Me and Earl and The Dying Girl.

I've learnt two things about myself from reading Jesse Andrews' Me and Earl and The Dying Girl. Firstly, I've learnt that I have absolutely nothing in common with a teenage boy. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Secondly,  I've learnt that I'm really pleased that I've got nothing in common with a teenage boy because to be honest, they seem like gross individuals who tackle issues like unwanted boners and idiotic actions beyond their control all day, every day. Therefore,  I've gotta say, Me & Earl did absolutely nothing for me. I wanted to like it, I honestly did but alas i spent my time reading a couple of pages, sighing and then putting the book down; just to pick it up and do the same. I feel like this book is one of those pieces of work that have will gain a tremendously successful cult following but unfortunately, I will not be one of them.

The whole book is written from the perspective of our main character, Greg. In fact, it's really his book we're reading. Greg is a chubby teenage boy that tends to steer clear from any real friends, bumbling his way through dating and making his amateur films. His one and only real friend is loud mouth, Mr. Sassy Pants; Earl. Greg is quite happily floating along through adolescence without a care until his mother forces him to befriend childhood acquaintance, Rachel, who has recently been diagnosed with leukemia. Thus follows a cancer narrative that really has very little to do with cancer and to be honest with you, I'm not all that sure i know what this story was genuinely about.

To be honest, I cant really fault the general writing style, that is the one thing i liked. It was just the sheer volume of quirky bullet pointed narrative, list after list of supposedly funny anecdotes and scripted dialogue. If Andrew's had picked one of these writings styles and ran with it, I would have enjoyed it. However, the constant mix match of narrative style made me feel slightly motion sick and it distracted me from the actual story line. In saying this, the book was well written within it's individual parts, it just didn't feel like an actual book for me. I know Andrew's wrote in the style of a teenage boys attempt at a book but i found Greg's constant ramblings and back track information tedious.

What killed it for me though was just the characters, i just didn't like them. I didn't find Greg lovable and humorous as you were meant to. I found his general obliviousness towards normal behavior to be forced. In fact, I found all the characters to be forced and a little static. Earl for example, was just a bad racial stereotype of a young black man. He's made out to be this ghetto raised, chain smoking, foul mouthed problem child and the dialogue that he's given is so predictably and a little cringy. An example being the sentence; "I'm talking about pussy. I got a little honey mustard over here, a little Heinz 57, and a whole lot of pussy" (Earl, Me and Earl and The Dying Girl. Andrews, 2012). Gross, right!? Totally cringy too! If I ever overheard a young man speaking like that I can tell you now, he'd get a stern word from me, my friend. Then there's poor, young Rachel. She's got leukemia and no doubt is feeling pretty bad about herself. So you'd think that maybe she'd get some good dialogue or some nice, amusing high point but nope. She;s kind of just a narrative drive that doesn't really do it's job. Like i said, this book isn't a cancer book so she's got to have some kind of other reason for being there and I just don't buy the relationship between her and Greg.

I picked up this book because I liked the cover, pretty much the thing you're supposed to not do. Ya know, the whole not reading a book by it's cover thing. Well I did, OK? That doesn't make me a bad person, does it!? Apparently so because I then got some bad literary karma by picking up a novel that had major potential with an interesting writing style but just wasn't supported by it's characters and narrative. I'd be interested in reading some more of Andrews work to see what a different story would do to his novel way of story weaving. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Elly.