The Rules for Hearts - Sara Ryan

[bookgazing]

‘The Rules for Hearts’ returns to follow Battle Hall Davies, one of the three heroines from Sara Ryan’s first book 'Empress of the World’. Battle is now eighteen and has gone to spend the summer living with her brother Nick, before she goes to college. Battle wants to reconnect with the brother she lost for four years, but Nick is hardly around and instead she finds herself spending more time with Nick’s ex Meryl, who Battle finds very attractive and his boyfriend Charles. These two also live with Nick at Forest House, along with a small group of theatre people. When their landlady, Aurora, announces that her theatre company will be putting on a production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Battle decides to audition so she can spend more time with her brother. And if it means more time with the Meryl then that’s all to the good as well.

I started reading ‘The Rules for Hearts’ assuming that if I liked Ryan’s first book I was sure to like the sequel, but it seems that Sara Ryan is an authors who likes to do something slightly different with every book. ‘The Rules for Hearts’ is almost diametrically opposed to ‘Empress of the World’: in ‘Empress’ the characters can be sarcastic but are ultimately supportive, whereas in ‘Hearts’ many of the characters seem incapable of offering simple kindness and do not form connections easily; the romantic storyline in ‘Empress’ is about Nic and Battle discovering their sexuality, while ‘Hearts’ is about how Battle forms relationships once she’s sure of her sexual identity; ‘Empress’ is a light, fun book, ‘Hearts’ is largely bittersweet; ‘Empress’ is narrated by the extremely vocal, self-aware Nic, ‘Hearts’ narrator is Battle the girl who thinks ‘words don’t work’.

Having enjoyed ‘Empress of the World’ for its cheerfulness and it’s positive, female friendships there were times when I found the atmosphere in ‘The Rules for Hearts’ a little bit too hostile for me to enjoy. Battle arrives at Forest house, which is populated by people who perpetuate a free and easy bohemian attitude. For several of the characters this attitude hides the turmoil they can’t conquer. The community is split between people like Aurora, Henry and Robert who are true to themselves even when their attitudes are unfashionable and Meryl and Charles who feel the need to hide their confusion and must create more confusion around them so they can feel more grown up than others. Nick, whose personality mixes bohemian, disinterestedness, confusion and truth with a unhealthy glug of self-interest isn’t a welcoming presence for Battle or the reader. It’s this mix of confusion and cynical control that emanates from the twenty something characters that I found a bit alienating. Meryl, who seems determined to prove that she knows Battle’s limitations better than Battle does, felt particularly spiky to me and when you compare her with the devoted Nic, she is rather unlikeable.

About fifty pages in I realised I had to get over comparing the two books so closely. They may be vastly different, but their differences don’t indicate that one book is weaker, the differences just show that these are two distinct books. Yes, I loved the positivity of ‘Empress of the World’, but some of my favourite exchanges come from the complicated, negative emotional play between Battle and Meryl:

‘Meryl moves even closer. She stubs out her cigarette and tosses it into an empty flowerpot. Then she uses her index finger to trace a line from my cheekbone to my chin.

“You’re pretty memorable.”

I slap her hand away. “Stop it.”

“What?”

“Just stop it. It’s stupid.”

“What’s stupid?”

“You were going to kiss me again.”

Meryl looks away. “How do you know what I was going to do?”

You had that look. And you know, it would’ve been fine. I would’ve liked it. But guess what? In an hour, or a day, or a week you’d say, ‘Oh, no, sorry, you’re going to make a big deal out of this, you’re not going to be able to handle it.’ I’m tired of it. You just go back inside. I’ll stay out here with my dog. Who isn’t mine.” ' .

Sara Ryan deploys her talent for writing sharp dialogue and character insight, but uses it to direct ‘The Rules for Hearts’ in a different direction as she explores the added complexity of relationships in adulthood – the extra hang-ups we’ve accumulated because we’ve been alive for more years. It’s a book full of difficult, honest emotions and it often looks quickly yet frankly at the coexistence of conflicting emotions. When Meryl says ‘ “I don’t always want things to turn into sex…But I don’t know what to do when they don’t.” ' it reminded me how important imperfect characters like Meryl can be, even if I may not always like them; often they speak uncomfortable truths.

Battle slots in between the two groups in the house. She’s always true to herself and kind even if other people don’t understand her motivations, but she is easily confused by others chaotic attempts at gaining dominance over her. It was so interesting to get inside Battle’s head and learn a little more about her, after only seeing her through Nic’s eyes in ‘Empress of the World’. Battle is an interesting new kind of voice because she’s intelligent and articulate, but she is also intensely private so she often rejects the opportunity to have a conversation and she doesn’t minutely examine everyone’s actions. She seems like an interesting variant on the narrator who isn’t introspective and articulate that Nymeth mentioned in her review of ‘Dark Dude’. I think that Ryan makes Battle’s first person narrative distinct from Nic’s narrative in ‘Empress of the World’ by remembering that even though Battle will inevitably share more with the reader through a direct narrative, she still wouldn’t analyse events in detail in her own mind.

After two short novels I can say I’m a big fan of Ryan’s personal style and philosophy. All the quirkiness she deliberately filled her first novel with appears in the sequel. Battle has a date at the gun range. The group organise a last minute, costumed wedding. There are other easy scenes that express a certain transformation of how these episodes might generally be written, without being especially eccentric. I love with the way Ryan thinks about how the standard world works, transforms it, but then manages to make the creative oddness of situations seem as if it would naturally occur.

I also like the ideas that Ryan wants to express through her novel. Whether she’s showing that connections don’t have to be dropped just because a romantic relationship ends (and maybe one day I’ll grow up and emulate this idea), or how easy (and how limiting) it is to label people with assumptions. On the other hand I like that she doesn’t make her book idealistic, providing counterbalance to Aurora’s healthy relationship with her ex Henry who officiates at her wedding with Nick’s depressing pursuit of an open relationship when Charles isn’t comfortable sharing his boyfriend with women.

One of the best things about ‘The Rules of Hearts’ is that it’s a different kind of GLBT young adult book. It’s not a coming out story and although there’s a romance, it’s really concerned with family ties and the everyday exploration teenagers indulge in once they’re away from their parents. I haven’t talked about that aspect at all, but I’ve been going for long enough so I’ll just say this is key to the novel and while this strand of the plot feels slightly fumbled at the end it’s mostly integrated well with the other plot strands.

If anything in ‘The Rules for Hearts’ is not quite right it’s the headings of acts and scenes that are used to structure the novel. They tie in with the idea of the characters putting on a play, but I couldn’t see any real reason for structuring the novel this way and the idea of scenes wasn’t integrated in any meaningful way into the way the story evolved, so it seemed gimmicky. Oh and the dog, is there any real reason for the inclusion of ‘Lucky’ in the story, except to remind us that Battle likes dogs? Yep that’s it on negatives, but clearly I have a quickly established fan girl relationship with this author and her books so please do look elsewhere for more thoughtful analysis of the book’s weaknesses.

Other Reviews

Kevin Moore
Not Acting My Age
Bookpage
worducopia
traci’s blog