attention and ways for readers to think through them. While being faithful to the importance of these topics, all the easy phrases describing well-paced novels that hook the reader still apply, (pick any three): gripping, engrossing, humorous, exiting, insightful, engaging, heartbreaking, page-turning, hard-to-put down...
This book has layers, the kind of architecture that rewards a reader’s thinking and questions. Mitchell works in a variety of forms, including dreams and instant messaging. The dreams, which might be the only part of the novel that I found inconsistently convincing, offer a parallel story mirroring the issues James won’t fully acknowledge in his life. The IMs provide a safe, rich space for two characters to express themselves without consequence. James’ path of reinvention transforms him from an anonymity at a traditional school to a rebel at a school for math and science geeks—err high aptitude students. Here’s James coping with being ignored by his cheerleader-crush at his first school:
“It’s no big deal, I told myself. There are kids who are orphaned, or shipwrecked, or fighting in wars—every story we read in English class focused on someone coping with something big. Compared to their problems, not getting an H was definitely not worth talking about. But that was the problem. Nothing in my life was worth talking about. I was so unremarkable that one even noticed I’d been forgotten.”
The difficulty of feeling intense emotions, as we do in high school, combined with the shame of knowing there are bigger issues in the world, is a painful combination. We wonder if our feelings matter, and adolescent boys face gender roles valuing stoicism and toughness over expression. We can deal with the world as it is, or escape into video games, sports, drugs, or, as James does, start over and invent a more interesting version of himself. In other words, lie.
James Turner, becoming J.T., delights in the new, attention-worthy version of himself.
“Rumors about me spread, spilling beyond the sophomore class. I repeated some of the stories I’d told at the lock-in and made up a few new ones, but mostly I acted modest, like my car-stealing, street-fighting past wasn’t something I enjoyed talking about. Instead of bragging, I sounded like the soul survivor of a catastrophe, reluctantly giving an interview.”
As much fun as this reinvention is for James and his friends, Dickie and Heinous, it’s more fun for the reader. Their antics, pranks, and banter are immature and enjoyable. For all these playful moments, the novel always has a sense of its direction and seeds of the important issues at hand. After a ketchup-enhanced, staged battle in the cafeteria, James sprawls on the floor tomato-scented and playing possum at the feet of a beautiful upper-class student thinking, “Nothing ever made me feel so alive as playing dead.”
James’ use of stage vocabulary like “act”,”play”, and “role” adds up through the book for both the reader and the characters. He later admits, “I forced myself to joke with them, but my laughter sounded empty. I was a cardboard cutout of a person—a flat look-alike trying to pass myself off as real. I worried that Dickie and Heinous might hear the hollowness in my voice and know that I was all lies, paper thin.”
It’s painful to watch scenes where James can’t stop from lying, can’t stop playing his role. What we witness is the difficult transition from holding our identity as something external—as fashion, or a character in a film to mimic—to a real internalization of how we actually see ourselves. Mitchell’s representation of this not only feels right, but when you take it apart it matches up with human development scholarship. This is to say, he really nails these difficult experiences. The details are just right, rich and meaningful, screen names, the one-eyed school counselor as an external representation of the stigma of asking for help—it all fits.
Todd Mitchell lives here in Fort Collins with his family and teaches at CSU. He shares Elvis’s birthday. His first book, Traitor King, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. A glimpse at his acknowledgments hints at how much of himself he put into this novel. It pays off. For more information visit: www.toddmitchellbooks.com. |
