I really love the movie version of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants so I decided to pick up the book. I'm kind of a sucker for teen movies and films because even though I'm no longer a teenager, I find that they generally contain the optimism and hope that I miss from being a teenager. You know, that your friends are going to be your friends forever and everything is destiny and your life will work out perfectly. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not an unhappy adult - I just miss that unabashed innocence of the uncomplicated years is all. There's something very powerful in that belief.) I was also under the mistaken impression that this was a book written during my teen years and I'd just missed it - but no, it was written in 2001 and I was in my 20s then.Anyway, I wasn't so keen on the first book. And apparently the movie producers weren't either, since they changed almost every detail. (I tried to find an explanation for this on the Internet, but no go; almost every review said they remained mostly faithful to the book. Huh? Did we see the same movie?) The basics remained the same: It's a story about four best friends who find a pair of jeans that fits them all perfectly and they send the pants around to each other over the summer as a way of staying connected. Lena goes to Greece and falls in love; Carmen goes to South Carolina to visit her divorced, single father, only to discover he's found a new family; Bridget goes to soccer camp in Baja and falls for a coach; and Tibby stays home to work at a drugstore and she forms a friendship with a 12-year-old who has leukemia. But then after that, the book is pretty different - and strangely, I think the screenwriter did the better job. I recognize that I have a strong bias toward the movie, and perhaps I wasn't giving the book its own fair shot, but I just found it to be...meandering. The movie does a much better job of providing reasons and/or explanations - like why Bridget is so reckless, what happens with her and Eric on the beach, why Lena's in love with Kostos at the end of the summer...
But the characters are compelling, without a doubt, and quite similar to the live-action versions. So I decided to read Book 2, The Second Summer of the Sisterhood. I was totally curious as to how things turned out - I've seen the second version of the movie, but with the way Book 1 ended, it seemed impossible for the book version and the movie version to match up. And sure enough, they didn't, not really in the slightest. But that was okay - I quite liked Book 2. Even though it also suffered from some contrived situations, it was touching - and I felt genuinely bad for Lena and Bridget, especially. In the second book, the girls are still in high school; Lena stays home for the summer agonizing over Kostos, Carmen stays home and ruins her mother's relationship with a new boyfriend, Tibby goes to a filmmaking course in Virginia, and Bridget runs off to Alabama to reconnect with herself and her grandmother.
My only real gripe with the second book was the emphasis on appearance - which seems like a harmful thing in a book written for teen girls. Basically after the ambiguous thing that happens with soccer coach Eric in Mexico, Bridget slides into a funk. She quits soccer and dyes her trademark hair black - and god forbid, gains 15 pounds. And while I realize it's supposed to be a metaphor, I was mostly just left with the impression that weight = bad. I just wonder if young girls realize that Bridget re-finds herself because she confronted the truth - and not just because she went back to being that gorgeous, svelte girl that everyone loved.
Anyway, so I'm on to Book Three tomorrow. Yes, I've been sucked into this series. And I'm kinda hoping Lena is going to get the movie's fairy tale ending with Kostos. I don't think it's going to happen but having lived through a similar situation in real life, I know it sucks and you think about it forever, so I've got my fingers crossed for her.
And on a final note, as an added bonus, the very hilariously awesome clip of America Ferrera and Blake Lively promoting The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. Yes, it's the one with the eye roll...
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