Review: Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia by Jenny Torres Sanchez

Title: Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia
Author: Jenny Torres Sanchez
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Release date: May 28th 2013
Pages: 272
Genre: Young Adult contemporary
Source: Publisher (I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thanks!)
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Frenchie Garcia can’t come to grips with the death of Andy Cooper. Her friends didn’t know she had a crush him. And they don’t know she was the last person with him before he committed suicide. But Frenchie’s biggest concern is how she blindly helped him die that night.
Frenchie’s already insane obsession with death and Emily Dickinson won’t help her understand the role she played during Andy’s “one night of adventure.” But when she meets Colin, she may have found the perfect opportunity to recreate that night. While exploring the emotional depth of loss and transition to adulthood, Sanchez’s sharp humor and clever observations bring forth a richly developed voice.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My expectations for Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia were not exactly high - it's a small-press title, and the story sounded like the typical grief plot, something I enjoy but have read a million times before. That's why I was so surprised when I got into the novel - the main idea may be pretty standard, but the characters and subplots are unique and make this a great novel.

Frenchie is what made this whole book work for me. She's not your average YA "heroine" - she's messed up in the best way possible. She's depressed and angry, but instead of sulking about it in the standard annoying emotional way, she lashes out at the people around her and messes up the relationships most important to her. While that doesn't exactly sound like a good thing, it provided for a fascinating plot and was a nice change from the standard grief storyline. I enjoyed reading about her struggles through her actions instead of her words. And while Frenchie would be hard to like in real life, I loved being inside her head and really felt for her.

Frenchie's relationships with other people are just as unique and interesting to read about. There's Joel, Frenchie's best guy friend, whom she's been having problems with ever since he started spending more time with his new girlfriend Lily than with her. At first, I feared this would venture into the typical MC-is-in-love-with-her-best-friend storyline, but I'm so glad it doesn't: Frenchie isn't jealous of Lily because she likes Joel as more than a friend; she simply wants her friend back. I love that the way this guy-girl-friendship is treated in the novel, a topic much too rare in YA. I also loved Frenchie's relationship with Robyn, her best girl friend, which is unconventional in its own way. And Frenchie's relationship with Colin is just as great: I love how their romance is only hinted at and does not take the main focus.

This present storyline of Frenchie's relationships with Joel, Robyn, and Colin is interspersed with what happened during her night of adventures with Andy. Frenchie's and Andy's - and then Frenchie's and Colin's - "adventures" that night are pretty basic: the standard teenage rebellion of getting a tattoo, breaking into a park, and staying out all night. But the mystery around Andy's suicide made it worthwhile - I loved trying to figure it all out alongside Frenchie.

One thing I wish had been elaborated on more is Frenchie's future. Frenchie just graduated from high school, did not get into the art school she wanted to go to, and has no plans for the future. While I get that not having plans is sort of the point, and that the story only presents a very short span of her life, I wish we could have seen some more development of Frenchie's character in terms of making some sort of decision for the future.

Even though I was a little disappointed by the lack of development towards the end of the novel, I really loved Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia. With an original voice, unique characters, an intriguing mystery, and palpable emotions, Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia is a novel I really enjoyed.

Interview with Jenny Torres Sanchez (The Downside of Being Charlie Blog Tour)

Today we have Jenny Torres Sanchez here for an author interview! This post is part of The Teen Scene's blog tour for The Downside of Being Charlie by Jenny Torres Sanchez. You can find out all about the tour here. 

1. Checking out your website, I see you used to like thinking of other names for yourself, so you must like being allowed to invent names for fictional people! How do you go about choosing names for your characters?

I do like the naming my characters, but actually, I tend to keep them relatively simple. But I will “ feel out” a character’s name for a while, use the name for a scene or two and see if it feels right. If it does, I keep it.

Charlie has always been Charlie, but in my second YA nove I changed the names of some characters a couple of times before they felt right.

2. Without spoiling anything, could you tell is what was your favorite scene to write in The Downside of Being Charlie?

I think my favorite scene to write was the snow scene. In this scene, Charlotte and Charlie are lying down on her front lawn, looking up at the sky as it snows. That scene is very vivid in my mind. I can see the inky sky and the blur of falling snow. There’s this quiet beauty to the whole thing, but this scene is also where Charlie and Charlotte start to get somewhat real with one another and it’s crushing to Charlie. I don’t know, somehow this scene just seemed very important. And I just really liked figuring out the conversation between Charlotte and Charlie in this scene—how much they would tell each other and how much they would still keep from one another.

3. What is the best writing advice you've ever received?

Produce, produce, produce. This became my mantra as I set out to write The Downside of Being Charlie because sometimes (and I was definitely guilty of this for many years) there is a lot of talk about writing, or a lot of reading about writing, or a lot of going to writing conferences and workshops, but there’s not a whole lot of actual writing, which is after all the most important part of writing. I don't discourage anyone from doing any of these things, but it should be in addition to writing. Because no matter how much prep work you do, the best way to become a better writer is to produce work. Work that serves as practice, that you can learn from, that you can tweak and make better and use to better understand what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong. If you don’t produce anything, you won’t learn no matter how much you discuss it with other writers, or read about it, or attend the best conferences. And you won’t get better. You have to produce. You have to write.

4. I read you're a high school English teacher. How does that help you with your own writing?

My experience as a teacher definitely helped my writing. Seeing the drama and angst that is high school (after thinking I was done with it and blocking out most of my own teenage years) was really interesting. Seeing the struggles my students had, the way they behaved, the things they would say or wouldn’t say, really made me think about and appreciate the teen experience in a new way and made want to me to write about it. It helped me remember what it was like to be a teen and it gave me the opportunity to observe teens. But most of all, I think it reminded every day to give teens lots of credit. Sometimes it’s easy to generalize teens, and perhaps think that they don’t appreciate literature. But they do, and they have strong opinions about different issues but they’re also incredibly openminded, and they’re passionate. Being a teacher helped me (I think and I hope) write characters that are real, that I hope teens can relate to and they see themselves in.

5. If you had to pair up your main character Charlie with any other character from any other book, who would it be and why?

I would pair Charlie up with Vera Dietz from Please Ignore Vera Dietz. Please Ignore Vera Dietz is one of my favorite books and I think both Charlie and Vera suffer quietly, I think both are very good about hiding things, but I think they would see this in the each other and somehow feel connected. I think they would understand each other and become really good friends.

Thanks fo the great interview answers, Jenny!


Make sure to check out all the other stops of the tour, and keep your eye out for The Downside of Being Charlie, which has already been released. 

The Downside of Being Charlie by Jenny Torres Sanchez
(Amazon | Goodreads)

Charlie is handed a crappy senior year. Despite losing thirty pounds over the summer, he still gets called “Chunks” Grisner. What’s worse, he has to share a locker with the biggest Lord of the Rings freak his school has ever seen. He also can’t figure out whether Charlotte VanderKleaton, the beautiful strawberry lip-glossed new girl, likes him the way he likes her. Oh, and then there’s his mom. She’s disappeared—again—and his dad won’t talk about it.
Somewhere between the madness, Charlie can at least find comfort in his one and only talent that just might get him out of this life-sucking place. But will he be able to hold his head above water in the meantime?