Margaux with an X

I was gripped by Ron Koertge's Margaux with an X. I couldn't put it down; Margaux's attitude and wit is captivating. She's not the shallow, dimwitted "plastic" that most beautiful girls are portrayed as; she's a very profound and intelligent young woman with pain and wounds that cause her to act the way she does when she's with Sara.

The odd and unlikely yet understandable and comfortable relationship between Margaux and Danny is also part of the novel's ability to grip readers; Danny also has past hurts that shapes who he is, but his pain is manifested positively. This is partly because of Evie, his aunt, who takes him in and helps him heal. Margaux has no one. Until Danny and Evie.

The figurative language is also captivating. She speaks of the larger journals in Evie's collection as "large as the screen on a confessional" (134). Instead of telling a boy "no," she tells him she'll talk to him later; she's not sure why she did it. She was "hedging her bets, perhaps. Not burning her bridges, but at least buying matches and starting to gather kindling" (68). She refers to her mother's fingernails as talons, and she describes the front door of their apartment as having "long scratch marks on it, like the insides of a coffin in a horror story" (85). The imagery is unique and refreshing.

I did not, however, like the feelings the novel evoked. I felt as though I reverted, like I was a teenage girl again, and Margaux was the girl we all desperately wished we could be --she's drop-dead gorgeous, witty and quite intelligent, even if she appears mean. So, I recommend caution when recommending this novel to teenagers. It certainly would be a little too old for middle schoolers. I suppose if I were teaching eleventh or twelfth grade, and we were doing literature circles I would allow it; I'd have them focus on vocabulary and figurative language.