As far as fiction is concerned few settings can rival high school in providing a proper environment for tragedy. Young adulthood (real and imagined) can seem so filled with hardships and triumph, that one day in high school can provide the equivalent of a year's worth of drama from any other time period. It's a time when minor events can improbably impact extended periods of a lifetime (often, conveniently chopped into four-year blocks). I can't think of any other time in our lives that can seem so utterly tragic. But when thinking about the misfortunes and missed opportunities in our own teen years, most people can think of at least one other person that had it just a bit worse, the person for whom nothing ever went right, who was the butt of all the jokes, and who even the dwellers of the lowest rungs of the social totem could use as a stepping stone. For the young characters of Cintra Wilson's debut novel Colors Insulting to Nature, Liza Normal is that person.
For Liza, whose only aspiration is to become famous in some way, shape, or form, success is just not in the cards. Pushed by an overzealous mother (herself a failed starlet), Liza and her brother Ned are the products of life on the outmost fringes of show business. It doesn't help that their mom, Peppy Normal, is the town laughingstock, and the theater school she runs is a stomping ground for rich brats and juvenile delinquents. The fact that Liza is the victim of her mother's fashion sense, also doesn't help and gains her the undeserved reputation as the school slut (which is bad reputation for anyone to have, but even worse when you get it without ever have so much as kissed anyone). The saddest bit of all, though, is that Liza is just not talented, at least not conventionally so. But nothing can stop her from dreams of celebrity. Early on, she imagines that someday her diary will be discovered and published to Anne Frankish notoriety. With entries like: "Hello, I am Liza Normal, age 14. Chantal Baumgarten is the biggest bitch in the world. If success is the best form of revenge then I'd better get famous real fast," you doubt she'll be tugging at heartstrings.
Wilson obviously loves her character, and pities her for the tragedies she will endure, but that doesn't stop her from putting Liza through the emotional wringer enough times to account for a whole high school's worth of drama. But as a credit to the can-do spirit that Wilson, who acts as an interjecting narrator throughout the book, attributes to the spate of seventies and eighties "you can do whatever you set your mind to films" (think Fame, which Wilson references, along with several other films, throughout the book), Liza always bounces back. Even when she is utterly humiliated at a party by having her hair shaved into a mohawk (and this is by far not the worst thing to happen to her that night), Liza turns the joke around by going punk, a transformation that allows her to brush off (at least externally) the day-to-day torments of high school.
As Liza is fighting tooth-and-nail to find success and celebrity, her brother Ned stumbles into it. Following the night of Liza's humiliation and his failed attempt to protect his sister, Ned falls deeper and deeper into a life a seclusion, refusing to leave his room and dedicating his time to making intricately-designed light boxes, which eventually catch the eye of a local art collector and propel Ned into art stardom. The irony is not lost on Liza (nor the reader) that the one member of the Normal family that does not want fame, unintentionally finds it. But again, Liza is undeterred.
