3 stars
One thing that has always bothered me about a majority of romantic comedy films is stalking. I don't mean to be totally rude. The protagonist of this story is not a bad person. He is actually pretty like-able. Like-able for a stalker. As much as I wanted to root for him, I just found his methods unsettling. It also kept me from loving this book. Allow me to elaborate a bit.
Vinny (Vincenzo) Gold, a 15 year-old living in 1977, is surprised and disheartened to find out that his parents are getting a divorce. They assure him that they still care about one another (in fact it appears that dad is still in love with mom, adding insult to injury), but their relation has lost whatever spark brought them together. Vinny's mom then marries his high school gym teacher, who is obsessed with football, as per the stereotype. Vinny is not the football type. Then, after a mugging in the subway, Vinny's mom and new stepdad decide to move to Long Island, where the stepfather has just accepted a job!
It is hard not to feel for Vinny. He is pushed from one place or another due to things that affect him, yet are out of his control. We also discover that Vinny has "a girl" in his NYC school. Sadly for Vinny, she moved away. Sad for only Vinny, because this girl was unaware that she was "Vinny's". He had been pining for her and done nothing about it. So, pretty early on we know that Vinny is pretty shy, especially when it comes to girls. In fact, we can assume that Vinny is just shy in general, because after arriving at this Long Island high school, he doesn't seem to be interested in making male friends. He goes right from mourning the one sided relationship in his old school to lusting after his pretty female neighborm Patsy, in his new home.
After watching Patsy dress through his window to hers, Vinny becomes fixated on Patsy and begins a campaign of late night calls to her. After eavesdropping on a conversation from a high school jock/classmate of his, Vinny gains access to Patsy's unlisted phone number. His first few calls, which always seem to happen after midnight, are a disaster when Vinny makes an obscene comment to her. Let me just explain, that I am not so much disturbed by Vinny's voyeur activities as I am by what happens with Patsy's phone number. Vinny is a teenage boy and I am sure that a majority of teenagers his age would have succumbed to watching an attractive classmate dress if given the opportunity. What bothered me was the relationship Vinny and Patsy forge through what is definitely phone stalking.
Vinny feels badly about his racy comments to Patsy and continues to call trying to apologize. On the same level though, he appears to be empowered by his status as "obscene caller". He even uses this term to gleefully refer to himself several times. I get that he is trying to be funny, but it came off as creepy. Sure, Patsy calls him out on being creepy but plays this game with him hanging up whenever she feels the conversation has gone too far and continues to pick up every night when he calls back. Since this is the late 70's Patsy can ask an operator if the call is local, but there are no other methods of discovering her caller's identity.
Still, it is Vinny who has all the power in this relationship. He only tells her that his name is "Italian" when she finally asks. He begins to see himself as suave "Vincenzo" and acts like kind of a jerk to Patsy. She knows he is a student in her school but that is it. So basically she is being watched by someone who knows everything about her school social life (friends, boyfriends, etc) but does not know who it is. For all she knows it could be a teacher? She also at one point opens her heart to Vincenzo and asks for his number so she can call him back but he refuses. We are expected to believe that this is due to Vinny's under confidence that he believes she would not want to date him if she "met" him, but really it keeps him in a position of power over her. Again, creepy.
So when Vinny starts spending time with Patsy herself he struggles to merge his two personalities. He clearly is not a bad guy, he defends Patsy's honor when the aforementioned jock disrespects her, but just does not say terribly kind things to her himself during their phone calls. This is supposed to be romantic? It really bothered me.
Again, what kept me reading way that I did feel that Vinny was a good person. Like I said, he is like-able, but the choices he makes just made my stomach churn. The fact that he was empowered by these calls did not sit well with me. I wish that we could have seen Vinny pursue regular friendships at school other than listening in on Patsy's friends conversations. I appreciated the view of Vinny's ever changing relationship with his parents and their new lives. I did enjoy reading his story, I just had too much trouble with what felt like the glorification of a habit that would become less charming as Vinny grew older. Let us hope he learned his lesson.
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