B599-JAS4
Review Of Fearless, by Tim Lott
Copyright © by Jessica Schneider, 7/22/07
I’ve always believed that a great children’s tale is a great tale. When thinking of the great works in children’s literature, one might think Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, or E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web or Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking Glass.
Now, Fearless, by Tim Lott, is a young adult book that uses the dystopian themes from many previous ‘adult’ books such as 1984, A Clockwork Orange, The Lathe of Heaven, and Brave New World. Here, we have a society of young girls that are sent away to a ‘City Community Faith School,’ but the school is in actuality, a large prison. They are forced to wear badges with their codes upon them, they endure poor living conditions, lack of sanitation, separated from their families, the whole shebang. The novel centers on a young girl named Fearless who is determined to escape the facility and let others know on the outside about its horrid living conditions. Fearless, of course, is not the girl’s real name, and nor are the other names of the girls: Stargazer, Tattle, Bellyache, and Stench. The school is run by a man named The Controller: a name not just meant for the literal control he has (or does not have) over the girls themselves but also one who is controlled, both in manner and when it comes to being under rules himself.
Early on in the story, Fearless escapes the school by hiding in the rubbish lorry. Her decision to do so is after having gotten into trouble by making up tales about having a family and how the families of the girls are out looking for them. As readers, we are given little background about what life is really like in this ‘school’. A film the situation reminded me of was The Magdalene Sisters, where there we have young ‘fallen’ girls who have been sent away to an Irish penitential asylum for having either gotten pregnant or even so much as been a ‘temptress’ for young boys. There the girls are forced to wash linens as a means of ‘cleansing’ for their sins, all the while being under constant oppression of the nuns. In that film, because we are shown the horrible setting and the circumstances, the want to escape is a no brainer. Viewers undergo what the women undergo. But in Fearless, from the very beginning of the story to the very end, we are dealing with Fearless’ attempts to escape. More time is spent outside the facility than within it, so readers don’t really get to experience it the way the characters say they have. There is no slow build up to her initial escape, and Fearless comes across as a bit too much of a caricature, one who wants to ‘stand up for the right thing’ rather than someone’s escape we are rooting for.
There are also some scenes that are a bit over staged, such as one when Fearless goes to seek the help of a police officer and tries to inform him of the school’s horrid conditions. Yet because of The Controller’s ‘respectable’ reputation, the police officer does not believe her. But then, as the policeman goes to call The Controller on the phone to report her, The Controller suddenly erupts over the phone, and it is by this outburst how the police officer then begins to question if The Controller is really as ‘respectable’ as he is believed to be. “You are scum, man. You are worthless. A liability to the City…” The Controller tells the police officer.
I was not convinced that a man so concerned about his self-image would erupt so suddenly, especially knowing the circumstances if he happened to get caught in all this corruption. Yes, we later find out his personal connection to Fearless, but as a reader I found the scene to be overstated and too obvious.
Once The Controller finds out that a girl has escaped, he orders the girls at the school to shave all their heads, a task which strips them of their identities. Likewise, in another instance, he takes all their ragged clothes and dyes them gray, another act that results in the same loss of identity. The girls cannot tell themselves apart, and they slowly feel their identities are taken. An interesting concept for a punishment, but none of this, of course, is new. In Lathe of Heaven, the people’s skin color all change to gray. 1984 has similar themes. The scope of Fearless the novel is a rework of many of these dystopian themes, but unlike the great dystopian classics, (albeit they themselves range in quality) what is missing from this tale is the subtlety in the writing. For example, by the end of the tale, we learn the girls’ real names: Stench is Lila, Tattle is Abigail, and Fearless is Hero because she was named after “Hero of the ancient tales.” The book then ends with the girls dropping white roses into the sea, calling her ‘a true hero’ albeit we don’t really know if she was real at all or just a tale. While I found the ambiguity interesting, there are other aspects in the book that come across as too preachy, even for a young adult book. In addition, when Fearless is faced with several crumbling statue angels earlier in the tale, she discovers their names to be Truth, Courage, and Compassion. And although she herself finds the names ‘corny’, readers who aren’t children (and even some children) will find them cliché.
Here is the very last paragraph from the epilogue: (underlined mine)