Life by Committee by Corey Ann Haydu (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Life by Committee by Corey Ann Haydu
Change has been tough for sixteen-year-old Tabitha: her newly curvy figure and interest in boys have estranged her from her nerdy friends, and her young hippie parents, who had her when they were sixteen, are expecting a new baby. She’s now diving deep into late-night online chats and occasional secret makeout sessions with Joe Donavetti, who is publicly very much coupled with another girl; rumors of this extracurricular activity are enhancing Tabitha’s promiscuous reputation at school. At a website called Life by Committee, she finds a group of pseudonymous people who share secrets and in return receive an assignment to take a risk connected with that secret. Tabitha’s initially exhilarated by the leaps the group encourages her to take, until she begins to question the romantic risk-taking narrative when she starts facing its consequences. Haydu (author of OCD Love Story, BCCB 9/13) captures in deft strokes the teenaged girl who’s being slut-shamed mostly for becoming sexually attractive, and who struggles to negotiate her resentment at the unfair characterization (Tabitha’s actually a virgin whose main joy is reading old books) with her interest in male attention. Her engagement with the website is utterly plausible for a girl with her love of a good story, and the book effectively sets up [End Page 520] both the site’s appeal and its manipulative nature. Ultimately, though, the book’s target is secrets and their power, and it understands both the thrilling ability to have something to yourself and the way we hide and disguise our realities. This would therefore make an excellent partner with an exploration of the PostSecret project (Warren, My Secret: A PostSecret Book, BCCB 1/07), as well as a thoughtful standalone with much insight about perception and truth.
