Today we're joined by C. K. Kelly Martin, author of the acclaimed YA novels ONE LONELY DEGREE, I KNOW IT'S OVER, and the newly released THE LIGHTER SIDE OF LOVE AND DEATH. Below, she gives us a peek at the very complicated love life of her main character, who finds himself caught between the girl he can't stop thinking about, and the girl he shouldn't be thinking about at all.
And if you haven't already, be sure check out the book's trailer, here.
There’s a series of lyrics in the classic Billy Bragg song, “A New England,” that go: “I loved you then as I love you still/Though I put you on a pedestal/They put you on the pill.”
Romantic relationships, when stared at up close, are never perfectly pretty or perfectly simple. So it goes that when sixteen-year-old aspiring actor Mason Rice falls into bed with Kat Medina, a close friend he’s had a crush on for three years, the aftermath isn’t at all like the euphoria he experienced that night. In fact, things kind of start to suck.
Good as the experience was physically, losing their virginity to each other doesn’t do Mason and Kat’s friendship any favors. At school Mason can’t look at her without imagining her naked and flashing back to that night. Meanwhile, Kat doesn’t even want to talk about what happened and considers the incident a major mistake. Having a normal conversation becomes an impossibility for Mason and Kat, awkwardness abounds.
This is not what Mason expected, and as time marches on and his and Kat’s friendship unravels further, he begins to seek out a distraction from just how wrong things appear to be. Maybe Mason wouldn’t exactly call what he’s looking for “romance” (look up the word and you’ll see terms like “fanciful”, “extravagant” and “heroic” used to describe it), but he’s definitely chasing some kind of ideal.
And as much as you ever like someone, as much as you ever love them even, no one is ever ideal. Colette, the twenty-three-year-old woman Mason becomes embroiled with next, is, like Kat, a flesh-and-blood person with her own complexities and issues. Can Mason overlook these things and keep their relationship casual? Or is keeping things casual even what he truly wants? And has he stopped thinking about Kat, stopped wondering what’s on her mind when she stares at him during history class?
There’s another set of Billy Bragg lyrics (this time from "A Lover Sings") that always comes to mind when I’m thinking about the nature of falling for someone. “It’s things like this that remind me of how I felt/The first time you came back for coffee/The way you took it amazed me.”
Awe, when you’re attracted to someone, flows effortlessly, but making things work on a continuing basis takes effort --- empathy, open discussions, compromises. Mason feels that kind of amazement Billy Bragg sings about for both Kat and Colette at various times, the- I-can’t-catch-my-breath-when-I-see-you-unexpectedly-across-a-room feeling. In THE LIGHTER SIDE OF LIFE AND DEATH, I hope I manage to convey just how overwhelming that heady feeling can be while also exploring the realities of romantic relationships through the eyes of a young man who isn’t as in touch with his own feelings (or the feelings of those around him) as he thinks is.
-- C. K. Kelly Martin
