“When even the unpopular girls are rich, if not always pretty, how will they attempt rebellion and nonconformity?”

I haven’t read this new satirical novel about an elite private school in Australia. I probably never will. When I got to the line above in The New York Times review, I thought, “Why would I care?” and decided I should stop reading.

I know, I know, rich white kids have problems too. Their lives are not perfect just because their parents have money. Sure. Sure. I get that. I still don’t want to read about them struggling to find a way to rebel when . . . what? They aren’t overcoming racism, finding their next meal, moving every six months? So sad for them.

I say I don’t care, but the truth is I am merely annoyed.

“Ziggy makes friends with the social outcasts Lex, who was adopted from Bangladesh by aging white Australians, and Tessa, who lost an arm to cancer and wears a prosthetic.”

So I get it, her friends have a tidy assortment of struggles.

There was no getting around it, I had to read the entire review. Being a teenager is miserable for most. Even those who are popular often have something terrible going on behind the scenes. Not to mention the shallow work involved in maintaining their popularity. It doesn’t help that people are still lying to high school students about “the best years of your life.” Trust me, it gets better.

““Inappropriation” is certainly intelligent and has its finger on the zeitgeist of the Instagram and Tumblr generation, but it also paints the worst possible picture of teenagers trying to understand themselves. Who is the book’s intended audience, really? Those of us who understand our own complexities and nuances, and can laugh at the book’s exaggerations of them? Or those who think that all identity politics is nonsense? Surely both groups will enjoy it, but for very different, and in the latter case perhaps troubling, reasons. In satire as in life, there’s a difference between laughing with people and laughing at them.”

The teenagers I taught came from a wide variety of backgrounds. All of them had struggles. Even the most together, confident, and consistently cheerful person in the world genuinely suffers in his or her life. None of us get by in perfection, at least no one I ever taught. I never found their pain and confusion entertaining, much less funny. There have been any number of novels making best-seller lists while focusing on a narrow demographic. This seems to be another one.

I just finished reading the post-war utopian novel Walden Two by behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner. Skinner honestly believed he was creating a (fictional) cultural paradise, a utopia where everyone could achieve a pleasant life regardless of gender or race. Big, big fail, not to mention many of the details about child rearing and eliminating envy, competition, and jealousy are naive at best, downright abusive at worst.

Childhood is tough. Shows like Jimmy Kimmel find entertainment in causing kids to cry. It’s okay, because it’s only a joke? Because the kids’ parents lied? Because no one should cry over candy? Why not tell them their dog died?

Kimmel is just crass exploitation. The novel review suggests Frieman’s novel has very little more to offer. Skinner’s novel is a trainreck in many ways, but at least he had an objective. If you believed you could make everybody happy (not cry), wouldn’t you try to do it?

I still don’t think I will read the book, but I am glad to have read the review.