Théa pour l'éternité
by Florence Hinckel
(Théa for eternity)
This book was not what I expected. I was skeptical when I read the summary, but being the addicted reader that I am, I borrowed it anyway.
It started off as a really stereotypical giggly-angsty teenage novel. "I love him, but I've never told him, so he doesn't know, so he's kissing another girl, so I'm sad" kind of thing. We've seen and read that a million times. I would've dropped the book if Théa hadn't jumped her friend's girlfriend in front of the whole school. Let me explain.
Théa and Théo are best friends, have been forever. They're neighbors and are very close. Of course, Théa falls head over heels in love with him and wants to be more than friends, but he falls in love with another girl. At the same time, Théa dealing with her parents' divorce and her mother's obsession with being too old. This is all a bit much for the poor girl. What Théa would want more than anything would be to stop time, to sort everything out. She's afraid of growing old.
Back to the attack on Théo's girlfriend. During the fight, Théa yells "I wish I could stop time!". (Which is clearly what you yell when you're attacking your best friend's girlfriend.) She then gets called to the principal's office and instead of getting in trouble, meets a scientist who is as fascinated as she is with time and age. He offers her a most bizarre proposition.
He can help her stay young forever. He can stop her time.
Here is where we enter into the very blurry lines of science fiction written by someone who has just about as much knowledge of biology as I do (which is to say, not very much).
Théa (being a selfish idiot) accepts and through a series of really simple tests (she takes pills) she stops aging. And then it all goes right before hitting rock-bottom as we expected.
Okay, you can pretty much tell how I feel about this book.
First: I liked that the book is not what it seems in the first few lines. You start reading it, expecting a typical teenage girl novel, but then you fall into science fiction.
Second: It would probably have been better if we hadn't fallen into the science fiction. I mean, sure the author used the words "telomere" and "chromosome" and that's impressive and all, but when you write a science fiction story, couldn't you at least do a little more research about your topic than the average ninth grade bio class?
Third: I didn't like the main character, I thought she was really selfish, but at the same time, it really makes you think. How many teenagers, in our modern-day society that prizes youth and beauty, would do the unthinkable to feel better about themselves?
And that's the point I want to get at. This isn't a remarkably well-written book, nor is it very deep or new in its basic idea. It was written to get a thought going. A "what if"?
What if we could buy eternal youth? What then?
There are those who would take it, without question. But there are those who would cringe and refuse. Can you imagine what a wreck our world would be? It's very interesting to think about.
That is the reason why I did like this book. Because it made me step back and think. What would I do? How would our world be if this happened? Is it such an insane idea? I like books that make me think. So, conclusion: not a great book concerning the way the words were put down on paper, but worth a read if you have two days to spare (it's not long at all and a very quick read).
So that's it then. My thoughts on French YA books. I hope at least some of it made sense.
This means I have to find more books to read, because I haven't been doing any reading for the last two weeks.
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