bookgazing | 'Dairy Queen' - Catherine Gilbert Murdock

At fifteen years old, DJ Schwenk has become responsible for her families dairy farm. Her dad slipped and injured his hip, leaving him unable to do anything physical. Her mum is working two jobs to support the family. Her two older brothers left the farm abruptly after a fight with their dad and are now pursuing college football careers. As the oldest sibling left on the farm DJ has to do most of the heavy work like milking, mowing and haying. She’s given up playing basketball for her high school team in small town Red Bend and no longer runs for the track team. She’s also failing English literature because she hasn’t had time to write all the required essays. DJ has been taught by example that true, worthy Schwenks don’t quit, talk back or whine, so she just keeps working. Her resentment towards her family silently grows, even though she is a practical girl who understands that she has to take care of the farm so that the family can survive economically.

Catherine Gilbert Murdock takes the time to weave an explicit examination of the importance of expression and communication in forming healthy relationships into ‘Dairy Queen’. By doing so she emphasises the real consequences that can come from anyone, but especially teenagers, being denied expression and understanding. There are many relationships filled with silence and repressed feelings in ‘Dairy Queen’ by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. DJ’s family have taken not talking to epic places. Her father refuses to talk to DJ’s two older brothers Bill and Win after they argued with him last year. DJ only speaks when she needs to. Even when she has something she wants to say it takes her a long time to formulate her ideas and by the time she’s ready to speak other characters have formed ideas about why she’s not talking, or moved on to other topics. Her younger brother Curtis almost never speaks and this is a source of concern for Mrs Schwenk, who has had Curtis tested for autism, but it seems Curtis is just reluctant to open up. The Schwenk household is not a place where open expression is encouraged and is filled with exchanges between DJ and her father that contain little dialogue, but are filled with heavy, foreboding silences:

' There was another long silence. If I had to make this into a movie, I'd have everyone count to twenty-five before saying anything. That's how long the silences were. ' .

All the members of the Schwenk family feel estranged from each other, because they don’t communicate.

As DJ has grown up in a household where silence is the main form of eloquent expression she has trouble expressing herself to other characters. You could say that the default teenage personality is that of the outsider who has trouble expressing themselves, because they feel that no one understands them. Too many standard outsider characters who find it hard to express themselves can exhaust reader sympathy and make the character type seem cliche, so in ‘Dairy Queen’ Catherine Gilbert Murdock has worked hard to distinguish DJ from a mass of other characters that struggle to articulate their feelings.

Readers may be used to characters who think in a cleanly expressed, analytical inner voice, but are inarticulate when they try to verbally express themselves to other characters. DJ presents a new kind of faltering teenage voice, searching for expression. Gilbert Murdock has written her inner monologue as a slow and sometimes fumblingly analysis of events, feelings and concepts, then coupled DJ’s thought process with a taciturn verbal way of expression, which alternates between presenting a reticence to speak, a search for the best way to express her thoughts and a simple, but deep contemplation distilled into its most direct form. An almost real time unrolling of DJ’s deeply engaged, investigative thought process, expressed in simple matter of fact language, allows readers to see how hard she has to work to make her emotions coherent even to herself having grown up in a household that doesn’t encourage expression. Readers are so close to DJ’s way of thinking after sitting inside her head, watching her scrutinize her thoughts before verbalising them that they will feel they understand exactly what she is trying to express. When it is clear how little some characters around DJ understand what she is trying to express I think it becomes clear that it is so eays to misunderstood people, or ignore them because they don’t express themselves in the same way as everybody else:

' "I - you think I did it on purpose?"

"Yeah I mean, who else just sits there waiting like that?"

"You think I'm waiting?" This was getting old, me repeating everything he said. "It's because I don't know what to say! Or I'm trying to figure out wht to say but by the time I get around to figuring it out you're talking again."

"Really?" Brian looked like he didn't believe me. '

Being misunderstood, or having their expression shut down doesn’t only go one way though. DJ is capable of misunderstanding others, like her friend Amber, who it turns out has been in love with her forever. She accidentally brushes off her brother Curtis, when he opens up to her, although she has grown so that she understands how important his moment of openness is and apologises. When she does this readers will understand that DJ isn’t being set up as the singular teenager who ‘no one understands’, but rather as a participant in the huge human game of misunderstandings and bad reactions. Oh people we are so complicated to understand.

Noticing that DJ is struggling to cope family friend Jimmy, the coach of the Hawley football team from the nearby, richer high school, sends his whiney, spoilt quarterback Brian Nelson to help out on the farm. In contrast to the Schwenks Brian Nelson’s family talk a lot, maybe they even talk too much. His mother works in a program called Talk Back and she’s obsessed with asking everyone in her family what they’re feeling. Brian’s dad is overly protective of his son and shields him from any potential criticism, which keeps his son from developing as a football player and a human being. Brian’s family shows that while DJ’s family is not ideal, because they don’t communicate, they’re not a broken, ignorant family who can be ‘fixed’ by following another family’s standards. Brian’s family need to learn to apply communication and support in moderate, reasonable ways, just as the Schwenks need to increase their verbal communication and support. I was personally fond of this message.

Brian isn’t much use on the farm, but then DJ doesn’t exactly help him adapt. Brian was part of the team that mocked her older brother Bill for crying when Red Bend lost a major football game and DJ isn’t pleased about working with him. Still, Brian needs to get fit and Jimi thinks DJ might be the best person to train him. Watching Brian and DJ work to improve the Schwenk farm provided some of my favourite moments, like their initial hard and angry haying session, which delivered a feeling of how hard manual farm work must be and how tough DJ must have been to do it alone:

' Then I got to back the wagon into the barn hayloft so we all could have so much fun unloading. It's not as much work as loading, thank God, because you don't have to walk as much. And you're out of the sun, although it's not as if the hayloft is air-conditioned or anything. Or dust-free. Plus you have to be careful when you stack the hay bales because you're stacking them so high, and if you leave gaps the whole stack could collapse when you're climbing on it and break your leg. But at least Curtis was helping us unload, so we got it done faster. We didn't say too much. '

Maybe it’s cliché to write a description of cleaning with a power washer that turns into a water fight and almost gets romantic, but I don’t care, I loved it.

Yet despite loving the water fight, loving the kiss they share, loving the way they bond over training the big thing that I didn’t like about this book was the romance between Brian and DJ. Simply (to avoid making this longer) I think Brian is a jerk who discovers the joys of being listened to by an equal, but doesn’t try hard enough to really understand how DJ functions. To qualify my dislike of Brian, he is a jerk with problems and the potential for growth (and potentially later books for me to watch him grow in), which is a male, romantic character type I find hard to resist. So although I dislike him, at the same time I kind of want him to tangle his fingers in DJ’s hair. As DJ wants him so much I want her to have him, because she’s worked so hard, grown so much and should get everything she wants.

I think this book made me rethink my stance on love triangles, because if there’s just one guy in a book and the heroine likes him it’s hard for the reader to fully reject him as a romantic partner, unless he’s the biggest monster of all time. If there were more potential romantic partners for DJ in this book then I’d feel happier about rejecting the idea of Brian as a romantic lead, no matter how much DJ wanted him, but as he’s the only guy around and I want her to have everything including fulfilling love I find it hard to wish she’d reject Brian. He’s not that bad right? Gah. So confused and not sure if that made any sense. Anyway Brian and DJ, yes, but no, but yes, but....

I’ve spent a long time talking about the family and emotional aspect of ‘Dairy Queen’, now let’s talk about the sport. DJ eventually comes to realise she can’t be happy just being Brian’s football trainer, she wants a different kind of relationship with football (and with him). She starts training hard and after working out a way to pass English (by writing about the summer that led her to realise she wanted to play football, aha framing device you reveal yourself) she tries out for the Red Bend football team. She is the only girl and while she’s a good player she suspects Red Bend takes her mostly because they are desperate (their team is awful) and she has Schwenk football history behind her. I enjoyed the team bonding, the parts where DJ trained with the team and the final big game moment where Red Bend play Hawley. I did think that in this book the parts about a girl joining a boys organised sports team was expanded on less than I was expecting (but maybe it’s wrong to expect every book about women in sports to make gender conflicts its central them) but the training and football element of this book was substantial. My favourite sporting moments were when DJ talked about how she used to enjoy running:

' ...and just then, just at that moment, I'd stop worrying and just start flying, my legs pumping away without me even thinking, straight for the line.

That's what I was remembering as I ran down the heifer field, and thinking how this was even better because my legs didn't have to wait, they could stretch out as much as they wanted with that feeling like I could run forever...and then because I was feeling so good I just kept running as fast as I ever could right to the goal line. '

and a half time moment in the big game against Hawley where Red Bend begin to join as a team, chanting and howling. As ‘Dairy Queen is the first book in a series I’m expecting lots more sporting moments to come. 'Dairy Queen' is a fun, engaging book with a quiet, thoughtful female narrator who is into sports - a great way to spend a few days.

Specifically Sporty

What sport/s does the heroine take part in?

DJ has always started on the girls basketball team and run track, but now she wants to try out for the football team (this is American football UK readers).

How much sport does the heroine participate in, in this book?

DJ starts training Brian about a quarter of the way into the book, but it’s not until much later that she realises she might want to play football. Then she starts training independently. She then trains with the Red Bend team and we see DJ play a couple of games. Overall I’d say there’s a solid proportion of sport played by the heroine in relation to the personal issues she experiences off the field.

Do any other girls play sports besides the heroine?

DJ’s best friend Amber also plays basketball. Her other friend Kiri usually plays volleyball during football season, as do Amber and DJ, but they think volleyball sucks, so Kiri quits to be a cheerleader for the football team.

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