A Midsummer Tights Dream

Two reviews in two days? She must be crazy, you say. She must have loads of time on her hands, despite working on a degree. Or, someone might whisper, she might have found a book easy enough to whip through with funny loveable characters that keep you reading until the last page without putting down the book once. Ding ding ding, we have a winner with contestant number three!

            Apparently having read two Louise Rennison books in two days has made me start to write like one of her characters as well, which is quite fun although occasionally exhausting. I’m not sure how our dear Tallulah Casey does it, keeping the flow of fresh and ridiculous epithets and observations coming in such force. A Midsummer Tights Dream is chock full of Tallulah’s original perspectives on life at Dother Hall, and made me laugh even more than the first book in the series. Remember how I said I had been left with plot points hanging everywhere last time? Well now I am left with new plot points hanging in different ways, but with some of the old ones wrapped up neatly. Rennison has done an excellent job in keeping the reader interested in this fast paced world that seems to revolve around understanding teenage boys while also making crazy “art.”

            We meet up with Tallulah beginning her second term at Dother Hall, back in the cozy arms of her quirky group of friends. Tallulah seems to be falling into the whirlwind of teenage romance, as she sorts through her feelings towards Charlie, the boy who kissed her but has a girlfriend, Alex, the dreamy (and unavailable) older brother of Ruby, and Cain, resident misunderstood bad boy who seems to be toying with Tallulah for his own amusement. I hate to say that Rennison is falling into a tried and true path, but this is much the same formula that works in the Georgia Nicolson series. One girl, many boys, however will she choose? In fact, much of this second novel began to remind me of Rennison’s other series, with some of the characters beginning to form personalities not all that different from Georgia’s Ace Gang. The fact that Tallulah’s friends are called the Tree Sisters doesn’t quite add that definitive stamp of originality quite yet. However, I read the first series because I found them funny and I’m willing to read this series because they are shaping up to be just as, if not more funny.

            I enjoy Tallulah’s take on the boys in her life, but also appreciate that she doesn’t let her entire story become about them. She still goes and visits the owlets with Ruby and is involved with her life at Dother Hall. In A Midsummer Tights Dream the reader is starting to get an idea that Tallulah does actually want to be a star and find some sort of talent within herself. We are realizing that she is a born comedian, and slowly with the help of a few kind teachers, Tallulah is seeing that spark as well. She is cast as Bottom by the evil Dr. Lightowler in the school’s production of A Midsummer Nights Dream by Shakespeare, and manages to steal the show with her silly Irish dancing and general out of control legs. We see another side of Tallulah as she often writes down various thoughts in her performance notebook, all of which are hilarious but also hold the small ingot of real imagination, or at least creative vision.

            Again, the only real fault that I will find in the novel is the hasty wrap up at the end. We’ve been told Dother Hall has fallen into financial ruin and the play is supposed to raise money to help keep it open, however this is resolved within a paragraph by nearly magical means. Tallulah becomes involved with Cain only for us to have that cut short as well. I’m not sure if Rennison is realizing that her book is running on a bit and decides to just leave off, or if she is intentionally trying to build suspense for the next installment in the series. The later certainly works on me, since I am now going to wait impatiently until February 2013 to find out what Tallulah will get up to next. So again, definitely read this book, indulge in a quick read that will have you at least grinning if not chuckling and let yourself be a teenager again. An English teenager stuck in a Northern world surrounded by crazy pseudo artists, but a teenager nonetheless.