Dora: A Headcase by Lidia Yuknavitch

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Date of Publication: August 7^th, 2012

Memorable Quotation: “Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, lemme tell you. Those are big years. Everybody always thinks of it as adolescence- just getting through to the real part of your life- but it’s more than that..I could die tomorrow and have lived the main ups and downs of life. Pain. Loss. Love. And what you all so fondly refer to as wisdom. Wanna know the difference between adult wisdom and young adult wisdom? You have the ability to look back at your past and interpret it. I have the ability to look at my present and live it with my whole body.” (pg. 174)

Lasting Impression: Raunchy, fast-paced, and immediately captivating, any fan of Chuck Palahniuk will love this story of a teenage girl who rebels against society not for attention but for the need to be free against judgmental adults.

Storyline: A

Pace of Story: A+

Characters: A+

Ending: A

Overall Grade: A+

Taking Sigmund Freud’s patient Ida Breur aka “Dora” into the twenty-first century, she is given a modern twist as being a defiant seventeen year old who adopts the name ‘Dora’ because of the Dora the Explorer purse she always keeps her Zoom H4n in to record the world around her  putting her own twist on things. Between Dora and her three comrades, Little Teena, Ave Maria, and Obsidian, they perform ‘art attacks’ to stir up the mundane of everyday life, live in the glory and pain of adolescence and in doing so, form a family that goes beyond blood. 

Lidia Yuknavitch’s story she gives Dora to tell is unlike anything I have ever read, mostly because this is not your typical coming-of-age story. Even if you are not, or were not, a teenager plunging into anarchy against your parents and the entire world, everything Dora says and describes makes sense. The bold and blunt context Dora uses to tell her story is fierce but with a passion to show the world that being a teenager is not ‘a phase’ that will go away with time and Yuknavitch, like Palahniuk, is not afraid to yell at society through their characters and tell everyone how everything really is. 

Part satire of psychology and all the fast-paced adventure of finding yourself you can handle, the only small issue with this novel is the pace. Yuknavitch moves very quickly and sometimes you may have to catch your breath and re-read some parts to keep up, but if you are quick on your feet and can keep going without hesitation, you are in for a wild ride.

There are not enough words to describe how extraordinary and important this book is in today’s world, but author Vanessa Vesselka has made an interesting observation that shows how important Dora: A Headcase is. She says, “In twenty years, I hope to wake up in a world where Dora: A Headcase has replaced Catcher in the Rye on high school reading lists for the alienated.”  Believe me, I hope I wake up to this world one day as well, because this novel could serve to be one of the most important pieces of literature anyone will ever read, especially teenagers. Some teachers may think that this book is advocating teenage rebellion (which it is not), but the significance is there. Through Dora: A Headcase, Yuknavitch brilliantly shows how love goes beyond words, self-expression goes beyond art, and if the world is not ready for you, tell them to make room because you’re coming anyway.

~Shelly-Beans