I'm Going Through Puberty, and There Are Aliens Everywhere!

Brett Schneider recently took me on a date to the Chicago Public Library. He wanted to track down the leather bound, gold-tipped manual called "The Game," the book that teaches you how to pick up women in bars and clubs. He wants a girlfriend. And he deserves one. He's a magician, for goodness sake! Anyway, it was during this very same library date that I stumbled across my own gem of a novel. A novel about puberty and aliens. Brett thought the cover looked cool. So I read it. And now I blame Brett for everything. 

Girl in Landscape is about a 13-year-old girl who's mother dies in a post-apocalyptic Brooklyn. So, as is the normal, healthy grieving process of any family who's experienced a loss, the rest of the gang decides to pack up, get in a rocket ship and move to a new planet. 

On this new planet, there are aliens and tea potatoes and ice potatoes and green potatoes and tiny invisible deer that scamper around the rocks and ruined arches. There are lesbians, and strange murders, fires, more aliens, blah blah blah.

While exploring this strange new landscape, the girl starts undergoing some strange physical changes of her own. Her breasts are getting bigger. She kisses a boy. Then she turns into a tiny invisible deer! And then she sees the resident painter doing naughty things with an alien! And then she turns back. And then she brushes knees with the resident creepy man, and she feels naughty about everything!

Whatever. It's kind of out of control. And stupid. The characters kept saying that they needed to be brave like arms. Many many times throughout the novel. Are arms actually brave? I don't think so. Maybe flabby, but not brave. It felt like the entire book was one giant puberty metaphor that I wasn't quite grasping. 

I will say that it was well imagined, and that there were a few passages that were moving and well-written, but on the whole, Brett Schneider really messed up. I think I will never trust him again. Unless he tries to pick me up in a bar or a club. Then, hopefully, he'll know what he's talking about.