Becoming Bindy Mackenzie / Jaclyn Moriarty

  

When I read YA fiction, and like it, I find that I am either transported back to fifteen, utterly absorbed as my younger self, or I read it from a distance, aware of how much more I would have enjoyed it without all those pesky years getting in the way. This is the third book by Jaclyn Moriarty to have achieved that first, far preferable, reaction.

Bindy Mackenzie seems an unlikely hero at first. She’s the school nerd who scores top grades in everything, holds down several jobs, creates business opportunities (designed to con her schoolmates out of their pocket-money – endeavours that earn her the attention of her preoccupied father), grasses people up, and categorically places herself way above the phenomenon known as The Teenager. Part of her charm is that she is completely unaware of how she is perceived. But in a new class, called FAD (Friendship and Development), consisting of eight students and a new, kooky teacher, Bindy discovers how disliked she is when the group have to write down, anonymously, what they think of her.

Outraged, Bindy embarks on a campaign to hold up a mirror to her classmates and reveal the venom that must exist inside them if they can be so cruel to her. Of course, ‘genius’ Bindy has missed the point, but by the time she realises that it’s she who has been unfair to them – aloof, judgemental, patronising, offensive – she’s more disliked than ever and now suffering from some unexplained fatigue and sickness.

Moreover, she’s upset about a secret she’s keeping about her brother – I originally thought this was the ‘mystery’ hinted at in the blurb, but it’s perhaps the only part of the story about which I expected more than I got. And she’s increasingly concerned, though she would never admit it, about being ‘wanted’ – her parents have left her with her aunt and uncle while they go off property developing in the city, she loses her job(s), and the love interest of the story is elusive to say the least.

Bindy is on a mission to atone for her behaviour, and as a result of that and the illness her schoolwork slides and people start asking questions. But by now Bindy has some digging of her own to do, concerning a conversation she happened to transcribe in the school grounds (on the laptop that goes with her everywhere – even to her first gig). By finally shedding her haughty exterior she manages to win the friendship and support of her FAD group just in time for them to figure out that someone is trying to hurt her – or even kill her.

What starts as a story about finding yourself, and finding your place in the world, suddenly turns into a gripping mystery – I spent the last quarter of the book literally on the edge of my seat as Jaclyn Moriarty managed to reveal all the tiny clues she’d left throughout the book and weave them into a brilliant finale. If I were being mean I’d say that it’s a tiny bit far-fetched, but above all it is page-turning fun, and there is so much more to this book. I have to admit that there were times I panicked about the slightly wild but thoroughly readable mess the author was creating – “How are you going to pull it all together, Jaclyn?” I was thinking. “Is all of this really relevant, Jaclyn?” (I don’t actually know her, I’m just a bit of a desperate fan). But it all ties up ingeniously, and surprisingly – Jaclyn Moriarty does not just do ‘funny’, and ‘warm’ and ‘insightful’, she also does ‘clever’.

Bindy is arrogant and insensitive but she has a such a good heart, it’s more that she has no idea how to use it, and her total lack of awareness made me want to drag her into a corner and whisper to her the ways of the world. Jaclyn Moriarty masterfully builds her up as a grossly misunderstood girl who is plagued by a woeful misunderstanding of life around her. As the overachiever is unhinged, our affection for her grows. I was relieved to see Bindy changing, but not out of all recognition – not by becoming ‘just like everyone else’, which would have been an almighty cop-out. It is very heart-warming (ok, I’ll admit it, I shed a tiny tear), not to mention gorgeously funny: feel-good, read-it-twice kind of stuff.

The novel is written, as usual for this author, in a series of letters, memos, reports and Bindy’s diary (or ‘philosophical musings’ as she calls them). Fans of her first two books, Feeling Sorry For Celia and Finding Cassie Crazy, will enjoy meeting some of the characters from those books in minor roles, but the story works on its own, too.

What I love most about her writing is that it shows me how proud she is to be writing for her target audience. (I can’t bear it when authors claim they’re writing for teenagers when it’s perfectly obvious they’d rather impress an adult reader.) She is never preachy or patronising; she gets under the skin of such varied characters and helps us to identify with them all. Jaclyn Moriarty knows young teenagers, and here she deftly juggles several elements while maintaining an immensely readable, light and humorous tone.

Macmillan Children’s Books, 2006, 384 pp., ISBN: 0330438840