Walking+Naked

Freaks, Cliques and Poems, Oh My! Alyssa Brugman 185. Delacorte Press. US $15.95 Review by Jenny Cooke
 * //Walking Naked//**

//Walking Naked// by Alyssa Brugman is narrated by a girl named Megan Tuw. Megan is the book’s protagonist and has a seemingly perfect life. She is the only child of two loving parents and is part of her high school’s most exclusive groups. Megan is secure in her role and ignorantly happy. Because of her secure and flippant attitude, Megan is suddenly thrust into detention with the school freak, Perdita Wiguiggan. Perdita begins to challenge Megan’s view of the world and the two bond over the unlikely subject of poetry. Megan begins to understand more about Perdita’s true life as she slowly moves away from her school clique. The clique discovers Megan’s friendship with Perdita and gives her a choice: the freak or the group.

This book accurately portrays the trials of modern high school and shows how easily girl’s friendships and loyalties can change in this impressionable period as well as their view of the world. Alyssa Brugman does an excellent job of making Megan’s voice mimic that of a modern day student. This is an interesting book with witty observations and a plot which many teenagers are able to relate to.

One thing which separated this book from many other stories of teenage popularity is the character’s complexity. The main characters of Perdita and Megan are not defined as heroines or bad people. Perdita and Megan are both just high-school students fighting for survival in their different environments. Megan’s flaw is that she is very sure of herself which leads to an unsatisfied ego. The outcast is not perfect either. Perdita has personality flaws which make it difficult to like her but also succeed in making her character more interesting. The freak is not simply misunderstood but has some traits that are odd such as reciting poetry at random times. Perdita even moves differently from others. Megan describes Perdita’s gait when the book first introduces Perdita’s character, “Even the way she walked was weird. Perdita Wiguiggan hunkered down with her shoulders stooped and her chin forward. She took long clomping strides like a man. It was a very ungraceful walk.” Perdita is intelligent, intense, and emotionally unstable. Her passion is poetry and she is so obsessed with it, that she steals the school’s collection of poetry books from the library and stores them all back in her room. Perdita verifies her action to Megan by explaining, “Besides, nobody else was ever going to read them and appreciate them as much as me. Why shouldn’t I borrow them?” Perdita can sometimes be so intense that she forgets the boundaries of right and wrong.

The contrast between Megan and Perdita is an interesting aspect of the book. Megan has everything and while Perdita has nothing. Perdita lacks friends, parents, and her only solace is in poetry. Perdita was adopted and her adopted dad is abusive to his wife. At school, Perdita is shunned and mocked by others. Perdita faces so many real problems of the real world while Megan faces none. Megan has a pre-made set of friends, brains, and loving parents who want the best for her. Through her friendship with Perdita Megan realizes that not everybody has the charmed life that she does.

Alyssa Brugman works many examples of poetry and its meaning into the plot. Perdita believes in the power of poetry to express any emotion. Every emotion she has ever had has already been captured by others and stored in books. This idea gives Perdita comfort to know that she is not completely alone in the world. Discussions of poetry are cleverly written into the book. One example of this is when Perdita asks the teacher supervising detention his opinion of a poem by Yeats called the “A Coat.” Perdita says, “I think what Mr. Yeats is saying is, whenever you do something, make something that is of yourself, other people will misinterpret it. So you might as well keep it to yourself.” Perdita voices her opinion then asks the teacher for his. This poem is where the story gets its title from. Perdita tries to show Megan the meaning of poetry by taking Megan on “outings” to her house with the schools stolen supply of poetry books and also to a lecture and discussion of poetry at the local university. At the university, the professor discusses the meaning of a poem by Sylvia Plath titled “The Thin People.” Megan’s view of poetry is not revealed until the end of the book. “I think most poems are a joke. Don’t you get it? All great poems are riddled with secret messages the poets have left in a language which only their nearest and dearest could ever understand. We try to decode them but I don’t think we’ll ever know.” //Walking Naked// is an engaging book that high school students will relate to and enjoy.