The Wakefields of Sweet Valley (part two)

Things they didn’t teach me in grad school “Anyone who sneaks downstairs in the middle of the night to put her feelings into a poem is a writer, Amanda. A real one.” (Another Simpsons reference: “That’s the stupidest story I’ve ever heard, and I read the entire Sweet Valley High series.”)

Meanest thing ever Ted, amazingly, chooses Amanda to be his girlfriend. They share a secret letter-writing romance, while Samantha continues to lust after him. Samantha, ever the smart one, finds the letters, burns them, and keeps Ted’s pending visit a secret. When she tricks Ted into going for a drive with her, Ted breaks the news that Amanda is the twin for him. Samantha decides to frame him for bootlegging and watches nonchalantly as he’s dragged off to prison while Amanda sleeps unknowingly at home. When detective Amanda puts the pieces together the next day, she confronts Samantha. And here’s the one place I get really, absolutely angry. She gets mad not that Samantha did something horrible to another human being, but because “All Ted and I wanted was to be happy together.” This is the continuing argument for why she won’t talk to Samantha. And her parents don’t seem to notice or care? Samantha goes off to Hollywood, becomes a huge starlit, gets married and pregnant. Her parents – we see through the clips Amanda has cut from the paper – appear to act as if their daughter didn’t do something completely horrendous. (One might note that Samantha is a “perfect size-six.” What that means in 1920s standards does not mesh with our modern day beauties.) At the tender age of nineteen, Samantha dies in childbirth, as Amanda swoops to her side.

We found Sweet Valley! Guess where Amanda’s teaching English? Sweet Valley High! I’m so excited for her. She’s helping care for her niece Marjorie, who is about to be swept away to France. I guess Sweet Valley isn’t sweet enough. Damn Depression.

Most boring thing ever I have vague memories from Marjorie’s Anne-Frank-alike existence. For some reason, I’ve always associated her helping the Resistance with the creek by my parents’ house. Marjorie, too, loses the man she loves and is forced to marry someone else. “She was going home, but her heart would stay here. Buried with Jacques. Forever.” The book seems to get really weird on pacing around this part. Marjorie slows way the hell down, then speeds up into some marriage, and then BAM! she’s got Alice, and we’re landing on the moon.

Last week in Sweet Valley Another brief history lesson on the family, just in case we’ve forgotten over the course of three hundred pages (and the other quick recaps along the way). Young Alice draws a family tree, and, with fifty pages remaining, we see that “One day, she would be able to fill in the spot where her own family would go.” As far as I can tell, Amanda is the only one to not get married. But she still has a family in her dead twin’s daughter, so I guess that counts.

Feelin’ groovy Here is where time becomes vague for our brooding hippie child. The other sections of the book have definitive years attached to them. Now we just have the late 1960s, but we do know Woodstock has already taken place. Idealistic Alice protests on her college campus and, surprisingly, falls in love with Hank Patman. (I believe this relationship resurfaces in a later Sweet Valley High book. The twins maybe find a picture or something?) (Oh, that reminds me, they’ve been passing down the wooden rose all along. That used to make me happy when I was little, but now I find it rather forgettable.)

The more you know…(shooting star) “Hank, my painting is not just a hobby. Women have professions, too, you know.”

Things that are unbelievable I know Sweet Valley is never supposed to be believable, but I draw the line at college students in the 1960s drinking sparkling cider. If high-class Hank is giving Alice caviar, shouldn’t there be wine or something involved? Maybe they’ve smoked a joint? Something? Anything? No? Okay.

Hey, I think I’ve read this before “And then she could resist no longer. Alice inhaled the salty, furious ocean. It was the last memory she had.” Girls named Alice should stay out of the ocean, I think.

Another Wakefield? You know what Alice notices about this one? His “high cheekbones, the strong, straight line of his nose, the cleft of his chin.” She, too, is fairly certain she’s seen him before. And felt the pain of him walking away. We know that Ned, though, gets to win eventually. I thought that, in this book, we learned of Ned’s ring that matches the wooden rose, but that must be in the boy half of the Saga (the one with the blue cover. This one’s pink, in case you were curious). I am wrong, though.

Here, we learn that Amanda is still alive. Jessamyn, we learned a little earlier, died right around when Alice’s older sister was born. No mention of when the original Alice died, though. And I don’t recall ever learning of Amanda or Marjorie’s existence in other Sweet Valley books. Maybe we do.

At the last minute, Alice realizes she could never marry Hank (just as we learn that Jessica will never date Bruce) and runs to find Ned, who is listening to “their song” on repeat.

A number of years later A little Steven Wakefield pokes at his baby twin sisters. Alice contemplates the girls’ heritage. If this were a movie, we could have a montage with sappy music. If it were my movie, I’d pick “We Are Family” just because it would make me laugh. We pan away with this: “The weathered old wood of the delicate flower, full of secret memories, held the past in its petals. Alice smiled at the infant in her arms, then leaned over and kissed the one in Ned’s. In their perfect, identical faces, Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield held the secrets of the future.”