B.F. (Book Friend)
Recommended Reading by Andria Regan
Hello Life
Andrea Koenig
(Soho Press)
Sometimes I think it’d be helpful if books were accompanied by a personal ad, so you’d know if you were the type of person that would get along with the book. If you’re a single white female between the ages of 17 and 25, and are looking for a non-committed, mellow friendship…this may be the book for you.
Andrea Koenig writes Hello Life with the urgency of a Sunday stroll. The storyline is deceptively packed with plot, centered around 16-year-old loner Gwen Pérez, whose single mother has just died in a car accident. The novel follows Gwen as she moves in with a neighbor friend who is also housing 16-year-old Lila Abernathy. Lila is the exact opposite of Gwen—popular—but fell from class stardom during her bout with Leukemia. Gwen soon discovers she’s pregnant by the 39-year-old man of her youthful infatuation, who literally does live in a van, outside a gas station, down by the river.
And, that’s about it.
Hello Life is more about awkward, life-altering and meaningful relationships between otherwise strangers. Gwen and Lila are completely—almost unrealistically—nasty to each other, but they have an unspoken friendship that you can’t help but admire. Koenig creates a type of intrigue by not explaining the relationship and history between her characters. Slowly, her relationships unravel the way a plot usually does so that by the end, the understanding is not what happened, but who happened. The only problem with this is that I’m left feeling a bit unsatisfied, like I just took someone to dinner and listened to their life story, and paid—and then got a kiss on the cheek at the end of the night. Andrea Koenig totally kissed my cheek.
It’s also a little weird that, after having read this book, I feel like I just watched the first season of Dawson’s Creek. The 16-year-olds are a little too grown up and refined and emotionally controlled to be real. The conversations are riddled with randomness, calculated by banter. The WB would be well served having Koenig on their team.
All in all, I must admit I enjoyed Hello Life, but lack the confidence to recommend it to anyone else. It’s like my secret friend, whom I totally get along with, but cover with a paper bag if we ever go out in public together.