Finn

In Matthew Olshan's FINN, the author doesn't so much update Mark Twain's classic, THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, as use it as a device to avoid the PC police. It's a brilliant move, really, because it saves him from a trap that often plagues writers of teen books, i.e., how do you make good, nice, wholesome people interesting. And you can't, of course. Real people, even good people, think and do things that aren't so nice sometimes. In teen books, authors make their heroes safe to the point of dullness to avoid offending the reader, and more importantly, the reader's parents. By adapting Twain, Olshan sidesteps the issue. With just a nod to historicity, he can let his heroine badmouth various minorities without fear of reprisal. "Don't approve of likable racists?" he seems to be saying, "Well, I'm updating Twain here." In Olshan's modern take on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the hero is a girl called Finn --- real name: Chloe. Jim is now a pregnant Mexican maid named Silvia. She's not a slave but an exploited illegal alien; her dream is still freedom, but to the West not north. Other details remain the same. As in the original, the mismatched pair journeys through a fantastical slice of America, where danger and excitement surround them. Fortunately, Olshan doesn't water down any of it. The risks the partners face and the depth of human evil they uncover are starkly real; Finn suffers beatings, kidnappings, and attempted sexual assault. As is to be expected in an adaptation, little similarities to the source material run rampant. Olshan chooses not to conceal them. In fact, part of his method is to throw them at the reader like party favors. The mighty Mississippi becomes a paved drainage ditch, an abandoned rowboat becomes a raft, and so on. All very cute; but beyond flattering the reader's literary knowledge, it doesn't mean much. Occasionally, Olshan uses ideas from the original book in more substantive ways, and the results are better. Finn daydreaming quietly beside her modern river, as Huck did beside his, is a genuinely bucolic moment that loses none of its power by being borrowed. However, these moments are few and far between. That Olshan has chosen to adapt Twain is not surprising: Twain was a keen social critic, and Olshan aspires to a similar style. But Olshan lacks Twain's eagle eye for hypocrisy. He can spin a yarn, but his thoughts on "society" tend toward the obvious. Worse, at times he lets his opinions cloud his prose. Finn's appeal is that she's a straight shooter. When she gets aw-shucksy to highlight an injustice, things fall apart. "The fact that we were white seemed to make us invisible, which was the opposite of my grandparents neighborhood, where it's black people who are invisible. Wait, I take that back. It wasn't exactly the opposite. In my grandparents neighborhood they just pretended that black people were invisible. Black people are actually watched very closely there." It's as if these sentences

Like most of my friends, I love reading books about girls my age (12). They're just easier to relate to. But to say I related to Chloe Wilder in Finn: a novel is an understatement. I felt like I personally experienced her experiences, lived her adventures, and survived her hardships right along with her. What I also really liked about this really good book was how Chloe's sidekick, Silvia Morales, made me think. On a recent family vacation in San Diego, I saw first-hand that many recent immigrants are living and working in the U.S., and that some Americans put down, discourage, and ridicule them, whether or not they are citizens, and especially if they speak Spanish. Even Chloe acted in a racist way towards Silvia in the beginning of the book, but she came to realize what kids my age don't know or sometimes forget - people are people, regardless of their country of origin.

If it hadn't been for lunch, I would've finished FINN without a break this past Sunday. As it was, it took me just that single day to ride through this fast-paced, scenic series of unforgettable adventures. The waterfall scene, for example, was a peaceful and calming interlude smack in the midst of an underworld of grime and crime, and was, quite literally, a cool episode. Another superb scene was the one near the end with King D. What an odd but memorable environment that surreal character created for himself. And when James was steering Finn and Silvia around the debris of his life, I felt such a sense of immediacy that I wouldn't have been surprised to look up and see him right there in my living room, doing his street dancing between the chalk marks. Chloe Wilder, a fast-thinking and resourceful girl toughened up by a week of unanticipated exploits, still reminded me of many of my female friends. Though vulnerable, she desperately tried to hide her vulnerability. And, with that mask on, she brushed up against a rough world seemingly not far from her own fairly comfortable existence, but in fact a world away. FINN will appeal to teen readers -- male and female -- wherever jagged cities give way to seemingly smooth suburbs.

Even though I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn some time ago, I think Matthew Olshan's idea of a modern Huck Finn is brilliant, and I can clearly see its connection to Twain's original work. I easily related to everything in FINN's plot (Is the Field School a real school? If not, it is the perfect modern name), and my favorite character, Marian, had a terrific personality and was hilarious! The beginning was funnier than anything, and no one could have asked for a better ending. The ending suggests a sequel. Is there to be one? ... Please!!!

After living largely unsupervised with her temperamental mother, Chloe Wilder feels as if she found paradise when she moves into the home of her grandparents. Though they constantly misinterpret Chloe's natural reticence and quietness for anger, her grandparents provide her material things, an allowance, and loving encouragement. On the other hand when the kind Mexican maid Sylvia begins to show her pregnancy, they toss her out, but not before checking to see if anything was stolen. Everything changes when "Soul Patch" abducts Chloe. It turns out that he is her mother's new husband because not long afterward, her mother's cursing as usual enters the dilapidated, filthy home. They keep Chloe locked away, but she manages to escape with her only hope to survive the mean streets being Sylvia.FINN: A NOVEL like its titled predecessor can be read on varying levels. It is an exciting young adult adventure tale with major social issues turning it into a thought-provoking adult-tale. Chloe with Sylvia as her guide falls from the elite radar screen into a lower class maelstrom where she learns much about class society in America from her experiences on the street. Matthew Olshan accomplishes quite a task blending social commentary that questions who really has "class" into an interesting adventure that never preaches only entertains.Harriet Klausner