Titulo: Fangirl
Autor: Rainbow Rowell
Idioma: Inglés
Editorial: St. Martin's Press
Sinopsis:
Cath is a Simon Snow fan.
Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan...
But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.
Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere.
Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.
Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words... And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?
Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?
And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?
OPINION PERSONAL
Hasta ahora no había leído nada de esta autora, bien por que no me llamara demasiado o porque, simplemente, no tenia tiempo o no me apetecía. La vida es demasiado corta para malgastarla con libros que no tienes ganas de leer. Pero cuando oí hablar de Fangirl, supe que tenia que leerlo. Porque, vamos a ver, un libro sobre una chica fangirl, solitaria, que acaba de empezar la universidad y que plasma todos sus miedos e incertidumbres? Definitivamente tenía que leerlo.
Y como he dicho antes, Fangirl nos presenta a Cath, una joven de 18 años que tiene que empezar la universidad (college). Cath es una fan de Simon Snow. Bueno, ella es más que eso. Cuando su madre los abandonó, ella y su hermana gemela Wren se aferraron a los libros de Simon Snow para seguir adelante. Empezaron a adquirir merchadising, leer fics, comentar en foros...y Cath ha acabado siendo una de las autoras de fanfiction de Simon Snow más populares de la red. Su hermana Wren ha ido dejando atrás esa etapa de su vida, preparándose para lo que la universidad le depara. Pero no Cath. Para ella su vida esta en Internet. Allí puede ser quien quiera, sumergirse en ese mundo que tanto le gusta y no pensar en nada más. Pero cuando Wren decide que no van a ser compañeras de habitación en curso siguiente, a Cath se le cae el mundo encima. Y así, se encuentra en una aterradora situación con la que no se siente a gusto. Cath tendrá que aprender a lidiar con una arisca compañera de habitación y su encantador novio, una profesora de escritura creativa que cree que fan fiction es el fin de la sociedad civilizada, un atractivo compañero de clase que solo quiere hablar de palabras... Y además no puede dejar de preocuparse por su padre, que es frágil y cariñoso y nunca ha estado solo.
Cath deberá hacerle frente a todo esto sola, sin Wren, y decidir si esta preparada para abrirse a nueva gente y nuevas experiencias, aun si todo ello implica dejar a Simon Snow detrás.
Decidí leer esta novela un poco como terapia, y leer sobre las situaciones y problemas a los que Cath se enfrenta me ha hecho reflexionar sobre muchos aspectos de la vida (suena muy filosófico pero realmente me hizo replantearme cosas). Tenia ganas de echarle mano a una lectura contemporánea, y la verdad es que Fangirl no me ha decepcionado.
Cath es... adorable. Y ermitaña. Y prefiere quedarse en casa a escribir o leer antes que salir. Con una protagonista así, ¿como no amarla? Si bien es cierto que a ratos su comportamiento me sacaba de quicio y me daban ganas de entrar en el libro y sacarla de su pequeño agujero, Cath me hizo darme cuenta de que ciertas actitudes son exageradas y que hay que abrirse al mundo porque tiene muchas cosas maravillosas que ofrecernos.
“Okay. Let’s start with a question that doesn’t really have an answer.… Why do we write fiction?”
One of the older students, a guy, decided he was game. “To express ourselves,” he offered.
“Sure,” Professor Piper said. “Is that why you write?” The guy nodded.
“Okay … why else?”
“Because we like the sound of our own voices,” a girl said. She had hair like Wren’s, but maybe even cooler. She looked like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby (wearing a pair of Ray-Bans).
“Yes,” Professor Piper laughed. It was a fairy laugh, Cath thought. “That’s why I write, definitely. That’s why I teach.” They all laughed with her. “Why else?” Why do I write? Cath tried to come up with a profound answer—knowing she wouldn’t speak up, even if she did.
“To explore new worlds,” someone said.
“To explore old ones,” someone else said. Professor Piper was nodding.
To be somewhere else, Cath thought.
“So…,” Professor Piper purred. “Maybe to make sense of ourselves?”
“To set ourselves free,” a girl said.
To get free of ourselves.“To show people what it’s like inside our heads,” said a boy in tight red jeans.
“Assuming they want to know,” Professor Piper added. Everyone laughed.
“To make people laugh.”
“To get attention.”
“Because it’s all we know how to do.”
“Speak for yourself,” the professor said. “I play the piano. But keep going—I love this. I love it.”
“To stop hearing the voices in our head,” said the boy in front of Cath. He had short dark hair that came to a dusky point at the back of his neck.
To stop, Cath thought.
To stop being anything or anywhere at all.“To leave our mark,” Mia Farrow said. “To create something that will outlive us.” The boy in front of Cath spoke up again: “Asexual reproduction.” Cath imagined herself at her laptop. She tried to put into words how it felt, what happened when it was good, when it was working, when the words were coming out of her before she knew what they were, bubbling up from her chest, like rhyming, like rapping, like jump-roping, she thought, jumping just before the rope hits your ankles.
“To share something true,” another girl said. Another pair of Ray-Bans.
Cath shook her head.
“Why do we write fiction?” Professor Piper asked.
Cath looked down at her notebook.
To disappear.
Los personajes secundarios también juegan un papel muy importante en la novela. Nos encontramos a Wren, la hermana gemela de Cath. La verdad es que fue un personaje que me encantó, porque aunque parezca una chica rompedora y que quiere deshacerse de su pasado y disfrutar a tope de su vida universitaria. Quiere conseguir su individualidad y que se la conozca por ella misma y no como una de un pack. El abandono de su madre afectó de manera distinta a las gemelas, y descubrimos claramente como son dos personas distintas y únicas.
Otra de las chicas que sacude el tranquilo mundo de Cath es Reagan, su compañera de cuarto. Las dos chicas son completamente opuestas, a Reagan le gusta salir, pasa mas tiempo fuera que dentro, sale con chicos, comete locuras...
“Get your shoes,” Reagan said. “I’m showing you where the dining hall is.”
“No.” Cath could already feel the anxiety starting to tear her stomach into nervous little pieces. “It’s not just that.… I don’t like new places. New situations. There’ll be all those people, and I won’t know where to sit—I don’t want to go.” Reagan sat at the end of her own bed, folding her arms. “Have you been going to class?”
“Of course.”
“How?”
“Class is different,” Cath said. “There’s something to focus on. It’s still bad, but it’s tolerable.”
“Are you on drugs?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should be.…”
Cath pushed her fists into her bed. “This isn’t any of your business. You don’t even know me.”
Y por último y digno de mencionar, el pequeño y adorable triángulo amoroso Nick-Cath-Levi. Nick es compañero de clase de Cath, es simpático, caballeroso y realmente aprecia como escribe la protagonista. Y Levi... a el no le gusta leer (algo que realmente escandaliza a Cath y me hizo reír un montón), es sospechosamente cercano a Reagan y parece querer conocer a Cath como individual, algo que parece no muchas personas se han molestado en hacer. No se si realmente se le puede llamar triángulo a esto, ya que los chicos no se pelean entre ellos y están en dos planos muy distintos.
Durante toda la novela podemos apreciar como los personajes crecen y maduran, son todos muy complejos y cada uno tiene sus propios demonios que exorcizar. La narrativa de Rowell es increíble, retrata maravillosamente a todos los personajes creando una historia que te atrapa y te sumerge en la trama. Las reacciones de la protagonista, sus pensamientos, sus miedos e incertidumbres... Rowell crea unos personajes complejos y reales que te llegan, porque realmente sabe meterse en sus cabezas y hacerlos tanto profundos como graciosos. Además, su estilo de escribir hace que la novela sea fácil de leer, y no solo eso, sino que al final de los capítulos o entre medias podemos leer los fics de Cath sobre Simon Snow o extractos de los mismísimos libros.
Nothing was going right.
They’d been attacked by a venomous crested woodfoul.
And then they’d hidden in the cave with the spiders and the whatever-that-thing-was that had bitten Simon’s tennis shoe, possibly a rat.
And then Baz had taken Simon’s hand. Or maybe Simon had taken Baz’s hand... Anyway, it was totally forgivable because woodfoul and spiders and rats.
And sometimes you held somebody’s hand just to prove that you were still alive, and that another human being was there to testify to that fact.
They’d walked back to the fortress like that, hand in hand. And it would have been okay —it would have been mostly okay— if one of them had just let go.
If they hadn’t stood there on the edge of the Great Lawn, holding this little bit of each other, long after the danger had passed.
—from “The Wrong Idea,” posted January 2010 by FanFixx.net author Magicath
“It’s different this time.” Cath had been saying this for the last year. “It’s the end.” Wren was right: Cath had written this story, Baz and Simon in love, dozens of times before. She’d written this scene, this line—“Snow … Simon, I love you”—fifty different ways.
But Carry On was different.
It was the longest fic she’d written so far; it was already longer than any of Gemma T. Leslie’s books, and Cath was only two-thirds of the way through.
Carry On was written as if it were the eighth Simon Snow book, as if it were Cath’s job to wrap up all the loose ends, to make sure that Simon ascended to Mage, to redeem Baz (something GTll would never do), to make both boys forget about Agatha … To write all the good-bye scenes and graduation scenes and last-minute revelations … And to stage the final battle between Simon and the Insidious Humdrum.
Everyone in fandom was writing eighth-year fics right now. Everyone wanted to take a crack at the big ending before the last Simon Snow book was released in May.
But for thousands of people, Carry On was already it.
Fangirl es una novela adorable. Rowell y sus personajes te atrapan en su historia con una narrativa ligera y fácil de entender, con sus divertidos dialogos, fanfics, y grandes verdades. Además, los guiños al mundo de los fandoms y fanfics son geniales y realmente me hicieron apreciar la novela y sentirme identificada.
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