Ellen Hopkins, a young adult fiction writer, has cranked out dozens of books for children and teenagers alike. Most of her books are about the “tough stuff”, covering topics such as religion, sex, drugs, mental illness, and suicide. She writes in freeform poetry, rather than a standard novel with chapters. Aside from the fact that her prose is rather original, her writing is usually morbid, depressing, and most of it is ridiculously melodramatic. Hopkins continued to demonstrate this writer’s trait in her new book, Tricks, the tale of five teenage prostitutes.
Tricks starts out with an original way of writing. It tells the stories of five different teenagers from all over America and their individual journeys and hardships. The first is Eden, who was the daughter of a preacher, and a family of an extremely strict religious background. The second is Seth who lives in Indiana with his father and the constant fear that his dad will find out he is gay. Whitney has always lived in the shadow of her older sister, and seeks attention from an older guy who promises her the world. Ginger acts as a mother to all of her younger siblings, while her own mother medicates herself with drugs, alcohol, and sex. The last teenager, Cody, tries to hold his broken family together and also develops a gambling addiction. As events unfold, each of them feels as though they must run away to Las Vegas to escape their home lives. Their paths all cross in Las Vegas towards the end of the book.
Although the subject of the book itself didn’t exactly sound promising (teenage prostitution), the book actually started out well. I liked how it switched between each character, explaining the events that led up to running away. However, as time went on, I found the book to be carbon copies of all of her other books. The main character(s) usually have something awful happen to them and they make even worse choices, and the end of the book is always so vague, that it makes you wonder if anything will ever start getting better. It’s extremely unsatisfying and although I can see that the author is going for a “deep” and thought-provoking ending, every ending feels as if it’s the same.
With Tricks, most of the characters were stereotypes, and most didn’t go through any character development at all. I’ve often heard Hopkins’ writing as being realistic, but avoiding sugar-coating everything doesn’t mean that everyone must be a ruthless villain, while the main character is some victim of circumstances. I think that being realistic means recognizing the fact that there’s good and bad in everyone, and not every bad person in the world circles one very vulnerable, helpless good person.
Besides that little stipulation, I felt as though Hopkins only presented a bunch of statistics in her novel, rather than think of her characters as people. I don’t really have a problem with metaphors, but it was almost as if she researched teenage prostitution on the internet for about fifteen minutes and then wrote a novel about it. That’s how I’ve usually felt while reading most of her books. It even makes me wonder if she’s being controversial just for the sake of being controversial.
Although I really like the fluidity and originality of Hopkins’ writings, I feel as if I’m coming to the end of the line on her books. It’s funny how one starts to notice these little patterns that match a specific book to a specific author. Sometimes, I like noticing these things. However, if the pattern involves graphic descriptions of things that for the most part should be vaguely described, melodramatic characters, and depressing endings, I don’t always think that it’s a good thing. In short, Tricks and Ellen Hopkins’ other books are becoming rather banal.