Like the Red Panda

Have you ever read a book where you could picture, visualize and seeing your mind everything that was going on perfectly? For me, that book is Like the Red Panda by Andrea Seigel. I'm not sure where I discovered this book but I remember wanting to read it for the longest time and never being able to remember its name... once a nice man in Walden Books helped me out for a good half an hour before we both eventually had to give up. (Incidentally, this happened to me another time with a different book and I discovered what it was called when I was looking through some old things and found the name written down in my Life-Long Notebook- crazy!)

Anyway, Like the Red Panda is narrated by Stella, a high school senior, a smart, precocious, attractive and alienated girl. She is about to graduate but has lost all care about most things. She attempts to go through the last few weeks of the semester- shopping for prom, signing year books, final projects- but at the same time, realizes the futility of it all. As she explains it: "The other week in coordinated science, Ms. Stocks was teaching us about star and how some are considered young when they die, even though they've been up in the sky for hundreds of thousands of years. Some burn out at two hundred thousand and some hold out until they're a million. Some are dead long before we ever even realize it because of the time it takes for light to travel. I hope that makes things clearer. Put a fork in my, because I'm done." So she instead begins to forge a relationship with her suicide-bent grandfather Donald, and her new boyfriend Daniel, a drug dealer and drop-out. I don't want to say much more because I don't want to spoil the ending but that's the basic gist of it.

What intrigues me so much about this book is that it takes place in Irvine. My hometown. The detail that goes into describing Irvine is exactly what any Irvine-ite who feels like an outsider here (me) would use. This was my response to pretty much every sentence describing Irvine, a person who lived there, the high school or people that were at the high school, etc....: "Yes! Oh my gosh, yes! I know exactly who that person is! Yes! Absolutely!"

Here is how she describes Irvine and I defy anyone who has ever been here to disagree: I live in a village of what is technically a city (I guess) called Irvine. Sometime around the sixties the Irvine family must have been taking their horses out for a spin, and one of them thought aloud, "A lot of people have cities named after them, but how many people have cities that turned out exactly how they imagined?" So I'm assuming they pulled out a piece of graph paper back at the ranch and drew up a dream plan, and they got really excited by the idea of seeing the future and the part they'd play in making it true. The Irvine plotted years ahead so that even Southern Irvine, the later part of the city to be developed (*** side note, this was written before Northwood was really overly developed like it is now***), was already a gleam in North Irvine's even by the time the original houses were built there.

Pitch-perfect.

This is how Stella describes her neighborhood: Next I go through the middle of Springbook Elementary where the tetherball chains clink and echo, even when there's no wind, and then I make a right. Go down the street, and I'm home. I live in a tract in the shape of a tadpole or a sperm where my house is part of the head. A curving line of homes extends from the main part and ends at Woodflower pool, which is turn connects to the lawn of Springbrook Elementary. Like I said, everything here comes full circle. Passion in planning.

I've been there. I've swum in Woodflower Pool. I lived in the street that intersects the street Stella turns right on. I went to Springbrook Elementary. I can visualize it perfectly in my head.

Anyone who went to Woodbridge around the time that I did can identify this person, even without the author writing a name: As soon as we hit the curb, one of the narcs cam speeding across the asphalt. I don't know his name because I don't get in trouble (***in real life, EVERYBODY knew his name***) but he's this big Samoan guy who rides around in a little white buggy thing. He always steers with one hand while leaning back, and I've noticed his legs are always spread really far apart. I mean, you can see his knees coming out the sides of the cart if you're looking at it head on.

Know who this is?? I did the second I read it.

I don't want you to think that if I don't know or am familiar with a place that I'm reading about, it lessen the enjoyment. It absolutely doesn't. Does the experience intensify when I'm familiar with the place I'm reading about? Of course. Do I tend to gravitate to reading books about places I've been to, like Oxford and London, New York, Los Angeles and Paris? Probably. Does that mean I will never read a book about Ohio? No, of course not. It makes me wonder where I would set a book if I ever wrote one. Would it be Irvine, the place I've lived the most in my life? Would it be London or Oxford, my dream homes? Would it be Idaho where I currently am? Would it be a made-up world? Who knows.