Naughts and Crosses (thoughts)

Have y’all heard of Malorie Blackman, or her YA novel Naughts & Crosses? I hadn’t, until Claire brought her up on twitter. Which is odd to me, since this has a lot in common with current YA best-sellers: it’s set in an alternate, mildly dystopian world, it’s the first in a trilogy, it’s written in the thriller style (lots of action, short chapters, etc.), and it’s got a strong girl as one of the protagonists. Best of all, all three books have already been published, so no fevered waiting! ;) For those of you who have finished with Patrick Ness and Suzanne Collins, Blackman might be the author to fill the void.

I’m going to be honest: I’m glad that I read this, and I think it’s a marvelous book for younger teens (if I were teaching literature, I’d want to do a unit on this), but while I have a lot of admiration for what the author was doing, I didn’t love the book. For the record, I also didn’t love The Knife of Never Letting Go (haven’t read any Collins). It’s just not my style book: I very rarely take to dystopian novels (I know, this makes me a rarity in the blogosphere!) or plot-driven stories. That’s why I doubt I’ll read the sequels, even though I’d highly, highly recommend this to a different style reader. In fact, I’ll probably be getting a copy for my sister for her birthday (she’s getting The Hunger Games for Christmas). :) (Also, a quick note on titles…while it was originally published as Naughts & Crossesin the US, which is the edition my library carried, apparently it’s been re-published as Black & White. I think that was a horrible decision on the part of the publishers but oh well. Also, the British title is Noughts and Crosses, reflecting different spelling usages.) So with that’s disclaimer, let’s talk more about it, shall we?

Blackman has imagined an alternative England that’s similar to apartheid South Africa: a society divided into two castes based on skin colour, in which the minority rules (I don’t think there’s quite the level of legislative racism in place…for instance, I don’t think it’s actually illegal to marry across colour lines in the book). In this case, though, the ruling elite (known as the Crosses) are black while the discriminated-against majority (the Naughts) are white. Blackman handled this wonderfully, and I imagine readers who have never heard of race privilege will have their eyes opened by the everyday, little ramifications it has as well as the bigger ones. There’s one scene, for instance, in which Sephy (the Cross heroine) asks a Naught girl what happened to her forehead, and points out that the brown-coloured bandage is really obvious. The Naught girl responds that it’s impossible to find pink-toned bandages, since all the ‘flesh’ ones are shades of brown. Ding! (This reminds me of one of the current style trends: ‘nude’ clothing…which means, of course, paler shades in the pink, peach, and beige families.) The first hundred or so pages deal with these more psychological effects of racism, and how the life-long friendship between Sephy and Callum (the son of Sephy’s original nanny, who is one of the few Naughts selected to attend Sephy’s super-privileged school due to the government attempting to avoid economic sanctions) becomes strained as Sephy’s eyes are suddenly opened to the racism she lives in and benefits from (although her life is by no means portrayed as perfect). I really connected with this section of the book, especially Callum’s struggles at the school and Sephy’s frustration when her attempts at being nonracist sometimes fail. I wish Blackman had done a bit better job establishing how Sephy and Callum had become so close and maintained their friendship, but I was willing to accept it as a given so that the book would work.

But then, the narrative focus shifts; there is a Naught resistance organisation, part of which uses ‘terrorist’ activity. Callum’s family becomes involved, and since Sephy’s father is a powerful politician, he too becomes involved. There’s a bombing, and a trial, and the whole thing becomes a thriller. At that point, I felt like characterisation had taken a back seat to the plot, and while Blackman is quite skilled at writing a page-turner, I just couldn’t get into it the way I had the earlier stuff. It felt a bit, well, obvious; I think most readers would agree that apartheid South Africa was bad. But not all readers, especially white ones, are aware of the way that racial privilege continues to operate in Western societies today. It this more subtle, but still powerful, influence that I think needs to be discussed more openly by people of all races, so I was a bit frustrated to see the focus shift. Still, as I mentioned earlier, it remains well-written, and I imagine other readers would have the opposite reaction (that the opening was too slow and that it really started getting good when the action picked up!). And the racist aspects of the justice system get explore, which could lead to some good discussions. For American readers in particular (the US is the only Western country that still has capital punishment), the racial angle seems to often get lost in the more philosophical pro/con death penalty arguments. The last few chapters raised a whole other host of issues, one of which annoyed me greatly, but I can’t get into that without giving away the ending.

I wish I had read this book when I was in middle school (it was only published in 2007, so a bit late for me, hehe): it would have opened my eyes to things I only discovered in college. But it’s not just preachy, or a political tirade; Blackman tells a good story, with memorable characters. It didn’t have enough richness for my current tastes…the writing is more a vehicle than the focus on the book and the plot sometimes felt a bit obvious. But it is subtitled a thriller, so I think Blackman achieved her own goals admirably. I just wish this one would become a mega-best seller! I’d love to see more people talking about it.

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