REVIEW: Orange by Benjamin

[Adriana]

 

 

Orange by Benjamin

This graphic novel takes place in China and is about a teenage girl named Orange who feels like her life is filled with nothing but problems. She thinks all her friends are shallow, her boyfriends are all after one thing, and she does not get along with her parents. She feels that she has nothing to live for, and as a result she decides to try to kill herself by jumping off the roof of her apartment building. However, just as she is about to jump she sees an older man, Dashu on the roof and decides not to go through with it as he walks away. She sees Dashu again on the bus and follows him to his apartment, leaving him her suicide note as she feels he saved her life. It also seems as though she has fallen in love with Dashu because from then on in the story she tries hard to gain his attention. For the rest of the story we also follow Orange around and see each of the aforementioned problems play out. We also learn that she is quite a rebellious teenager as we see her smoking, sneaking out of the house,staying out all night, and ditching class. Towards the end of the story, she finally gets Dashu to pay attention to her and he explains that all her reasons for wanting to kill herself are "easily solvable" and that she has just begun to live. *Spoiler Alert* He then says that he will die in her place and jumps off of the roof, killing himself as Orange watches in disbelief, feeling like she is watching a slow motion scene in a movie. Orange then wonders if he ever loved her back and seems to suddenly have an epiphany that life is beautiful and wonders why "grownups have to torture themselves so much over everything".


This book fits a lot of the YA Lit Criteria. To begin with, the story is written from Orange's perspective almost the entire time, with only a few scenes from the perspective of Dashu. Orange's parents were very much removed from the story as we only see them in only one scene of the book. The story is very fast paced as it goes over conflict and resolution very quickly. This story also has a lot of different subjects especially related to teens as we see issues dealing with love, sex, relationships, rebellion, suicide, friends, and identity. This story however, did not include a very wide range of characters from different ethnic and cultural groups as they were all Chinese and except for Orange's parents, Dashu, and an older boyfriend of Orange, were all of high school age and seemed into the same thing. This story also lacked in optimism as it was depressing the entire time with only a couple of optimistic things said at the end. This novel also dealt with a lot of negative emotions important to young adults as we saw a lot of anger, depression, frustration, and fear. Possibly the only positive emotion in the story seems to be the love Orange has for Dashu. As far as developmental tasks go I feel as though Orange did not really seem to change a lot by the end of the story or accomplish anything other then the sudden realization that life is beautiful and she should not want to kill herself.


http://manga.about.com/od/mangaartistinterviews/a/Benjamin.htm
I like this link because it explains the new movement of Asian comics, Manhua. It also talks about the author and contains an interview with him.


Personally, I did not like this book. The main reason for this is that the ending was terrible. It seemed as though the author wanted to throw in a resolution in at the last minute and that is exactly what he did. In his interview he said he wanted to write this story so that teens dealing with issues like Orange could connect with it. While I feel that young adults would be able to, the ending is so terribly written it seems to ruin the whole book. I would not recommend this book either for a classroom or for reading on one's own as it is poorly written,a bit confusing, and I did not really get anything from reading the book.

[Kelly Farrow]

I totally agree!! I thought I'd like this one but just did NOT! It didn't work for me on really any level.

[Adriana]

Thank you for replying! I wasn't sure if I was the only one that felt this way :)