We Are Okay

This may be something of a ramble with leanings toward a rant, but I have a lot of conflicting emotions to unpack about this book. On the surface, it's beautiful. It has gorgeous prose and an amazing cover and there are so many questions which keep you reading in seek of answers. But beneath the surface, there's pitting from weak plot threads and stains from lost trains of thought. The emphasis on description eventually becomes droll. The tiptoeing around what's troubling Marin eventually becomes obnoxious, since we're inside her head and there's no true reason for it to take so long to reveal the answers to important questions like what happened to her.

Marin's guilt issues are obnoxious sometimes, as well. In the past, she beats herself up over “making her grandpa sad” when she asks an extremely reasonable question of whether any baby pictures exist of herself. You'd think that she had called him a terrible person for not saving any, instead. But no. A simple question, which should have a simple answer, and she acts like she's a monster for ever asking in the first place. It's ridiculous.

I also found it difficult to empathize when she waxes poetic about how much she misses her old belongings, since it's her own fault they're gone. She's the one who threw away having a real home and ran off. She's the one who didn't care enough about those things to preserve them. She's the one who betrayed the person closest to her by ignoring concerned texts. She's the one who decided to wallow uselessly in self-pity and stay in crappy hotels instead of accepting a loving home openly and freely offered. There's a point where I just wanted to scream at Marin that she needs to grow up because she did this to herself.

I also hated that, after feeling empathy for Marin through the beginning of the book, things began falling apart and she became less and less relatable toward the middle. At the end, it's revealed via flashback that she's the kind of person who throws away an otherwise perfectly good set of clothes just because they'd been worn too much and she was concerned about making a bad impression on her new roommate with stinky attire. So she spent three hundred bucks on school-branded attire and threw her old clothes away instead of just tossing them aside so a poorer student could find and claim them, washing them later and keeping them, or outright donating them. That moment really took me out of liking Marin, because it's such a gross display of privilege and she surrounds it with fretting over how eventually she'll run out of the mass of money her dead grandpa she hates so much for lying to her left... Well, maybe stop pissing away money and just buy a can of body spray instead. Jeez.

Also, I got sick of how she seems incapable of going five seconds without mentioning Jane Eyre. I know rabid fangirls who are better than her when it comes to desperately trying to relate every aspect of life to her favourite book. And maybe in those five, shining seconds of not talking or thinking about Jane Eyre, she could also stop mentally begging Mabel to ask her about things she wants to say and then stop trailing off halfway all “nevermind I can't do this” after starting to tell one of the only plot-like stories in this book. There's mystery and then there's being obnoxiously secretive and the line gets crossed several times. Of course, then when it finally does come out, the reveal is so... anti-climactic. The event itself which apparently so deeply traumatized Marin is so dull.

All these emotions. All these hints at some sinister darkness. All the time spent wondering what kind of horrible, awful thing happened to Marin to make her feel so lost and so uncomfortable in her own skin that she ghosted her friend/girlfriend and fled to the other side of the country...

And it turns out, Marin has been a whiny, little brat about finding out her grandfather suffered a mental illness and kept secrets from her. Whiny enough to wonder if something as simple as a Christmas memory of decorating the tree was real or tainted by lies. (Protip: you can't lie that you're putting an ornament on a tree when you are literally putting an ornament on a tree and you can't taint a dialogue-free memory of sitting around said tree with lies that aren't being spoken.) And of course, she throws away a home, a family, a life all because she can't handle the idea of facing things she literally does not ever have to face. Nobody's telling her to go live in the house where the frankly not-so-bad thing happened (nobody was murdered, molested, raped, attacked, etc. it was just an emotionally bad thing). Hell, at one point, Mabel - the ex-girlfriend, sorta vaguely still best friend - begs her to just visit for Christmas break, and Marin is an ass about that.

Oh, she just can't possibly do it. Why not? Nobody knows. The way it's written, Marin is just plain stupid and self-centered. “Oh, I can't possibly go with Mabel, but oh I'll be so horribly lost without her.” “Oh, I can't possibly go back there, but oh I'm so worried and sad and distraught about all the things I willingly left behind and wondering what happened to them.” At some point, it stops being relatable as anxiety or grief and just starts inducing this feeling of ‘shut the fuck up, Marin, and grow up; if you miss things, go back to them, or else accept the consequences of your choices.' I think that's because the author is trying a little too hard to express thoughts logically when they're not supposed to be logical. Grief, anxiety, depression: these things cause irrational thoughts and actions. But in locking in on “oh I can't” instead of exploring the true struggle of desperately wanting to go, being terrified of returning, wanting to say yes but being seized by panic... we just get Marin constantly whining that she can't return. And being a horrible, entitled brat with regards to how her grandfather handled his grief while clearly influenced by some sort of mental illness.

How can she be such a terrible, cold-hearted person about her grandfather keeping photos of her mom away from her? Those were his property and he was clearly living in denial so strong that he couldn't face talking about the fact she was dead or sharing those memories with Marin. Yes, it hurt her. But, no, she was never entitled to him breaking his own heart open to talk to her about her mom or share his personal photos. And she of all people - the girl who ghosted everyone who still cared about her and ran off to the other side of the country just so she could live in denial - should be capable of understanding that sometimes you just can't face the source of grief. But nope, she's whining about how she was so entitled to have her grandfather share those memories with her within three pages of refusing to even visit Mabel for Christmas because boo hoo I can't go back there. The hypocrisy is infuriating and confusing and ugh.

I find this so peculiar, since all other aspects of the emotional handling show that Nina LaCour is a talented writer who's perfectly capable of portraying panic and soul-crushing sadness and the kind of bone-deep depression which makes a person not even want to get out of bed or be around other humans. Then we reach the end, and it's as if a resolution is provided but she needs to fill more space in the book so she has Marin artificially keep clinging to denial after admitting aloud and to herself what truly happened. She has Marin keep acting entitled, even after feeling the weight of denial and grief herself. We get a lacklustre reveal of a mediocre plot point, and still Marin doesn't change at all for having admitted the truth. Nothing changes. She's still a horrible friend, she's still self-absorbed and self-pitying and keen on blaming her grandfather for his obvious mental illness. It isn't until the very end of the book where we get any change, and at that point it just feels like more artificial, forced plot for the sake of tying it all up in a little bow and promising that things will be okay eventually.

Except Marin doesn't change herself. She doesn't drag herself out of grief and she doesn't overcome anything. She remains a hermit and the people she betrayed and hurt come running back to her with open arms to give her company when she chose solitude. That, to me, isn't overly hopeful of a message. It's more like a Lifetime Movie ending to force some happiness into a bleak, depressing experience. It's not a message about overcoming and surviving and moving on with life after facing a great loss; it's a message about just waiting around and continuing to hide from one's problems, and if the people you've hurt care enough about you they'll come crawling back to make your life a little brighter again regardless.

I also very much disliked that out of the blue, the dynamic between Mabel and Marin changed and suddenly created this awkward and out-of-place scene where Mabel teased Marin about potential crushes. Or that the very end is Marin finally agreeing to live with Mabel's family not because she's loved and not because of them as individuals and the true kindness they've shown all her life but rather because being hugged by Mabel's mother gave her a brief flash of memory about her own and she decided to chase that feeling and use Ana as her replacement mother.

It's just... meh. The book begins strongly. It has this beautiful writing and these entrancingly melancholy glimpses into a troubled mind. But by the middle, it becomes obvious that it's all just pathetic melodrama and not something as huge or as insidious as the reactions might imply. Then at the end, all of that is tossed away to put a magic fix into place and go ah, yes, everything is perfect again now when really nothing at all has been resolved and the main mysteries and questions are still left with only vague half-answers at best. Judging by how this book came to exist, as explained in the acknowledgments, I can see why it started out so beautifully atmospheric then petered out to the now everything will be totes okay again all the sudden ending. I've been there before, myself; when you're writing from a place of your own grief and sadness, there comes a point where you just want to make it all stop and put a happy ending on and be done with it. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe the author had very different reasons for ending this book as she did, but that's the impression I get.

All the same, I expected so much more from this book and honestly I feel somewhat let down by it. Were it not for the amazing representation provided for bisexual women and lesbians, I'm not sure I'd have even given this four stars. It's closer to three otherwise, and even those come from mostly the first quarter to half of the book and not the entire thing.

But the representation really is good. It touches on fear of homophobia without being too heavy-handed. It touches on confusion without being overly dramatic. It touches on the fact that it's entirely possible to be bisexual and still monogamous. And overall, it treats these girls as normally and respectfully as it does anyone else in the narrative. Their sexualities don't define them, even though naturally the former relationship is frequent across Marin's mind. And Mabel having a boyfriend now and a girlfriend in the past isn't treated as some kind of horrible or exceptional or traitorous thing; it's just how her love life works.

(There's also a lot of representation in the form of hispanic characters - Mexican immigrants, in this case - but I can't really speak to the accuracy or the way it's handled, as I don't have first-hand experience with a real life Mexican family. I will say, however, that it felt as if everything came from a place of authenticity, affection, and understanding.)

And even though I'm so let down by the ending and the reveal, I can't be too harsh on a book which made me feel as much as I did. I can't be too hard on a book that's written so beautifully. And I certainly can't be too hard on a book which made me feel like I could relate through half of the tale; it's so difficult to run across depression and grief written so well it doesn't feel like a failed attempt at emo fanfiction. I'm glad I read this book, I just wish the entire thing had been as good as the first portion.