The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog on The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, written by E. Lockhart. I read it for the Mayor's Reading Challenge. It's a book about the title character, Frankie Landau-Banks, as she takes revenge on a boys club for it not accepting her as a member. It's set in a private high school with a fairly normal, cliche group of children. The book follows the misadventures of Frankie as she tries to make it through her relationship problems, her internalized anger at people, and being fairly psychopathic and malevolent. To be honest, I did not enjoy this book. It wasn't that it was bad, I just felt that the characters were forced and a bit contrived, and the plot was a bit weird and distant, but that didn't seem like the intention of the author. It's said to be a pro feminist book, but this is done in horrible lighting which just shows one person ripping at a group, instead of either having a group of people work together to change things. It just seems violent, and without any moral or positive consequence.

Frankie doesn't change her personality much through the book. She stays the same, and it's not a good baseline to be at. She's distant, self centered, willing to cut anyone down in order to get an edge, and is pretty meh at being one to fall into a heroic archetype. She ends up destroying relationships of others and pushing out several of her friends and her boyfriend through how she deals with the fact that she wasn't allowed into the 'boys-club'. And it isn't out of equality. She believes that she's better than everyone else, and her attacks on the club only result in their friendships being damaged and the club hating her when they find out. The admittance of the club doesn't change, and all that happens is that she just proves that she was able to outsmart people. It's not a real goal for someone to root for.

I can't tell what the intention of the book is. It's framed as a pro-feminist book, but it acts less around resolving the gender differences (Never once does Frankie or really any other female actually interact and help each other out in a meaningful way, and there's plenty of stereotypical back-biting between them), and more just proving that one singular person was able to outsmart a small group of close friends by pretending to be one of their close friends. It's a mediocre book, one that I would not recommend reading myself.

Adventure Van, signing out.