For most of Jill McCorkle's The Cheer Leader, I thought I'd actually give the book an A. And then it ended. Badly. I am basing this evaluation on something I read in Les Edgerton's Hooked. One of his writing theories, which makes sense to me, is that structurally a book starts with what he labeled the "inciting incident." Other actions make up the plot. But underneath all of these actions, he believes there needs to be a "story-worthy" event, which is what the protagonist needs to come to understand about himself/herself. I thought The Cheer Leader was going to illustrate this theory beautifully. Early on there'd been a reference to a scary event that the heroine, Jo Spencer, had experienced while staying at an overnight camp. She'd gone to the latrine and something that she didn't want to remember occurred on her way there. Throughout the book she makes bad romantic choices, she starts drinking, and at college she starts throwing her education away. Quite often there is mention of whatever had happened at that camp. So there I was, happily reading along, expecting the end to be when the scary moment was revealed and it would explain Jo's behavior to her and to me. However, her realization at the end was that she was not seeing the value of her own life as she was living it. What a letdown!
But I still have several good things to say about the whole book:
1) The overall structure is fantastic. In the first part of the book Jo is looking at and commenting on pictures from her childhood. The second part moves into first person as Jo describes her life and disastrous romance during high school. The third section, where she is emotionally breaking down, switches to the third person with Jo as the point-of-view character. In each section Jo's thinking becomes more tortured and moves further away from reality. I was looking forward to an ending where the camp event was revealed, and Jo and I would understand the reasons for her destructive behavior. Alas, it wasn't to be.
2) I fell in love with Jill McCorkle's writing early in the book where she describes her mother feeding her baby brother. "… Mama's spoon suspended on the invisible railroad track, her lips pushed forward in a 'choo' while I sit helplessly unable to control what is about to happen, unable to control the story that goes with this picture. I have felt that way many times. (page 5) I liked the description of the pretend train moving along its pretend tracks. But, on this the second reading of that sentence, I have to admit that maybe I was looking for the wrong thing at the end. Maybe the end is Jo's acceptance that she can't have control. Makes the book's structure more logical, but I still like my idea better.
3) In the first part of the book a picture of Jo with her second grade class leads to a discussion of George Washington. "I have heard another story about him that is shunned in the school room. I have heard that he died of syphilis and pneumonia the former which he got from someone other than Martha and the latter which he got on his way to see the carrier of the former." (page 15) How can anyone not like that second sentence? Granted, I had to read a couple times before I got the full meaning, but after that, I was hooked. It's sad that later on that same page there are references to a time in her life when people would not tell her how bad a shape she was in. Again, I was led to believe that something major must have caused a breakdown, and, again, I felt cheated at the end.
4) Good writing and yet another tease: "That night when going to sleep beside snoring, semi-sexually active Beatrice, I had no idea what was ahead, all of the things that would reduce worries over padded bras and small breasts into trivial matters. … I was so protected by my ignorance about a lot of things. This is why Andy (the youngest sibling) was able to sit for years, happy as a lark with torn and tattered Huzzy (a stuffed snake); he did not even know that she was tattered and torn and I did not know that people can get that way even without knowing it." (page 42) Good writing, but I no longer trust her plotting.
5) I identified with the following: "I felt like I needed to … readedicate my life or something equivalent, though I had never been a believer in rededication. If everything that they told you when you dedicated the first time was true then there would be no cause to redo it." (page 138) Have I mentioned in any previous post my teenage experience with the religious camp? I went with two friends for a fortnight's stay, and while there was saved 20-some times and dedicated my life to Christ probably about close to ten. Sadly, I didn't have Jo Spencer's faith. Nor have I ever had a complete emotional breakdown—except for maybe when I was attending that camp.
6) I like authors who play with language. "Too, I discovered that love can be a very depressing thing. It maketh thou heart sick with grief, it maketh thou feel like s***." (page 138) Cool, huh?
7) Immediately after Jo's graduation program, she says goodbye to Beatrice, a grade-school friend who had turned dweeb and desperate in high school. "… When I walked out of that school for the last time I expected it to fall down and crumple behind me instead, it seemed that something had crumpled up inside of me and I didn't even remember having felt that way until I went home for Thanksgiving,. and found that Beatrice had slit her wrists and bled like a stuck pig." (page 158) Great transitional sentence. How sad that the author is again teasing. Of course Beatrice doesn't die. Having Jo deal with something like that would have taken the writer onto really thin ice. Guess I should've seen in that sentence a clue to the actual ending.
8) Jo is thinking about The Bell Jar, which she finds "terribly amusing. It came as a terrible shock when the professor said that Esther Greenwood was crazy… nobody wants to believe that someone who is not crazy would try to kill themselves, that they would have a good reason. Who knows what crazy is anyway? The reading is very good and that is why she doesn't mind saving kicks for a big event when one comes along." (page 169) Sigh. If only Ms. McCorkle's book had had a big event.
Bottom line: I read The Cheer Leader because I had been impressed by one of Jill McCorkle's stories in a Best American Short Stories collection, Right now I have a collection of her short stories on the unread shelf, and I'll probably try one more of her novels. Most likely that will be the end of my McCorkle-reading phase—unless that second novel is good all the way through. Regarding The Cheer Leader specifically, I strongly recommend the first three fourths.
