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A review on Fly On The Wall by E. Lockhart

Usually in high school, no one wants to be the outcast. We all want those stylish boots in Seventeen Magazine. Those fabulous skirts you see the most popular girl in school wearing.  To be different is social suicide. And we travel great lengths to be the same among the masses of peers. But in Fly On The Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything by E. Lockhart, Gretchen Kaufman Yee cannot stand for normal. Because at Manhattan School of the Arts everyone is different. And as Gretchen so fondly puts it, she had to “capitulate to nonconformity-conformity” because the Manhattan students refuse to settle for normality. And even though she dyed her hair firecracker red to be accepted and even though she sits outside and draws bad-ass pictures of Spiderman, comic book drawing being one of her callings, Gretchen still sits on the sidelines yearning to want to understand her fellow classmates. She wants to understand the best friend who starts disappearing on her, the ex-boyfriend who wants to “stay friends” but does not really “stay friends” and the boy she was falling in love with.

The story creatively takes the plot of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (while Gretchen is learning it in her Literature class) and gives a modern day spin on it. However, the similarities end with Gretchen wishing she could be a fly on the wall in the boys’ locker room.

After Gretchen’s own metamorphosis into a fly, she has no power whatsoever. She glances at the freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors who come through the locker room. She sees the things that most girls are not exposed to- she observes the insecurities that the male population at Manhattan struggle day after day to hide. Day 1 she compares the size of each male ‘gherkins’, as they are called within the story and becomes surprised and flustered at her sightings.  And not long after that she listens in and witnesses bullies picking on those who are ‘abnormal’ and ‘freakish’ and desires to change the outcome of daily locker room harassment. Seeing these instances helps her to finally understand the people around her.

And when she changes back, Gretchen initiates changes that she would never have done without her sudden transformation into the small, winged insect that everyone wants to swat. Her new found confidence changes her into a person proud of herself, and that is a message every high schooler needs to hear.

The writing style of E. Lockhart breaks down the barriers of proper punctuation, intertwining the rules of prose and poetry for a flow that properly shows the thoughts of Gretchen (as herself and as a fly) and accurately displays that our thoughts do not stop with a period. They continously flow on until they end and then we break out with a new point. The non conventional style of writing makes the story an easier read (only having 182 pages helped as well). When Gretchen was herself as a human, the poetic lines and breaks made the story easier to understand because I could relate to having her scattered thoughts and just simply being all over the place. However, when she was in her fly form, it did make the story slightly harder to wrap my brain around because I already had to process the fact that she WAS a fly and combining that with improper punctuation was difficult to say the least. It took me two times to read the book and actually give the fly form part a chance because it was slightly different than her thoughts as a human. The same scattered thoughts apply to either state she is in, therefore overall, it was comprehensible and accessible text.  It was the type of story I could chuck into my purse, read it on my way to my destinations while on Muni and finish it in one day.

Although I have never read the Metamorphosis (in fact, everything I know about it is from reading Fly On The Wall), I can still say that Fly On The Wall, with its hilarious, honest present day twists and turns on the life of a teenage girl should be snatched up today at your local bookstore.