By Susin Nielsen. Toronto: Tundra, 2010.
Violet Gustavsen, a twelve year old girl whose parents are divorced, tries to convince George Clooney to marry her mother in order to stem the tide of her mom's looser dates. Yes, you read that correctly.
Aside from the above, one of the things that strikes you most about this book is how it does portray a lot of the symptoms and feelings experienced by children of recent divorce.
The second thing is the moral relativvism. Violet's younger sister, Rosie bites another girl at her daycare. This is seen as mostly just in Violet's eyes, as are all the things Violet puts various people in her life through.
Susin Nielsen was a writer on "Degrassi Junior High." The Degrassi universe works on a bizarre mixture of two things: the worst case scenario and the above-mentioned moral relativism.
In the first, the worst consequences befall the misdeeds of the students in the various Degrassi incarnations. If you sleep with someone of the opposite sex, you will get pregnant or get a sexually transmitted disease. As happened to one character in the original series, you will contract the very worst of sexually transmitted diseases: AIDS. If you take drugs, you will either automatically ruin a friendship, or, more likely, jump off a bridge and cause yourself permanent brain damage, leaving your girlfriend and her new baby in the lurch.
At the same time, a postmodern attitude also pervades this television series. If it was right for you to sleep with your boyfriend, then that's fine. If it is right for you to be a particular sexual orientation, then that's OK, too.
Simply put, Nielsen has carried this relativistic attitude to this book.
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