Going Vintage is cute, fluffy and rather pertinent. I have been taking a lot of classes that deal with new media for children and young adults and the term “digital native” has been bandied around to varying degrees of acceptance. The point is, technology is as essential to kids today as perhaps breathing (you know what I mean). It’s not something they think about, just like we didn’t question telephones or the TV. It was just there and we used it. Similarly, the generation that is coming of age right now do not question computers, tablets, new media, stuff like that. So when Mallory (this name is really popular, I just wrote a review of Hysteria and the protagonist of that book is also Mallory) decides to go completely cold turkey where technology is concerned, everyone is skeptical about her chances of success.How does one survive without technology in this day and age? Cell phones especially are so necessary. I could live without one but I would never know what time is. Anyway, Going Vintage is the second title I have read by Lindsey Leavitt. The first one was Sean Griswold’s Head and if you haven’t checked that out one out yet, I sincerely recommend it to you. While Going Vintage was interesting, I thought it had rather less substance to it than I was expecting.First of all, there is that thing about Mallory’s boyfriend “cheating” with a girl online. I thought it was an interesting dilemma and it would have benefited from a lot more attention than it got in the novel. Mallory comes upon emails etc that her bf exchanged with that girl and immediately storms out – no wait, first she writes something not very flattering on what is the fictional equivalent of his facebook page.Some more discussion about the cheating, about what constitutes as cheating would have been interesting. Mallory, following the massive online reaction against her so-called hacking of her bf’s facebook page, jumps into trying to recreate what she felt was a simpler adolescence – one that did not have the constant connection and feedback enjoyed by today’s teenagers. An adolescence like the one her grandmother must have enjoyed when she was growing up. When there were no cell phones, computers or the cyberspace – when life was simpler.The book is especially successful in portraying the different kinds of relationships that construct a family. Mallory and her sister were particularly awesome and I enjoyed their exchanges. Mallory’s grandmother came across as far more gruff and less sympathetic than she was meant to be but she seemed like a real person than a stereotype of a grandma but I wasn’t a fan of either of Mallory’s parents. The book felt really rushed, to be honest. While it was fun and there were some laugh out loud moments, it felt like we were going at too high a speed to fully appreciate the nuances and complexities that made up Mallory’s life. Also, while the side characters were wonderful and sharply etched, I didn’t get much where Mallory was concerned. There is nothing about her that distinguishes her from anyone else.You know how books usually follow a pattern: problem, resolution, etc. I kept on waiting for Mallory to learn something from her attempt to recreate the past but she starts out knowing that she cannot sustain her tech-free life. I wish Leavitt had let Mallory realize that – shown that lack of technology may make for a quieter life but it doesn’t take the complexity away. The grandmother’s arc does try to convey that but again, not enough time and attention is devoted to developing what could have been an emotionally rich narrative/scene.The romance is there. It is okay. It didn’t do anything much for me. This may have been due to the speed at which things happen.I was just expecting a whole lot more from this book than it delivered. If you had a choice between this and Sean Griswold, I’d say go the Griswold way.
