issue sixty-eight
The Other’s Gold and the ephemeral glimpse of collegiate comradery: book review
The thing they don’t tell you about working full time is that you actually forget how to read! Not really, just kidding, but recently I’ve found myself in a bit of a reading slump. Besides keeping up with news, entertainment, profiles and the like, I find myself reaching for a movie or new TV show instead of a book when in need of entertainment or a break. After commuting home in the suffocating 97 degree DC smog and immediately showering off the humidity, I usually have no further aspirations beyond whipping up a 5-minute dinner and collapsing into my covers for the rest of the night.
I’ve been surprised by how draining my routine has proven to be, or maybe surprised myself with my lack of energy? When in go-mode on campus during the school year I’m used to a snack-break-and-rally mentality, in which I know that if I don’t get my ass up and get things done, they won’t get done. Maybe it’s something about the immersion in a university environment that changes the way we act, or at least affects that inner place that spurs that motivation to act. Which — not so gracefully — brings me to the subject of today’s review: 2019 sort-of campus novel The Other’s Gold by Elizabeth Ames.
I found this book through a recommendation and loaned it as an ebook through my local library this week, searching for something to feed the craving I had for an interesting, character driven, female-centric narrative. I was drawn in by the premise and synopsis — four girls meet each other as suitemates in their first year of college at an elite New England institution at the start of the millenium, and find their lives intertwined well into adulthood. Along the way, Ji Sun, Margaret, Alice and Lainey discover the most brilliant and most seedy elements of each other, journeying into marriage and motherhood while keeping in stride with one another. Or at least trying to.
Ji Sun is uber-wealthy by somewhat unexplainable means, effortlessly chic and Korean American. Margaret is a barefoot beauty, a little ditsy but passionate in all the ways that matter. Alice is tightly-wound, extremely dedicated, and on a solid path to medical school. Lainey is a little insecure, decently smart and channels herself into new identities and causes to make sense of her purpose in the world. The book is centered around four vignettes of a “mistake” each girl commits, and in between paints a picture of the intimacy and bitterness that grows within the group. From fickle fights to desperate devotion, all four girls become women in the process and context of knowing one another - and it all began in a dorm.
Here is where my first gripe with the story begins: with the exception of a snappy prologue, we as readers are somewhat thrust into this dynamic of four fast friends as soon as they are. From move-in day to their first party, first dining hall dinners, first boyfriends and many more, we are explicitly told how these girls are so close and inseparable and everyone notices it because they’re just so close. Respectfully, we hardly have enough time to remember who has what color hair before we watch them pledge devotion to each other. Typically I wouldn’t mind a bit of an abrupt beginning that forces readers to get their bearings at the same pace as the story, but this novel rather clumsily establishes its core dynamic: this four-fold friendship.
I found that after finishing this book and doing some digging into press interviews with the author, I found an explanation for this flaw — and several others I noticed. Ames explained that she wrote this book backwards; Part 4 was intended to be a standalone short story, and she later decided that her characters demanded more time and space. She then retroactively wrote the novel from adulthood to adolescence, resulting in the final copy we have in front of us today.
This is an interesting approach, and not inherently wrong in any way, but leads to an odd flattening of the main characters in the first portions of the book. Rather than seeing raw and real teenagers grow into maturing adults, readers observe caricature-like personalities butt up against one another, or go for the guy, or fail a class, etc until they figure themselves out and get “real jobs”. As someone who believes that young women are the most interesting people in the world, this path disappointed me as I watched each protagonist grow a spine, set of ideals and innate motivation once — and only once — she left her college campus.
Furthermore, not all protagonists are created equal. Ji Sun — notably the only non white main character and one of very few overall — has so little personality that her POVs and dialogue segments struggle to keep up with the rest. All we know is that she’s filthy rich, cold and icy (a defining trait that I really don’t like as it edges into stereotype territory) and wants her friend’s boyfriends. This is suspect, and raised several red flags for me as I watched the way Ames tackled several social inequalities and identity based struggles.
One of the defining chapters in the first quarter of the book is one in which Ji Sun and Margaret are in a study group with an overtly racist peer who makes fun of Ji Sun’s name and belittles her. Margaret makes a dramatic posturing of standing up for Ji Sun, so much so that she accidentally barefoot-stomps her way onto a piece of glass. Aforementioned racist peer white-knights by physically carrying her to the infirmary, and by two pages later, he’s her boyfriend.
This kind of flip-flopping floozy is certainly realistic (don’t I know it), and very much in line with Margaret’s character, but the kind of character that only does a disservice to the so-called values she projects. Ji Sun basically does nothing about this, and the sleaziness of the boyfriend becomes a begrudged inside joke between the roommates.
Moments later, Lainey intersects with one of the boyfriend’s football team friends Lesley — possibly one of the only Black people she’s ever met, it seems. The first time they smoke together, she assumes he’s a scholarship student; when she starts dating him she dons a costume of Blackness, wearing jerseys and cocoa butter and slang that she picks up off of him. Lesley never objects, just plays along until he’s kindly shoved aside so Lainey can galavant with British MILFs in France on study abroad.
Lainey’s self-interested activism is maybe her defining trait; certainly her sad excuse for a career and 99% of her stubbornness. She is never shown committing an act of “justice” that didn’t come out of stubbornness, a desire for attention, sense of false vindication or ornery foot-stomping immaturity. This would be grounds for an interesting exploration of self-interest in social justice spaces, but instead morphs Lainey into an unlikeable talking head or source of opposition in arguments with her friends. Reproductive rights and believing victims of sexual assault are no longer real ideals in the text, but daggers coming out of Lainey’s mouth as she hypocritically tears into an innocent bystander.
These portrayals of the real social context that creates the bubble these girls live in are made of clumsy blunders or emotional arguments, but never legitimized or yielding real consequences of the four of them. By the time we leave these characters, we still don’t have a sense of where they stand in the world — only in each other’s eyes. In a smarter book, or even a show like Girls, this might be the point, but here it just leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.
Moving on: the style of this book. It’s very MFA, which isn’t a bad thing — just something to know before you get into it. Each chapter is flowery and descriptive, often a major contributor to how each character views their environment and their peers. This fits the idealized setting and emotional core of the story, and I enjoyed it as a form of immersion into the world of Quincy-Hawthorn University.
The structure of the book that swirls around the big four “mistakes” is a very effective attention-grabber; when you see a title page that reads “The Bite”, you kind of have to stick around to see what the hell that means. However, much like the characterization of people of color in this universe, each mistake is staggering in how unequally it is yoked.
Without spoilers, Ji Sun and Alice’s mistakes are fundamentally not as “bad” as Margaret and Lainey’s. This may have to do with the age each girl was when she committed them (12 and 19 respectively vs 27 and 30-ish) and also the circumstances (provocation and lying for the sake of a greater good) but when it all comes down to it, they are just not the same. The ramifications and harm rippling off of Margaret and Lainey’s choices are fundamentally heavier, darker and more concerning. Even in this imbalance, each mistake is weighted as the same in the broader story of these four women.
Additionally, each mistake is presented and committed in a different manner. With Ji Sun, you get months of buildup and intense reflection that leads her to act as she does, and with Alice, you get a tumbling confession in a moment of recollection. Margaret and Lainey just do shockingly horrendous things as grown adults with few consequences, and in the smarting aftermath, we learn more about why they did what they did. This imbalance keys us in once more to the fact that the book was written backwards, but still makes for sloppy motivation.
Despite these inherent flaws, the strongest part of this novel is that which depicts the collegiate experience. The first half of this book (depicting the first two years of undergrad) is vivid, and full of the hallmarks of what a massive experience college is: new beginnings, responsibility, sexuality, milestones, maturity and milestones. The enormity of a world of wealth and access played out in the microcosms of basement parties, libraries enclaves and grassy malls is a perennial American story, and provides a backdrop to explore the intricacies of high stakes and choices of consequence. Who better to do so than four girls with secrets, insecurities and something to prove to one another?
All in all, I’d give this novel just north of 3 out of 5 stars. The story will pull you in, and leave you reeling after every turn, but rings hollow by failing to deliver equal ground for its characters to stand on. I still recommend — read it, and tell me what you think!
such a smart review leah!!