Roiphe may be a little off-base with her claim that "until recently, the young-adult fiction section at your local bookstore was a sea of nubile midriffs set against pink and turquoise backgrounds" — when I was in middle school in the 90s, there was definitely a series of YA books about terminally ill kids. And in Francesca Lia Block's now-embattled 1997 novel Baby Be-Bop, the main character is beaten by a gang of gay-bashers. But Roiphe is correct that many recent bestsellers deal with sorrow, suffering, and terror: there's Wintergirls, about a girl's gruesome battle with anorexia and cutting; If I Stay, in which a girl must decide whether to live or die after a car crash kills her parents; and Hunger Games, about a reality-show-cum-battle-royal in which only one teen will survive. Are these books shock lit, designed to sell copies through misery and gore? On the contrary, says Roiphe, their popularity just speaks to how difficult it is to be an adolescent. She writes,

[T]he extreme and unsettling situations chronicled in these books are, for many teenagers, accurate and realistic depictions of their inner lives. Your whole family may not have died in a car wreck, but it sometimes feels like they have. Everyone in the school cafeteria may not be plotting to kill you with bows and arrows, or knives, or mutant killer insects, but it feels like they are. In the theater of adolescence, with all the sturm and drang of separating from parents, with the total stress of just having to be yourself in the hallway at school, perhaps these books feel, at times, like a true and reasonable representation of daily life.

I once got to a talk by a linguist with who was developing a program to teach reading in inner-city schools. He said a big problem with the stories kids were assigned was that they were too happy — they didn't reflect any of the difficulties the kids actually faced in their lives. The idea that kids and teenagers always need to be protected or distracted from the hard things in life — or that, as Baby Be-Bop's detractors seem to think, keeping books out of kids' hands will keep them in the dark about sexuality, prejudice, and violence — is a false one. Children understand, from a pretty young age, that life can suck, and literature that acknowledges and comments on this is going to speak to them a lot more clearly than fluff about birthday parties and shopping.

Of today's popular YA books, Roiphe writes, "these investigations of personal disaster are much less depressing than the Gossip Girl knockoffs which initially seem frolicky and fun but are actually creepy and morally bereft and leave you feeling utterly hopeless." It sound harsh — and there's nothing wrong with a little escapism from time to time — but characters dealing with difficult circumstances are actually a lot more hopeful and inspiring than characters who never have to deal with anything.

It Was, Like, All Dark and Stormy [Washington Post]

Much of the book could certainly trigger a vulnerable reader. It tells the story of Lia, who spirals into anorexia and cutting after the death of her best friend Cassie, who was bulimic. Like many anorexics, Lia knows how many calories are in everything she eats, and her descriptions of her meals ("I eat ten raisins (16) and five almonds (35) and a green-bellied pear (121) (= 172)") could certainly serve as instruction and motivation for disordered eating. So could her reports of her steadily dropping weight and ever-lower goal, the pro-ana websites she visits (though, thankfully, Anderson doesn't include actual web addresses), and the tricks she uses to make her family think she's eating. Most disturbing, though, is the way Lia thinks about her illness and her recovery. Anderson writes,

[The doctors] are morons. This body has a different metabolism. This body hates dragging around the chains they wrapped around it. Proof? At 099.00 I think clearer, look better, feel stronger. When I reach the next goal, it will be all that, and more.

Goal number two is 095.00, the perfect point of balance. At 095.00, I will be pure. Light enough to walk with my head up, meaty enough to fool everyone. And 095.00, I will have the strength to stay in control.

At 090.00, I will soar. That's Goal Number Three.

To the non-sufferer, this thinking is distorted and scary, but to anyone with a tendency toward anorexia, it may sound all too reasonable. Lia's thoughts about herself may be far more triggering than her calorie-counting or meal-avoiding strategies — they may convince girls that their own disordered thoughts are normal or even correct.

Some have argued that the book's triggering qualities are mitigated by how terrifying its portrayal of anorexia and bulimia is. Jack Martin of the New York Public Library told the Times, "It's so horrific I don't think anybody would pick this book up and consider it a manual." It's true that the manner of Cassie's death — a ruptured esophagus caused by her bulimia — is incredibly disturbing, and that the deeper Lia descends into anorexia and cutting the more she feels self-loathing rather than strength. But a Times commenter says, "it doesn't matter if you describe the 'horrors.' i'll read right past it and go for what i want," and this may be true for many sufferers.

The real reason Wintergirls is a worthwhile book isn't that it will scare people away from eating disorders — it might do the opposite. It's that Anderson offers insight into a difficult subject, one that is much-discussed but frequently misunderstood. Especially strong is her treatment of Lia's family. While at first it's tempting to think that Lia's parents' divorce "caused" her eating disorder, the book ultimately resists such easy conclusions. Lia's mother, father, stepmother, and stepsister all come across as complex characters who influence Lia for both good and bad, and whose relationships with Lia will all be important as she begins her recovery. Anderson renders anorexia as a complicated disease with many interrelated causes, but she also emphasizes the importance of family in Lia's treatment — both these messages are worth sharing.

Cynthia M. Bulik, director of an eating disorder program, may have the best take on the book. She told the Times, "Books such as these should be read with careful parental supervision. In the best of all possible worlds, this could be a conversation starter between parents and teens rather than a dark world that teens enter alone reading the book in isolation." Read without discussion or supervision, Wintergirls could indeed be triggering. But read as part of a conversation — or, perhaps, read by parents and other family members — the book could help make some teens' worlds a little less dark.

Wintergirls [Amazon]
The Troubling Allure of Eating-Disorder Books [New York Times]
Skin and Bone [New York Times]

Earlier: Are Teen Girls Really That Fragile?

[Lots of spoilers follow.] First there's heroine Bella's willingness to marry her vampire lover Edward, even though it means becoming a vampire, leaving behind her family, and sacrificing any hope of a normal life. Then there's her pregnancy. She conceives during the honeymoon, and although she's never wanted a child before, she immediately falls totally in love with the green-eyed baby boy she's sure she's carrying. "I wanted him like I wanted air to breathe," Meyer writes, "Not a choice — a necessity."

This creepy antiabortion allegory quickly gets literal, as the half-vampire fetus (actually an interesting metaphor for any pregnancy) starts killing Bella from the inside out. Even as it breaks her ribs and sucked the life from her, she proclaims, "I won't kill him." But does she have to face the consequences of this choice? No, because vampire magic suddenly allows mother and father to hear the fetus's thoughts, and to discover that it already loves them!

Edward telepathically tells it not to hurt its mommy, and while he does end up having to bite it out of Bella's body with his teeth, everything is again fine because he uses more vampire magic to heal her wounds. Because she is now a vampire, Bella is even hotter than she was before pregnancy, and after a short recovery period she's able to have all-night sex sessions with her husband while the extended family takes care of the perfectly behaved, telepathic baby. In the Breaking Dawn universe, teen motherhood just makes your life rad.

All this radness is made possible in part by the idealized relationships all the vampires and werewolves have. Gone for the most part is the sexy rapacity of Dracula; gone is the fine long tradition of gay vampires. These vampires mate for life, and they mate straight. Werewolf love, meanwhile, involves imprinting, which can happen at any age. The werewolf Jacob imprints on Bella's baby — who turns out to be a girl — giving her a "promise ring" when she's only a few months old. Basically these mythical creatures live in a very safe, heteronormative world — and a boring one.

This is actually the book's biggest problem. It's 754 pages long, its heroine's dominant personality trait is low self-esteem, and, as Amazon reviewer Eventide points out, nobody really has to give up anything. Even the tedium of immortality is glossed over — these vampires just keep busy with their hobbies. If I had an eternity to read, I still might never pick up this book again.

Breaking Dawn does seem to be promoting a fundamentally conservative ideology. But then so does The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and they will pry that book from my cold, dead, godless fingers. I think ultimately we shouldn't worry too much about what ideas young adult books promulgate. We should worry about whether the books themselves are awesome. Because awesomeness promotes thinking, and thinking promotes becoming the kind of adult we all want more of in the world: the kind who can understand the message of a book — or a movie, or a blog post, or a presidential candidate — and decide for herself whether she agrees.

Breaking Dawn [Amazon]
Big Week For (And Big Reactions To) 'Breaking Dawn' [Publishers Weekly]
All Fangs, No Bite [Guardian]