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    Funny How Things Change
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    Funny How Things Change
    Unavailable
    Funny How Things Change
    Ebook194 pages2 hours

    Funny How Things Change

    By Melissa Wyatt

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Remy Walker has it all: he found the love of his life at home in crumbling little Dwyer, West Virginia, deep in his beloved Appalachian Mountains where his family settled more than one hundred and sixty years ago. But at seventeen, you're not supposed to already be where you want to be, right? You've got a whole world to make your way through, and you start by leaving your dead-end town. Like his girlfriend, Lisa. Lisa's going away to college. If Remy goes with her, it would be the start of everything they ever dreamed of. So when a fascinating young artist from out of state shows Remy his home through new eyes, why is he suddenly questioning his future?

    The author vividly depicts a rich and beautiful place in this powerful novel about a young man who, over the course of a summer, learns how much he has to give up for a girl, and how much he needs to give up for a mountain.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateApr 27, 2009
    ISBN9781429947022
    Unavailable
    Funny How Things Change
    Author

    Melissa Wyatt

    I have had the most boring life of any young adult author, and I’ve read a lot of young adult author bios, so I know. I have never sailed to Australia or trekked through Tibet. I have never been a race-car driver, danced on Broadway, or run with the bulls. I grew up in Weiglestown, Pennsylvania, a little town a few miles north of York, Pennsylvania, which of course is famous for the Peppermint Pattie. I was an accomplished liar as a child, though I didn’t lie to be mean or to weasel out of things. I just made up things to make myself seem more interesting to friends, teachers, and total strangers. Even then, I had an amazingly boring life. But being a good liar is a great background for a writer. I started making up stories about people other than myself and writing them down in eighth grade. But when I graduated from high school in 1981, I’d had about enough of school and took the first of a series of secretarial jobs for the State of Pennsylvania, jobs where the primary directive was to “look busy.” So I sat at the typewriter and wrote. Reams and reams of stuff. It was a great opportunity to stretch my writing wings and learn the craft. I left the state after eight years, and for a little while I made a living as a doll artist, sometimes making dolls for famous people like Demi Moore and Anne Rice, and that was about as exciting as my life ever got. The doll market crashed after 9/11 and I decided it was time to get serious about publishing a book. My first novel, Raising the Griffin, was published by Random House in 2004. Writing for teenagers appeals to me because being a teenager is all about change and choice and figuring out how you fit in the world, and those are great building blocks for stories. When I’m not writing, I’m hanging out with my two boys and my husband or indulging in embarrassingly old-lady-like hobbies like gardening, bird-watching, and old movies. (I haven’t yet taken up knitting, but there’s time.)

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    Reviews for Funny How Things Change

    4/5

    35 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A small town WV teen thinks he wants to leave with the girl he loves, but over the course of a summer considers whether he might love his hometown more. I loved it.
    • 3/5
      Funny How Things Change by Melissa Wyatt takes place in what's left of a West Virginia mining town. Jobs are scarce. Money is scarce.Remy has a college bound girlfriend and he's got a job at a local mechanics. He's been planning to follow Lisa when she leaves for college. He figures he can get a job at any garage. Then, things change with the arrival of a student artist, working with grant money to spruce up the town and capture the coal mining history through her art.Her fish out of water take on this little ex-mining town makes Remy re-examine his own relationship with both the town and the mountain. His internal struggle acts as the stage for building character studies for the town and the mountain.As it happened, I read this book on the heels of finishing Jeannette Wall's memoir The Glass Castle — part of which covers her time with her father's family in West Virginia. While the conditions depicted in Funny How Things Change are no where near as bleak as Walls's memoir, her descriptions continually crept in and colored my interpretation of Wyatt's novel. I think, though, that Wyatt's book is to be open ended.
    • 4/5
      I'm always happy to find a love story told from a young man's perspective. This one is suffused with love of place as well, and it's quite believable. Remy's quick temper and outraged feelings ring so very true, as does his bewilderment when it comes to relationships. He's a genuine person, one I'd like to know. The secondary characters are a delight, and the backstory feels full, although it's not explicitly told. Well-done, engaging, and recommended.
    • 4/5
      Funny How Things Change hit close to home to me, a small town girl who has never left home because of not only my family and friends, but my love of the land around me. And this is what tests Remy Walker at a very young age. Fresh out of high school, Remy Walker is finding his life changing in ways, drastic ways, in ways he isn’t ready for and in ways that will be irreparable. And it all begins with Lisa. Lisa, Remy’s girlfriend and love of his life is going away to college, getting out of town and not looking back and she wants Remy to go with her. Like most teenage romances, they can’t live without each other and so, with little real thought involved, Remy says yes. He will go with Lisa and nothing will stand in their way!Remy lives in coal mining country, the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, where his family has lived on their mountain for more than one hundred and sixty years. His town is dying, now that the coal mining industry is drying up. Life in Dwyer looks like a dead-end for everyone, not just a young kid starting out in life. But the mountain is in his blood, in his soul, and it is not until it looks like Remy will loose it all, do things begin to become clear to him. What will he choose? His father and his mountain? Or the love of his life, Lisa? And just how does Dana, the artsy girl visiting town to paint the water tower, and Remy’s new friend, factor into the equation?Funny How Things Change is a quiet novel about growing up, learning who you are, and knowing where you came from and where you want to go. Wyatt’s writing is lovely and her portrayal of a thoughtful, quiet, and confused teenage boy feels genuine and honest. It was heartening to read a novel where the protagonist actually learns to be happy with what he has with an even more refreshing ending – and even more exciting that it is a boy. I just haven’t read that many novels like this with a male protagonist. I’m afraid that a novel in this genre could get overlooked for the flashier, more exciting YA novels, but I hope it won’t. I would love to see more novels about Remy! Funny How Things Change feels like a true Southern novel with it’s themes of family and familial history. I highly enjoyed Funny How Things Change and highly recommend it.
    • 4/5
      Remy is seventeen and in love with Lisa. The roots of his small hometown run so deep into him. The question is, do they run deep enough to hold him there? This book was a creeper, meaning the story slowly crept over me and pulled me right into it. It wasn't long and I could feel Remy's desperation at wanting to escape his small town. Then the reader gets tossed about with his confusion. Remy is a very relate-able guy.The interesting thing about this book, is that it told a fairly simply story in an eloquent way. Before long the reader can sense his strong familial and geographical connections. It's not just the town that he's tied to but the land itself. The description in this book is beautiful. Remy thinks of the mountains as beings with water filling their capillaries. Check this book out and find out how Remy answers the age old question, should I stay or should I go?For all it's loveliness, I give this one four big kisses!
    • 3/5
      There’s not a big, intricate plot in this book; rather, it follows one character as he struggles to figure out who and what is most important to him in life. Remy would be perfectly content to live out his days in his small town. But people tell him that he can’t be okay with that, that he has to want more, to see more of the world than Dwyer, so he decides to move out of state with his college-bound girlfriend. Though it’s just one choice, the implications of it are far-reaching, and it could change everything in Remy’s life. When he meets Dana, Remy’s plan to give up the life he knows for a new life with Lisa isn’t as straightforward as he once thought it would be. It’s not just that he finds Dana attractive, or that he questions his love of Lisa because of that, but through his interactions with Dana he has the chance to look at his life from an outsider’s perspective. Honestly, if the whole story could be wrapped up into a choice between two girls, the book would have been far too simple for me. Instead he has to really consider what he is and isn’t willing to sacrifice for love, and also what love really is.Books like this live and die on the author’s ability to write compelling characters. Fortunately Remy is a well-written character and I enjoyed the glimpse into his life. I have to admit that at first I thought he was a slacker who just didn’t want to leave Dwyer because it’s comfortable to stay where everything is familiar. But he proved me wrong. There’s nothing about Remy that’s easy to categorize, and that’s why I love this character. Everything about him is complicated: his relationship with his father, his feelings for Lisa, his inexplicable love for Dwyer, the depth of his friendship with Dana. Throughout the book Remy is forced to reevaluate his future plans time and again as he comes against resistance from different directions. Ultimately the decision he makes about his future is fraught with complicated explanations, just like most difficult decisions in real-life.One thing this book does that I haven’t come across much in the books I’ve read is show a relationship between a father and son where the dad isn’t either overbearingly controlling or overcompensating for what a lousy guy he is (or has been in the past), and the son isn’t always thinking about how much he hates his dad. Remy and his dad are just two guys, living together, no need for apologies or explanations for being the way they are. When Remy’s dad questions the motivations behind the decisions Remy is making about his future, at first it seems like their relationship will shift into one full of tension, but instead it becomes clear that his dad just cares about him. The sacrifices he’s willing to make to bring about Remy’s happiness are astounding, and those sacrifices are what lead Remy to consider what sacrifices he can make in his life.By the end of the book, Remy’s growth as a person is evident. Through the conversations he has and the things he observes, he is forced to consider the consequences his decisions have in the future not only for him, but for the other people in his life. He does a lot of maturing over the few weeks of the story, and I think that the book ends with him making the best decision for him.
    • 4/5
      Remy and his girlfriend, Lisa, have been together forever – and that’s just how Remy likes it. His quiet, West Virginian life is simple, uneventful, and lacks big changes. But high school graduation is nearing, and Lisa wants Remy to go with her to Pennsylvania when she starts college. She knows Remy isn’t planning on going to college, and tells him he can get a mechanic’s job anywhere – so why not go with her? Of course, Remy wants to go with Lisa – he loves her. But when Dana, a traveling muralist and college student, comes to town, she starts to put ideas in Remy’s head. Ideas that put Remy’s dreams in front of Lisa’s, that question Remy’s blind love of Lisa. Now Remy has to choose between his old, comfortable life, and a new future.
    • 5/5
      Remy Walker has always lived in Dwyer, a small mountain town in West Virginia. In fact, the mountain that he lives on (Walker Mountain) has his family namesake. Now that Remy and his girlfriend, Lisa, have graduated from high school, Remy has to make the biggest decision of his life: Should he follow Lisa to Pennsylvania where she will attend college, and he will find a job, or should he stay in Dwyer? At first, the answer seems easy, follow Lisa, but then an outsider, Dana, helps him realize that the decision may not be as easy as it sounds.Funny How Things Change is an intimate look into a young man’s life and the decisions he must make. Remy is one of the most well-developed characters I’ve read about. Wyatt really dug beneath the surface of him, and this helped create a novel with a lot of feeling. Another great thing about Remy is that while overall he is a good person, he is not perfect. Funny How Things Change shows several mistakes that Remy has made, but these mistakes do not detract readers to the character. There’s a specific moment toward the end (that I will not spoil) that could have ended in readers disliking Remy, but because his character was so well-written, readers were able to understand Remy. It takes a gifted writer to that, and Wyatt succeeded.Another thing I liked about Funny How Things Change was that it’s so different from most YA novels. I mean, how many YA novels have you read that take place in a mountain town? I enjoyed reading about mountain town because it’s similar, yet different to what I know.