Summary: Ben: Having just graduated from high school, Ben is set to leave Gypsum, Nevada. It's good timing since the gypsum mine that is the lifeblood of the area is closing, shutting the whole town down with it. Ben is lucky: he's headed to San Diego, where he's got a track scholarship at the University of California. But his best friends, Pete and Hog Boy, don't have college to look forward to, so to make them happy, Ben goes with them to check out the hot chick parked on the side of Highway 447.
Lala: She and her Gypsy family earn money by telling fortunes. Some customers choose Tarot cards; others have their palms read. The thousands of people attending the nearby Burning Man festival spend lots of cash--especially as Lala gives uncanny readings. But lately Lala's been questioning whether there might be more to life than her upcoming arranged marriage. And the day she reads Ben's cards is the day that everything changes for her. . . and for him.
Review: My goodness, it’s been quite awhile since I sat down and wrote a proper review for anything. It’s not that I haven’t been reading, it’s just that this whole adult world post-college graduation (which has been… like… five entire years) is much different and I’m still getting my bearings on where reviewing may or may not fit into my current life. So, thanks for bearing with me as I figure all that out and occasionally pop out of the dust to write a review – like this one!
It's almost fitting that this is the book I’m reviewing after such a long hiatus because well, Burning is somewhat of a typical review for me – so lackluster, barely two stars, and had my eye-rolling throughout the whole thing. My first instinct was to wonder where Arnold got any of her information about Gypsy or Romani culture (she literally thanks Google in her acknowledgements), so I didn’t feel like I could take anything in here as being informative on what Romani culture really is. I’m sure the broad cultural explanations are correct (like arranged marriages, the roles of men and women, views on virginity, etc.), but I had a hard time believing other things like why Lala talks the way she does, if they really make their living scamming people with fortune-telling on the side of the road, or if the totally random (and never explained) Romani words thrown into the text are used so frequently. All examples in particular felt very stereotypical, but like I said, I don’t have any other information, so that’s just my gut instinct.
If you’ve been following my reviews for awhile, you may remember that I reserve one-star reviews for books that really grind my gears, things I just really hate. Two star reviews are more common for that reason, not because there was anything I particularly enjoyed about this book, but rather because it didn’t succeed in invoking that kind of visceral reaction from me. Overall, Burning is not a book I’d recommend (particularly not for junior high or early high school kids – lots of cursing, lots of objectification of women’s bodies, and a fair amount of sexual content); it’s lackluster and leaves you wondering why in the world you wasted any time reading it.
Perhaps the most interesting scenes in this whole novel were Lala with her family, the only opportunities we had to really observe the culture and the dynamics in the group. Despite being hammered over the head repeatedly with Lala’s yearning to be “free,” her family members were really the only interesting characters in the whole book. I liked the interactions between Lala and her sisters, the love between Violeta (one of the sisters) and her husband, Marko, and other little things (like Lala’s dad instructing the younger brother, Alek, to accompany Lala and Anelie on a walk) that gave insight both to culture as well as to the family itself. Unfortunately, this very quickly devolved into pointing out everything everyone thought was wrong with the culture and the family, so the pleasure in these scenes ended pretty quickly.
Since we’re on the topic, let’s start with Lala and her newfound observations regarding her family and her culture. Maybe it’s supposed to be symbolic of Lala taking off her rose-colored glasses about what it means to be a “Gypsy” (not sure how acceptable this term actually is, but it’s what they use throughout the book), but I found it annoying that suddenly, reasons for disliking the family members just seemed to crop up out of nowhere. For instance, Lala talks about how Romeo is an honorable man, that they grew up together and she liked him well enough, that she was happy to be even closer to her sister, Violeta, through marrying him, etc. But then Romeo is abruptly painted as quite the opposite – forcing kisses on Lala when she clearly isn’t interested, being threateningly protective of Lala whenever Ben is around, etc. The same happened with her father. It all seemed like a way to casually proceed with the general plotline of Lala being essentially excommunicated from her family and the culture, but so that we would agree that Lala did the right thing in abandoning them all. However, the case is never really made that Lala needs to literally run off with Ben in order to get the freedom she craves; she tells Ben that she could have told her dad she didn’t want to marry Romeo and the wedding would be called off. Since that event seems to be the major driving factor for Lala to disconnect with her roots, I wasn’t sold on the whole thing.
Man, the instalove was strong with this one. Literally upon first meeting Lala, Ben describes her as “the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.” Immediately, Lala narrates, “Deep inside me, it was as if something was waking and stretching its limbs. Some secret dragon hibernating in my core had been stirred by the presence of this boy.” After a twenty-minute Tarot card reading, Ben thinks, “She was meant for me. No matter what the cost.” Ben asks her out then and she declines. He comes back the next day and asks again. She declines again. The next day, Lala and her family drive into town for some ice cream. And that’s when Lala climbs on the back of Ben’s dirt bike, they ride off, undress and swim together, make out, and eventually, have sex. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Lala’s dad along with Romeo and Marko come and beat the crap out of Ben, and Lala makes it clear that she wants nothing to do with them anymore. She gives up literally everything she has ever known and her most precious relationship – because Ben is just so hot. Ben obviously has no qualms with sex before marriage, but Lala supposedly comes from a culture where such a thing is meant for husbands and wives alone. However, she doesn’t think twice before telling Ben that she wants to lose her virginity to him because “I want to have sex—because I want to share this experience with you, Ben Stanley.” Wow, what meaningful insight. I’m sorry, but one does not just throw off a lifetime of cultural beliefs regarding modesty and virginity in a cumulative two hours with a hot guy. Hormones aren’t that powerful.
So despite all this lead up to Lala and Ben being destined for each other and changing each other’s lives and all that jazz, Lala completely and utterly uses (and subsequently discards) Ben for her own kicks and giggles. Ben, in his deluded fantasy world, starts making these grand plans about having Lala move with him to San Diego, living together, creating a life together, and dreaming about how wonderful it is to be in love. Meanwhile, Lala wakes up the next morning and decides that she got what she wanted out of him, and now it’s time for her to go “be free.” I do agree that an ending with Ben and Lala traipsing off to San Diego together to live happily ever after wouldn’t be fitting. But the fact that we get led to this point because Lala tells us that Ben has woken something in her, that he makes her feel like there’s nothing about her she should be ashamed about, that he believes in love, that “I want to share this experience with you” as if she actually means that he is an important factor in the decision, and then it’s all blown off by, “JK, you don’t love me and I don’t love you.” I mean, it really makes you shake your head and wonder was it worth it, Lala? Even if we shrug off Ben’s feelings (because yeah, he definitely wasn’t in love with her, but he thought he was), was it worth sacrificing your relationships with your parents and your sisters, when you already told us that you didn’t actually have to marry Romeo and your dad would call of the wedding if you asked him to? It really doesn’t seem like it to me. But whatever – Lala gets to feel like she made the right choice because her mom gave her $15,000 in cash and now she gets to “be free.”
Alright, I’m almost done, I promise. I’m very much the type of reader that needs to enjoy the way something is written in order to enjoy a story. Really, all this writing had going for it is that it wasn’t in present tense, and I swear if it was present tense, this would be a one-star review. However, there’s just so much to eye roll at in the text itself. A huge one is the way Lala talks. She’s supposed to sound exotic and foreign, but I mean, she grew up in Portland. I’ve lived in Oregon all my life; I’m sure that she talks the way any other American teenager talks (even if the occasional Romani word or phrase gets thrown in). It reminded me of Kida in “Atlantis: The Lost Empire.” (But at least Kida has the excuse of living thousands of feet below sea level in an undiscoverable country…) There were other little things, like Ben having memorized the entire Robert Burns poem that Catcher in the Rye is based on, in all its Scottish glory, and being able to recite it at will. Or this gem of a thought: “I don’t know why people would ever want a bed any bigger than the one Lala and I shared that night.” Well, Ben, I invite you to take Lala to a family reunion where you have to share a twin bed for a week and then tell me you don’t understand…
Overall: I’m at a new phase in life where I’m finally willing to get rid of books that I didn’t like, and this one will go at the top of my get-rid-of pile. (The only bummer is that I’ll need to figure out what to do with it since this happens to be an ARC. How did I even get an ARC of this book nine years ago? I genuinely can’t remember…) It’s one of those weird books that doesn’t really fit any good age group. The reading level itself is like middle school, but the cursing and sexual content make it unfit for that group. And with the romance flitting out at the end, it really does make you wonder what the point in reading this book at all was. To watch Lala burn all the bridges in her life so she can start over with a large lump sum gifted to her, tax-free, and act like she’s so brave? To watch Ben go from a total cynic to being completely infatuated just so he can get crushed in the same twenty-four hours? (Or the real gem of the book – Ben’s mom admitting to him that she only married his dad because the condom broke and she got pregnant with Ben – yikes, TMI, Mom.)
