Mod. 2 - Realism, Romance and Censorship - ALONG FOR THE RIDE by Sarah Dessen

Bibliographic data
Dessen, Sarah. Along for the Ride. New York: Viking, 2009. ISBN 9780670011940

Critical analysis
Characterization -

Auden has an interesting life full of wonderfully peculiar supporting characters. She is not spontaneous, an avid reader, and lacks social skills that most teenagers have. Sadly, she has not accomplished as much as most children and teenagers have thus far in their lifetime. It is easy for readers to relate to Auden.

Eli is a mysterious man that creates a sort of quest for Auden. Many things she has missed out on in life he sets up scenarios so that she can accomplish them.

The girls that work at Clementines are upon first glance from Auden, your typical shallow, pink-clothes-wearing, girly girls. Heidi is characterized perfectly as a tired, struggling, young new mother. The dynamic between Auden’s mother and father portrays a great story line. Auden feels like an outcast and doesn’t fit in with either one of her parents or her lackadaisical brother.


Plot –
For her whole life, Auden has concentrated on her studies. Her mother and father are both scholarly individuals, so academia has always come easily for her. She has concentrated so much on her education that she lacks social skills and she has even missed out on parts of her childhood. With high school being over, she decides to spend some time with her father and his wife and new baby. Auden realizes that her father is still selfish as he was while he was married to Auden’s mother. Her mother seems to have gone off the deep end, having relationships with new graduate students as they roll in every semester. Her brother is off gallivanting around different countries. Finally, Auden meets Eli, a mysterious character that sends her off on a mission, to conquer what she has missed out on as a child. While Eli helps Auden create some belated childhood memories, she helps him heal from the distraught he feels about the accident that took away his friend.

From the novel:

"I thought of my mother, sitting at her kitchen table, with Hollis off working at a bank, and me, for all she knew, riding in a car with boys while wearing a pink bikini. How different we had to be from what she had expected, or planned, all those days when, like Heidi, she rocked us and carried us and cared for us. It was so easy to disown what you couldn't recognize, to keep yourself apart from things that were foreign and unsettling. The only person you can be sure to control, always, is yourself. Which is a lot to be sure of, but at the same time, not enough" (318).

Setting –
The novel is set in a small intimate town of Colby on the boardwalk by the calming ocean in the summertime.

Theme –
People are not always like they appear and Auden finds this to be true in this novel. The girls in Heidi’s shop are not as shallow and dumb as she perceives them to be. One of them will be attending the same university, as she will be in the fall.

The theme of riding a bike is perfect because that is a very important skill that most children go through in life. If you haven’t learned to ride a bike, there’s probably a lot that you’ve missed out on.

Whether or not people can or cannot change seems to be another underlying theme in this novel. Her dad doesn’t seem to be able to change the way he is a selfish man, only thinking about himself and not his family, until finally towards the end of the novel. Her brother, the care-free spirit, oddly settles down for an intelligent and nice woman and he even gets a job at the bank. All while Auden, the not-so-carefree spirited person, spreads her wings and jumps out of her comfort zone. She beings her transformation and matures in a different way, not just academically.

The one thing that irritated me was not anything inside the novel. The outside cover bothered me. Auden never should be portrayed in a frilly pink polka-dot dress. I just didn’t think the cover complemented the actual portrayal of the characters.


Review excerpts
Publisher’s Weekly

Studious good girl Auden, named for the poet, makes a snap decision to spend her summer before college at her father's beach house rather than with her mother, a professor whose bad habits include male grad students. Auden's thoughtful observations make for enjoyable reading-this is solid if not "top shelf" Dessen: another summer of transformation in which the heroine learns that growing up means "propelling yourself forward, into whatever lies ahead, one turn of the wheel at a time."

VOYA

The subtheme of bike riding is a perfect ploy—especially because she never learned as a child—for Auden to grow. The juxtaposition of Auden's carefree older brother falling in love and settling down while Auden spreads her wings shows how people can change given the right circumstances. The dialogue is true to both adult and teenage language. The summer resort town setting is perfect. As with all Dessen's books, her latest is a must-have.

Kirkus

Dessen reworks well-traveled terrain and creates a remarkably original story with realistic teen dialogue, authentic girl friendships and a complex underlying question: Can people really change? Taut, witty first-person narration allows readers to both identify with Auden's insecurities and recognize her unfair, acerbic criticisms of people.


Connections
http://www.sarahdessen.com/along-for-the-ride
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFyPlKoac-M - Sarah Dessen reading an excerpt
http://www.youtube.com/user/sdessen#play/all/uploads-all/1/BwNIsrMBqzY - Dessen answers questions readers had about her book

http://www.fanpop.com/spots/sarah-dessen - fan site