After hearing about Beth Anne Bauman’s Jersey Angel described as unusually sexy, maybe even TOO salacious for YA? I’m interested. I like to read controversial books, and even though the controversy surrounding the relative “sexiness” seems to have been limited to a few weeks of pre-pub buzz that has long since fizzled out, a quick look at the online reviews for this title on Goodreads or online reveals some VERY upset readers. But they aren’t upset in the way I expected, which isn’t suprising, since I did not find Jersey Angel to be the book I expected either.
Angel is sixteen, a year-round beach dweller. Her mother makes a living renting her two beach houses to tourists, Angel works at her dad’s gas station for pocket change, but that’s not the best part of Angel’s life. Angel lives for the summer, for kicking back with her best friend Inggy, for late night parties on the sand and boat rides and boys. Of course, boys. This is a slice-of-Angel’s-life, and her life, like the plot, is unfocused. Her relationships – friendships or family, sexual or not – drive the story. Angel is relaxed – no worries about grades, college, life choices, the other things that female YA protagonists are usually stressing over – and tension emerges when the reader starts to wonder if her laid-back attitude might end up coming back around to punish her.
The sex? It is there, but in small doses and with most of the action happening off stage; with all the buzz, I expected a lot more to blush about. The sex that makes it to the page is detailed in a romantic manner, full of moody details of the sand, the water, etc, but Bauman’s descriptions are not starry-eyed. I think in YA, the reader expects sex to be the result of a lot of build up between two particular characters, maybe a first-time incident for one or both parties, and then – Hollywood style – the romance of their relationship and the setting and their LOVE just sweeps away any need for details. This is not the case for Angel. The descriptions here speak of a character who knows what she is doing with her sexuality, knows what she wants with a boy, and likes sex for those reasons, not because it has some larger significance, plot or otherwise. I think this makes readers uncomfortable. Most of the bad reviews written about this novel seem to attend to this discomfort, but strangely, without naming it directly. Instead, reviewers call Angel “superficial,” and “boring,” and most are deeply uncomfortable not with Angel’s sexuality, but that she makes a bad choice in partners and doesn’t get punished. But I don’t think these reviewers just want Angel to be punished for an indiscretion – they want Angel to be punished for not adhering to the code of acceptable YA sexuality. The reactions here feel like an updated version of the 1970s panic over Judy Blume’s Forever…
So unsettling, yes. A book that every reader would feel comfortable handing off to their 12-year-old child? Perhaps not. But I do think Angel’s perspective is unique, the writing evocative, and the mood beachy and sultry and all other things I like about summer.
And contrary to some angry reviewers, I don’t think this book bears much resemblance to that other piece of New Jersey-themed Televised Fiction. However, since I have honestly (Honestly) never seen an episode in my life, I am really just speculating. I think there was a little laundry, but no gym and no tanning, and no mention of hair gel, bleeped out swear words, or anything else that the media has led me to associate with the Jersey Shore.
