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Anya's Ghost

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There was this great subtlety in Brosgol’s writing/drawing and Anya’s insecurities were introduced with such skill and it never felt too overwhelming. From the get go, Anya is at odds with society. She is insecure in how she looks, she’s self-conscious about her heritage, she has a crush on a boy who has a blonde All-American girlfriend with the perfect life and she argues with her mum all the time because they don’t understand how the other one is feeling. And then she gets haunted by a pesky ghost. I mean, come on…doesn’t she get a break? a b Ceceri, Kathy (May 31, 2011). "Review: Anya's Ghost". Wired. San Francisco: Condé Nast. ISSN 1059-1028. OCLC 24479723. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016 . Retrieved August 8, 2017. YMMV • Radar • Quotes • ( Funny • Heartwarming • Awesome) • Fridge • Characters • Fanfic Recs • Nightmare Fuel • Shout Out • Plot • Tear Jerker • Headscratchers • Trivia • WMG • Recap • Ho Yay • Image Links • Memes • Haiku • Laconic • Source • Setting Anya Borzakovskaya is a Russian emigre attending the third-worst private school in her state. Her single mother can't understand the pressures on Anya as she tries to Americanize herself and fit in to the sometimes vicious world of adolescence. Anya and her only friend, Siobhan, spend as much time feuding as they do helping each other out, and then there's Dima, the only other Russian kid in school, who is "fobby" (Fresh off the Boat) and who makes Anya squirm with embarrassment (usually just before he gets clobbered by the more athletic kids). Anya sneaks away from school one day in a dark cloud of frustration and finds herself down a deep hole — with a skeleton.

In a lot of ways, Anya’s Ghost explores the same cultural experience Gene Yang looks at in American Born Chinese, the barrier between being true to our own identity and being accepted by the world around us. While Yang’s protagonist gets a perm and imagines himself white, Brosgol’s Anya is determined to be assimilated. Both books speak gently to the threat of alienation, to the social stigma attached to not fitting in. Both works, in the end, admonish the reader that fitting in isn’t the be-all, end-all of human—let alone high school—existence. And best of all, neither book comes off overly preachy in their lessons, which is always nice for stories that contain overt morals at book’s end. Ordinary Highschool Student: Anya, Siobhan and their classmates. Evidently, Emily wants very badly to be one. I dated a girl once with haunted cleavage. Well, okay, no. I didn’t. But pretending I did makes the whole thing seem more worthwhile. Control Freak: "Highschool's pretty fun, but imagine how great college will be! Not that you'll be needing any more boy help pretty soon! How young do people get married nowadays? ...Well, we'll just have to find that out then, won't we?"But the whole story with Emily, the ghost, didn’t really move or excite me (I do have to admit that I couldn’t read this at night—Ghosts scare me!). Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: We're led to believe at first that Emily is just a timid but friendly ghost who only wants to be free from the hole her remains are in, akin to Casper. But once she manages to get Anya to go to Sean's party, the facade slowly starts to crumble and we begin to see how she really is. Foreshadowing: The cover. At first glance it just looks like Anya with the Emily we're first introduced to, but look closer and you'll see Emily's hairstyle is different. It's the hairstyle she gets when she first begins to reveal her true self to Anya. Gym Class Hell: Anya paints gym class that way during the bleep test, although it's pretty standard otherwise. Love Martyr: Elizabeth. She'll stand guard while Sean cheats on her with other boys' girlfriends because she wants him to love her.

Generally speaking, of course. There are always a few works of the genre that don’t play to cliché. Thankfully, Anya’s Ghost avoids most of the usual traps of the form. There are even moments when I found myself gleefully surprised at a direction in which Vera Brosgol would choose to take her story. Anya’s Ghost, as one may have guessed by now, is about three things. A girl named Anya, high school shenanigans, and, of course, a ghost. So really, the joy is in the details of how the story all works out rather than in the genius of any of the three parts on their own.Jerkass Has a Point: While Anya admits that's she's no different from Emily in some similar traits, she's right to point out Emily more than had her chance when she was alive and her dilemma is the result of her own rash actions and failing to grasp their consequences. Soul Jar: Of a sort. Emily can't move very far from her skeleton, so Anya ends up carrying a bone from her little finger so they can move about together. I get what the author was trying to do and this conclusion came about after a realization Anya has regarding Elizabeth's relationship with her crush, but it came off with the implication that it's acceptable to be mean to people who do have their shit together. Like, don't just act like a decent human being when someone is currently struggling with poor mental health - do so every other time as well, thanks boo boo. It’s more just that I never felt as if I couldn’t, if I had wanted to, talk to someone and have them not snub me outright. Maybe it’s different in other schools around the country, but according to my experience in Orange County circa 1990, school-based YA lit just doesn’t ring true.

The story: Wow! This was one unique and spooky story that really made me have a greater appreciation for horror stories (although I already had a huge obsession with those types of stories!) Vera Brosgol has done an excellent job at writing this story as the characters’ dialogues are full of snarky comments which made each character so relatable to the readers. I especially loved the ever sarcastic main character Anya as she is always making comments about how miserable her life is and how she is so embarrassed by her Russian family. Probably my favorite scene in this graphic novel was when Anya has to do the dreaded “Bleep Test” which is where you have to run across the gym and make it to the edge of the gym while a beep sound goes off. This scene strongly related to me because I remembered I had to do the dreaded “Bleep Test” when I was in middle school and it was not fun at all! Slut Shaming. Wow-zah. The casual level in which this was depicted was mind-boggling. Apparently, women can't wear shirts that show off their breasts without Anya and her ghost having a few choice words about it. #yikes.

Who stars in Anya’s Ghost: Cast List

She loves knitting, baking, and trying not to kill her plants. She hopes you are enjoying looking at her drawings! Vera Brosgol was born in Moscow, Russia in 1984 and moved to the United States when she was five. She received a diploma in Classical Animation from Sheridan College, and currently works at Laika Inc. in Portland, Oregon drawing storyboards for feature animation. Apart from the fact that this book was terrifying for approximately the entire book, Brosgol is a master of creating a beautiful story with a message that everyone who has ever felt like they haven’t fit in can relate to. It’s OK not to fit in because the people who you think are living the perfect life are just as flawed as the rest of us. In time, Emily reveals that she was once engaged to a man who died fighting in World War I. She also tells Anya that she fell into the well while fleeing a murderer. Anya promises to help Emily discover the identity of the man who killed her so that her spirit can rest in peace, and Emily agrees to continue helping Anya fit in at school. In a time of typewriters and steam engines, Iris Winnow awaits word from her older brother, who has enlisted on the side of Enva the Skyward goddess. Alcohol abuse led to her mother’s losing her job, and Iris has dropped out of school and found work utilizing her writing skills at the Oath Gazette. Hiding the stress of her home issues behind a brave face, Iris competes for valuable assignments that may one day earn her the coveted columnist position. Her rival for the job is handsome and wealthy Roman Kitt, whose prose entrances her so much she avoids reading his articles. At home, she writes cathartic letters to her brother, never posting them but instead placing them in her wardrobe, where they vanish overnight. One day Iris receives a reply, which, along with other events, pushes her to make dramatic life decisions. Magic plays a quiet role in this story, and readers may for a time forget there is anything supernatural going on. This is more of a wartime tale of broken families, inspired youths, and higher powers using people as pawns. It flirts with clichéd tropes but also takes some startling turns. Main characters are assumed White; same-sex marriages and gender equality at the warfront appear to be the norm in this world. If there’s one negative, it’s purely down to me rather than Brosgol: I’ve read a wee bit too many books like this before and I can’t get as excited over it as I have others. If I’d read this before American Born Chinese, Friends With Boys, and Ms Marvel, I’m sure I’d be more enthusiastic.

I lovedlovedloved Siobhan. She was my favourite kind of literary friend who, basically, tell the heroine to shut the eff up and get over it when they’re being dramatic and don’t let them become too annoying or bitchy. I would like to have seen more of Siobhan because she is the Jane to Anya’s Daria. And one day while she’s feeling particularly blue about her life, she falls into a deep hole in the ground. Underground she meets Emily, a 90 year old ghost. Broken Pedestal: Anya is deeply infatuated with Sean and envies his girlfriend, until she finds out that Sean takes advantage of his girlfriend’s insecurities to get her find girls for him to cheat on her with. Misfit teen Anya attends a private high school where the only people who really talk with her are tough-girl frenemy Siobhan and fellow Russian immigrant Dima, whom Anya deems too “fobbie” (fresh off the boat) to be her friend. She wants to be more American, especially more slender like most of the other girls in school, but it’s not easy with her single mom plying her with heavy, fried Russian breakfasts. Then one day, her mind filled with all her problems, Anya walks right into a hole in the ground and falls into an abandoned well, where she finds a skeleton. This skeleton has a ghost, a teenage girl, who helps get Anya rescued, and then follows Anya home. She says her name is Emily Reilly, and she was murdered ninety years before. Before long, Emily starts helping Anya pass her exams, dress more fashionably, and stalk her secret crush, school basketball star Sean. At first, Anya enjoys her new BFF, but as time goes by she realizes that Emily has taken over a lot of her life. When Anya tries to do things her own way, Emily threatens her friends and family.

Plot: What's the story about?

Control Freak: Emily shows her true colors as one when she starts taking more and more control over Anya's life, trying to force her to live the life she wanted. Brosgol, Vera (December 31, 2011). "Frequently Asked Questions". verabee. Archived from the original on April 6, 2016 . Retrieved December 21, 2021. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2015-09-21 13:54:38.537796 Bookplateleaf 0006 Boxid IA1154814 City New York Donor Anya’s Ghost is a coming-of-age ghost story by Vera Brosgol. It was published in graphic novel format in 2011, though Brosgol, who both wrote and drew the story, has said that it took four years to complete.

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