Obliterating the gender barrier

Who doesn't love treasure hunts? Or traveling? Or weird artwork? Or crazy aunts? Or chick lit?

Oops. I know a lot of guys who would disagree with that last statement. Well, so what? I was introduced to Maureen Johnson during the very stressful month when I was writing my novel, last November. Her writing was a beacon of truth and wit in what felt like a muck of my bad writing. (Observe that previous sentence, for example.) So I dutifully ignored the pink and blue cover to 13 Little Blue Envelopes, one of Johnson's more popular novels, and dived right in. (Though I did resolve to finish it before my three-day weekend finished, in case people wondered why I was reading such a book.)

Really, though, this novel only looks like chick lit. It has a female protagonist-- okay. But really, I find it very close-minded of male readers to have an aversion to that sort of character. Look past the stereotypes you might think of with chick lit and this is a really astoundingly good story.

Virginia (Ginny) has an aunt who is kind of insane. The aunt takes off to Europe, and unfortunately dies there, but not before she has a chance to send Ginny on a quest. Ginny is given 13 little blue envelopes (we have a title!) that lead her across London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Venice. Along the way she meets some savory characters and some not-so-savory characters, with varying degrees of permanence in the story. Seriously-- even the person you might consider the main male protagonist has an uncertain ending. (Oops. Spoilers.)

The settings are pretty much exactly as they should be. Amsterdam is damp. Paris is intimidating. London is... well, London, with its weirdly awesome British culture and confusing train maps abounding. Since I've been to most of these locations, I can attest to the decent descriptions of them, though sometimes the characters are a bit stereotypical. I have Danish friends, and they don't shout all the time. I'm just saying.

I can overlook them, though, because of the writing and the engaging protagonists. Ginny is introverted and shy and relatively intelligent, so I can relate to her easily. (On that last one -- I mean to say that there is rarely a moment when the audience knows something totally obvious that the protagonist hasn't figured out yet. Unless you look ahead and realize that (spoilers) there are only 12 envelopes.) Keith and Richard are layered characters, too, even when viewed through Ginny's eyes.

Of course, I best like Aunt Peg's character. Going on a huge road trip through Europe is just the sort of thing that I (and a lot of teens I know) would love to just loosen me up and get me ready for the world. Maureen Johnson's best gimmick is that the envelopes' contents get more and more vague as the book goes on, reflecting her developing illness at the same time as they let Ginny make more decisions on her own. There is a very organic separation of Ginny's and Peg's characters by the end of the book; the final auction seen more than anything reflects the difference between what Ginny would want done with her aunts' items and what her aunt would do.

The best feature of the novel, though, is that aforementioned biting sense of humor, that usually comes as a surprisingly true observation of daily life. Like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling before her, Maureen Johnson has an uncannily good sense of how to tell a story. The book has engaging characters, prose, and ideas for people of any age, but particularly for teenagers -- male or female. Maybe electronic readers will help to decrease readers' judgments of a book by their cover. Then romantic or pulp drivel might be foresaken for quality writing like this; and all without a pink and blue cover to scare off the males.