XVI by Julia Karr is a dystopian novel set in an especially horrific world, especially for women. Feminism and equal rights have died out long ago in this society that brands girls when they turn 16 to physically and clearly announce to men that she is now of sexual age. This is viewed as an essentially open invitation for the men to take what they want, often without bothering to make sure the female is willing. After all, girls are taught by media, advertisements, even their own mothers that sex is desirable and it's just the thing to do. After all, all the cool girls do it.
But our heroine, Nina, is not interested in becoming just another mindless sex-teen. She's glad she's only 15, so she has the protection of a bare, tattoo-less wrist to ward off the desires and attentions of the men and boys who can and will take advantage of her once her birthday rolls around. Her mother has always been very vocal about her value as a person, as a woman, and has taught her to respect herself. But then again, her mom is dating an absolute slimeball who regularly beats her. Never mind the fact that he's already married. Nina hated Ed, but he's the father of her younger sister Ginnie, and her mom won't leave him, so she does what she can to stay out of him way.
While the premise to the story was intriguing, dark and horrifyingly dystopic, it almost felt like Karr had a few too many great ideas, and decided to incorporate them all. While a complicated plot can be a good thing, and more than one story arc is almost always positive, she had so many different facets to this story, so many subplots, new ideas, conspiracies etc that it overwhelmed the story and slowed things down, when it should have been speeding things up. Don't get me wrong. Each of the ideas were good, and could have been really solid. I actually liked each and everyone of them. But, no matter how great they are, some of them should have been cut, or the novel needed to be quite a bit longer to house each of them.
Because there were so many different plot arcs and great ideas floating throughout the story, a lot of the exposition lacked any read depth, as did some of the supporting characters. Like Ed. He is supposed to be pretty evil and seriously awful. I mean, if nothing else, he beats their mother. Men who beat up on women suck. Period. But other than that, we don't see Ed being evil. We know that he makes Nina's skin crawl and that she despises him, and she regularly calls him evil, but other than a few lurking, awkward moments, he never really acts terribly evil, just kind of creepy. It wasn't until the very end that I really started to feel that Ed was a seriously evil nasty, but that scene was over almost before it started. The build-up was intense, but the conclusion was a let down. This was pretty consistent throughout the whole novel.
Those two annoyances aside, I did actually really enjoy this debut. Karr holds a lot of promise as a writer, and her world building is delicious. To me, one of the main points of dystopian literature is to target and exaggerate a problem in our own society and demonstrate why it is so awful. XVI does this. I think that our society dangerously glamorizes teen sexuality and sexual activity, when psychologically, most teenagers are not ready to make that choice. They feel like they are, or they cave to pressure from their boyfriends, but it often has long-lasting psychological ripples. The media and propaganda are also hugely significant to this story, just as they are in our society now. It is almost impossible now to avoid advertisements and media spotlights, but it is impossible in Nina's society, because they follow you. In the beginning of the story, there is a short moment of dead air, which causes panic, because the people are so unused to silence.
I also really enjoyed the characterization of our main cast. Nina was a wonderful narrator, wanting to be strong and remain true to herself, but just experiencing the first stirrings of teenage love and infatuation when she meets Sal. I do think that Karr played this one a little heavy handed, but the idea was solid. Nina does not want to become another mindless sex-teen, so she fights against her feelings for Sal, who, although being confused, handles things quite well. And Nina becomes comfortable around him, comfortable enough that they can talk about how she feels she isn't ready to make that step, and Sal is perfectly fine with that.
As I mentioned, there were a few issues with the writing that didn't quite work for me. Parts of the story arc were given a very narrow focus, blocking out all else, while others were far too broad to really become invested in what was happening. But, overall, even with all that, I definitely recommend this novel. It is a fairly strong debut novel with a lot of potential. Hopefully Karr's writing will tighten up a bit in time for her next novel, which I believe is a sequel to XVI. And I, for one, am most definitely looking forward to it.
*Disclaimer: Received through Around the World Tours.