Jillian Clemmons

At the Manhattan School for Art and Music, where everyone is “different” and everyone is “special,” Gretchen Yee feels ordinary. She’s the kind of girl who sits alone at lunch, drawing pictures of Spider-Man, so she won’t have to talk to anyone; who has a crush on Titus but won’t do anything about it; who has no one to hang out with when her best (and only real) friend Katya is busy.

One day, Gretchen wishes that she could be a fly on the wall in the boys’ locker room–just to learn more about guys. What are they really like? What do they really talk about? Are they really cretins most of the time? Fly on the Wall is the story of how that wish comes true.

I just finished Fly On the Wall and gave it five stars on www.Goodreads.com. This is a fun, edgy, fast-read. A teen version of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. I love E. Lockhart’s voice. She describes sub-cultures within high schools so well. I’ve also read Lockhart’s book Dramarama (recommended by Will Write for Shoes) from this author. Dramarama was similarly unique and witty. I felt like I was in drama camp reading it.

One of my favorite scenes from Fly on the Wall was the conversation where the character Titus has it out with his homophobic friend. It was so realistic and relevant.

There were several instances of gay male behavior highlighted in this book. For example, “Two guys come in early and steal a kiss inside a toilet stall, still wearing all their clothes. Then they had to different sides of the locker room and change for gym like nothing happened. Like they’re straight.”

I think this book would be a titillating read for a high-schooler, especially a LGBT teen. Also, the descriptions of the popular boy hierarchies was funny and true.

One quote passage I found interesting was a piece of dialogue between Gretchen and her art teacher. The art teacher says, “You’ve captured the eccentricities of your subject without descending into caricature. This woman is absolutely specific, and even a little comical, but she is drawn with respect and delicacy.”

I wonder if this is feedback Lockhart’s received about her work. It sounds like a description of her writing.

Librarian Jennifer Wardrip wrote a great review of Fly On the Wall for TeensReadToo.com. I’ve copied and pasted it below.

Sixteen-year old Gretchen Yee is a pretty typical teenager. Sort of. She attends the Manhattan High School for the Arts, otherwise known as Ma-Ha. There, she gets to take not only the normal, everyday classes of Literature and PE, but also Drawing and Sculpture. Gretchen is a great artist, and she’s especially partial to the comic-book style of drawing. Not to mention that her personal hero is Spiderman. She has a best friend name Katya, who now seems to spend all her time either hanging out with the poseurs behind the school, smoking cigarettes, or babysitting her three younger sisters.

When it comes to the opposite sex, though, Gretchen has no idea what she’s doing. Actually, she doesn’t even know what they’re doing half the time. Her parents are in the throes of a divorce, she has no close male friends, and her kind-of ex-boyfriend, Shane, now spends most of his time acting like an idiot. How can she ever know what goes on inside a guy’s head when they act like such total morons most of the time?

After casually mentioning one day after school that she wished she could be a fly on the wall in the boy’s locker room, something really, really strange happens. Gretchen wakes up the next morning as, you guessed it, a fly on the wall of the boy’s locker room. Never mind the fact that she can’t wrap her mind (her own mind, thank goodness, not a fly mind) around what’s happened, now she spends several hours every day seeing high-school guys get naked! In front of her! Without clothes! And she can’t close her eyes because her fly-body has no eyelids!

Needless to say, the things Gretchen sees and hears inside the boy’s locker room at Ma-Ha are (ha!ha!) eye-opening, to say the least. Who knew that Titus, the object of her undying affections, gets tired of hearing his friends talk bad about homosexuals? Or that Malachy, a guy she’d never paid much attention to before, has secretly been dating her best friend? Or that one of the Art Poseurs is [..] Or that she’d spent so much time wondering if she was invisible, all the time being crushed on by a guy she’d never seen before?

Strangely enough, after I finished this book I picked up Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn by Sarah Miller. Another book that is told by a female narrator, stuck inside a teenage boy’s head. Perhaps I’m trying to identify with my inner Zac Efron. Stay tuned for that review!

Website:

Check out E. Lockhart’s fun Web site: http://www.theboyfriendlist.com and her blog! http://www.theboyfriendlist.com/e_lockhart_blog/

Question:

Has anyone else read this book? What did you think?