Review Detail

This review is going to be difficult to write, in much the same way that The Mockingbirds was a difficult book to read and, I’m sure, to write. In young adult fiction, not enough attention is given to rape; what rape is, how it affects the victim, how it is handled by authorities. Daisy Whitney’s treatment and approach to such a stick subject thrilled me massively. This author did virtually everything right in this book. I was impressed.

A lot of the time, date-rape can fall into a sort of gray area, as it isn’t necessarily “violent” and date rapists don’t always fit into the “alleyway thug” persona; but it’s still wrong. So when Alex Patrick is date-raped at the beginning of her junior year, she runs into a problem. In a “he said, she said” situation, should she go to the police? The school administration? Maybe she should just keep quiet and try to move on with her life.

Or, there’s the Mockingbirds, an organization that makes your typical high school student council look just plain bad. The Mockingbirds are one-part secret society, one-part student government, and one-part rebellion. It’s in interesting mix of ideas and indentities, and it’s definitely unique. Daisy Whitney gets full points for creativity here.

The author should also get recognition for her main character: Alex. With Alex, things walked right on the fine line between proactive character and damsel in distress. It’s not something that often works. Alex was strong, she made her own choices and stuck with them; but she was also a rape victim, and in some cases, she needed some serious support. Whitney, I think, did an excellent job with Alex’s character.

I also found the “trial” itself to be fascinating. Basically, the students held a little courtroom scene in the laundromat, complete with “counsel is badgering the witness” jargon and everything. Now, maybe it’s a bit difficult to imagine 15-year-old kids completely mastering the ins and outs of the American legal system, but that scene was certainly interesting.

Where The Mockingbirds and I disagreed was, well, about the Mockingbirds and how they functioned. In the back of the book, Whitney explains that, in college, she was the victim of date-rape. At the time, her university had no method of dealing with date-rape, so the admin attempted to hush things up. That wasn’t good enough for Whitney, so she and other date-rape victims launched an awareness campaign that, eventually, reaped results.

But in The Mockingbirds, Alex and the student body handle things on their own, rather than try to get adult help. Now, I very strongly believe that rapists and sex offenders belong in jail; so when Alex’s rapists was “punished” by stepping down from the water polo team, I was a bit miffed. I think he got off easy, which wouldn’t have happened if the students hadn’t decided to take the law into their own hands.

I mean, if Daisy Whitney worked hard to get recognition for her own case of date-rape from school admin and law enforcement, why, in her book, did the same not happen? I mean, yes, in a sense, the Mockingbirds took care of Alex’s rapist and he was “tried” for his crimes and “punished”, but it was all very anticlimactic and, as I said, not at all what the rapist truly deserved.

Because, “boo hoo, I stepped down from the water polo team” wasn’t enough for my intolerant little soul.