I've been chewing this over since listening the audiobook of this novel, and I'd be interested if anyone has read it, and what their reactions were. It seems to be exploring important issues for young women, but at the same time is the product of its time, since there are certain absent connections that are obvious to my second wave eye.

Pretty Furious (published 2024) is a YA novel by E.K. Johnson about a group of five girls, tight high school friends in a very small Ontario town. Over a year, as each of their birthdays comes up, each of the five girls, and then the instigator again for a sixth time, comes up with a birthday wish to enact justice against males from the community for their treatment of other girls. The instigating incident is the town's treatment of one of their schoolmates after she had an abortion. The schoolmate and the sister who drove her to the city are shunned by the church while her boyfriend/the child's father suffers no consequences whatsoever. To add to the five's outrage, the church has newly raised a memorial stone to the Unborn in a prominent place and the boyfriend's parents mounted a billboard in their field facing the girls' house with 'Abortion stops a beating heart'.

Spoilers follow, though not too heavy.

The girls set out to sabotage the memorial. Then they arrange retaliation against a male athlete who spread gossip about a girl who could not disprove the insinuation that she was doping without revealing her medical history and so was forced to give up a sport that she excelled in. They target a boys' school team and their coach for having refused to roster the non-binary sister of one of the girls. I'll come back to that. They aim to expose a group of male sexual harassers at school who have been tacitly enabled by the administration. Fifth, the girls move to draw attention to the behaviour of a gang of boys who have been engaging in threatening behaviour to two Syrian immigrant families in the town. And finally they turn their attention to that billboard.

They aim not to be caught. They deliberately, consciously use what they perceive as their privilege as good white girls to slide under the radar. They're confident that they will not be challenged or be questioned. In the instance where they go after the gang of boys who are harassing the Syrian families, they decide it's potentially too risky to draw police attention to non-white immigrants. So they set out to draw police attention to the same boys' harassment of (white) girls at the swimming pool, in hopes it'll put the heat on them.

E.K. Johnson is warm towards female friendship. She writes positive female friendships, without trivial conflicts, catfights, spats. She writes women loyal to each other. She writes girls who lesbians. Most of these girls don't have boyfriends, and the ones that do haven't disappeared into coupledom. They're spending their time within the community of girls. They have their clubhouse and their place to conspire, though it's clear they will move in different directions as they pursue their individual futures.

The reason I say the book's feminism is ambiguous is that while the girls are conscious of and self-conscious about the systemic nature of their privilege, their status as "good white girls", they seem unconscious of the systemic nature of their oppression. They see privilege as systemic, but oppression as personal. They are aware that the Church and their society is oppressive, but they feel the oppression coming down on them through the actions of individuals, the priest, teachers, the parents of the baby's dad. It doesn't occur to them that they are unsuspected not because they are clever (which they are), not because they are above reproach, but because they are invisible, that their society is as negligent of their wrongdoing as it was of the wrong done to them. I find it entirely plausible (and that plausibility is a strength of the book) given their age and era that they should have this gap in their understanding. It shows the extent to which young women have been taught that feminism is a completed project.

The other interesting product-of-its-time element is the handling of the trans non-binary character. I will say it's relatively benign, since it is a trans identifying female, and she's a fairly low-key girl who doesn't really want to stir up trouble. It's the five become militant on her behalf. However, given the situations that other targeted girls encounter, and because one of the prime ways that boys make their displeasure against an encroaching female known is sexual harassment--it's not plausible that she would only have been cut from the team. It's trans plot armour and it's disingenuous.

Has anyone else read the novel? What do you think?

Johnson also wrote Exit, Pursued by a Bear, which is a Winter's Tale reimagining about a small-town champion cheerleader who is roofied and raped while attending a big cheerleading camp. She gets excellent support after the rape and the ensuing abortion, but she has no memory of the assault or the lead up to it, and has to continue competing with her squad knowing that someone within her own sports community, possibly a teammate, was responsible. Johnson also wrote several enjoyable Star Wars novels, centring female characters and women's friendships, about Padme Amidala and her handmaidens, and Ahsoka Tano. And an alternate history take on a diverse Victorian Empire on which the sun never set, That Inevitable Victorian Thing, which is a great deal of fun ("The Log Driver's Waltz" as music for a society debut!), though it's my observation that a lot of North American writers don't really get class.