Children of punk

>> A straight girl gets stuck in the L.A.
hardcore scene in former Montrealer
Cecil Castellucci’s new teen novel Beige

by Juliet Waters

Last summer, when I talked to ex-Montrealer, musician and novelist, Cecil Castellucci, we had a chat about contemporary young adult fiction. Naomi Wolf had just written an op-ed piece in The New York Times slamming the materialism of the best-selling Gossip Girl books. Castellucci, however, turned out to be a vigilant defender of a kid’s right to read whatever they want—whether it be teenage or adult trash.

Since then, there’ve been some interesting developments. Gossip Girl is now a TV series developed by the creators of The O.C., arguably one of the better shows in the teen soap genre (until around the 14th time Marissa and Ryan broke up. Yes, even book critics overindulge in plot lines about rich, beautiful kids). And Castellucci made her own appearance in The New York Times, in a feature on Minx, a series of graphic novels published by DC Comics and promoted by the same marketing firm that turned Gossip Girl into a bestseller. Castellucci is the author of the first of these graphic novels, The Plain Janes, about a group of “art terrorists” advocating for the preservation of neighbourhood art.

She’s also just published a third novel, Beige, which is about as close to the terrain of Gossip Girl as Montreal is to L.A., where Castellucci currently lives. If there are any similarities between Plain and Beige, it’s that both are rooted in the teen genre. Critics are unlikely to put Castellucci in the same league as classic kid-lit authors like Paula Fox or J.K. Rowling (then again I wouldn’t even put Rowling in with Fox. And I still miss The O.C.). These are books meant to be easily digested by teens and unlikely to appeal to adult readers. Still, Beige is a light, fun read about a topic you wouldn’t expect to be light and fun—negotiating life with parents who have a past as hardcore punk junkies.

Not long ago, the typical plot in the teen genre might have been the story of an angry goth girl who finds that the “normals” she’s been stuck with aren’t so bad after all. In Beige, a chronically straight Montreal teen, Katy, is forced to spend the summer entrenched in the L.A. punk scene until she learns a few things about authenticity, independence and creativity.

There’s a good explanation for Katy’s repression. At 15 she’s not much younger than her mother was when she became a groupie for Suck, an iconic L.A. punk band that never quite reached anything resembling financial success. Katy’s mother cleaned up and moved on. Her father, however, Suck’s drummer, Beau Ratner (a.k.a The Rat,) tried, but failed, getting himself banned from Canada and permanently exiled from his daughter’s life.

Now Katy’s mother is completing her archaeology thesis in Peru and has shipped Katy off to live with her father, finally sober and living in L.A. Katy arrives seething with polite resentment and the electric guitar she has never touched, a gift from the father who knows nothing about her. Katy soon gets forced into an unwelcome friendship with Lake, the daughter of Suck’s lead singer. It turns out, however, that the ageing punks and their angry but ambitious spawn have more to teach Katy (now Beige) about life than she realizes. And despite her resistance to music and anything having to do with it, it turns out she’s got innate talent.

Castellucci has clearly drawn from her own experience in the music scene. The first people she thanks in the acknowledgments are her close friends and former bandmates from Bite, who eventually kicked her out (according to both local gossip and Castellucci’s Wikipedia entry.) Anyone who kept up with the gossip back then will smile at the scene where Lake gets booted out of her own band for being a “band Nazi.” Just as they will smile at Castellucci’s own way of staying in touch and moving on.

Beige by Cecil Castellucci,
Candlewick Press, hc, 320PP, $21.00