Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson

I have started to read the book ”Prom”. It’s about a girl named Ashley. Ashley is eighteen years old and is in senior year in high school. She has a flaky boyfriend that wants them to move in together and a crazy family. The senior prom is closing up, and Ashley’s best friend Nat is in the prom committee. For Nat the prom is the most important thing in the world, but Ashley couldn’t care less. One day, during a math lesson, their math teacher gets arrested. It turns out that the teacher has stolen all of the prom money. Without money, no prom. For Nat and everyone that have been longing to the prom, buying dresses and hiring limos, this was a catastrophe. Do they have to cancel the prom, or could they in some way save the evening?

Ashley lives in Philadelphia. She and herfamily live in a decent neighborhood. It is describe like a normal, quite street, with small but nice houses. They aren’t row houses, each house has its own yard. Ashley doesn’t like her house. She says that at first sight it’s pretty nice, but if you look closer, you will get the same feeling as if you saw a nasty wart on somebody’s hand. I get the feeling that the author is trying to tell that Ashley’s family’s house is kind of like the family. At first sight, it’s a pretty normal family, but when you get closer and start to know the family members, you realize that they are far away from normal. A dad that starts project that he never finishes. A mum that keeps getting pregnant and walks around with hickeys on her neck, and three little brothers that are so different that you almost thinks they’re from different families.

Ashley’s school is described as a pretty okay school. When she started there it was really bad. Kids got stabbed, teacher got raped and the janitors smoked drugs during their work. Then they got a new principal that cleaned and fixed the whole school. With new security guards people stopped bringing knives, the school got a food court and the new janitors did their job without getting high. The author never describes how the school building looks, and neither the environment around it. It’s a little bit sad because you can’t live in to the story as well.

Av: Heffaklumpen