Pointe, Claw by Amber J Keyser Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“I am far bigger than the skin that holds me.”- Pointe, Claw, Amber J Keyser

Jessie Vale dances in an elite ballet program that requires perfection to land a spot with the professional company. When she is cast in an animalistic avant garde production, her careful composure cracks wide open. Nothing has felt more dangerous.

Meanwhile, her friend Dawn McCormick's world is full of holes. She wakes in strange places, bruised, battered, and unable to speak. The doctors are out of ideas.

These childhood friends are both running out of time. Jessie has one shot at her ballet dream. Dawn's blackouts are getting worse. At every turn, they crash into the many ways girls are watched, judged, used, and discarded. Should they play it safe or go feral?

For some reason, I've always been draw to ballet. I've never danced ballet beyond a Parks and Rec program, but I find ballet to be so classically beautiful and, well, elegant, everything I love. Degas is one of my favorite painters, because of it. So I picked up Pointe, Claw, because it reminded me of several other YA ballet books that, well, I didn't like per say, but it seemed like a safe pick. 

Right away, I could tell that Keyser takes herself way too seriously. I got this impression from both the summary and the author bio in the back, in which she told us exactly what she was trying to do with the book, which was apparently trying to answer some philosophical question nobody really cares about. That struck me as a slightly narcissistic move, like she was trying to show off how smart she was even though she's writing a YA novel about sick kids and ballerinas, which is more common than you'd think it is (like Maybe One Day and Side Effects May Vary).

And the book does come across as a vanity project. The abstract prose and open, slightly confusing ending just came across as the author majorly feeling herself and her intelligence. I mean, the writing's very pretty, I'll give her that, but also screams of pretension. The narrative style and characters made me think Keyser was trying to be Wintergirls-era Laurie Halse Anderson, but Wintergirls was a more successful novel because Anderson seemed more genuine and like she wasn't writing the book because she wanted to show off her brain. I'm starting to also think Keyser really wants to be Anais Nin, what with the abstract and erotic nature of her prose.

I feel like a big part of what Keyser was also trying to do in this novel is shock people. She wanted to write a controversial novel involving female sexuality, and none of those parts honestly felt genuine either. The constant references to masturbation and sex and strippers felt like a little kid who just learned how to swear, so he drops f-bombs left and right to try and get a rise out of people. Eh. I suppose in that respect it's very avant garde of her. Shocking for the sake of being shocking, amiright? Seriously though, it got to the point where I could have a fucking drinking game for every time masturbation is brought up and it's mentioned in the oddest of places, like Keyser always has to remind us girls do it too. 

Actually, the avant garde ballet that's the center of Jessie's parts is a great metaphor for this book. It wants to be wild and animalistic yet also beautiful, yet when I read about it it comes across as an unintentional parody of the whole movement. It's funny in a way I don't think it should be because of how overwritten it is. And yet, no one wants to say it's bad, because then they will be accused of "not understanding it". So of course, the ballet gets a standing ovation and the book gets 4 and 5 stars from everyone, and I'm over here wondering if I'm broken because the emperor's naked to me. On a lighter note, the avant garde scenes also remind me of the "Choreography" number in White Christmas. I love that movie. 

Anyway, I also didn't really like the characters very much. Jessie had no personality whatsoever and Dawn was just so darned special. She wanted to find out what's wrong with her but rejected every fucking diagnoses all the "condescending" doctors gave her, dismissing them all as being sexist and often withholding information because she didn't want to get an answer she didn't agree with. Personally it sounded like most of her issues were psychosomatic- the mind is a powerful thing- but I'm far from a doctor. I think the thing that pissed me off the most was that she wanted to be a fucking scientist and she didn't even listen to any of her doctors. It seems like she just wanted to be miserable the rest of her life, and frankly it got to the point where I couldn't blame her stepdad for wanting to kick her out because who would want to live with a girl like that, a girl who you can't even say hello to someone without her telling him about all the parasites that could kill you. 

Also, I feel the need to discuss the scene in the book involving marbles. The fact that the girls were nine years old in that scene and doing those very adult things made me think something was seriously wrong. And Keyser described it in loving detail, making it clear she didn't think the two girls were doing anything wrong and that they were "making each other feel good" made me sick. She does realize that that's how a pedophile explains his actions to his victim, right? And then there's the fact that they were nine years old, too old to want to dance around naked. The parents were right in punishing their kids for that. Those kids should not have been doing that or anything else sexual at that age, and it made me wonder what happened in Keyser's past that she would ever think that was okay for a pair of kids to do, regardless of sex. 

So I did not like it. Sure, on the surface the book seems so seductively pretty, but once you look in deeper you realize the water's actually pretty shallow. There is nothing behind those pretty words, even though it seems like it at first.

4 out of 10