The novel revolves around a typical family – a mother and a father who we don’t learn too much about, and their three children, Justin, Cyder, and Ariella, whom the family calls Plum. The story is mainly told from teenage Plum’s perspective, not usually a main character that appeals to adults. Plum is experiencing all the teenage woes of pimples, feeling fat and unattractive, and being on the fringes of a group of friends to whom she clings even though she doesn’t really like the girls, because having no friends at all is worse. To top it off, Plum’s house is old; its furnishings are old; not at all like the cool houses of her friends, and her parents are embarrassing. Sounds like a young adult novel so far. The only redeeming part of her life is her two older brothers who we eventually discover to be in their early twenties, not teenagers as I originally thought. Justin and Cyder are very cool – dark, handsome, and dressed in black. So far so good, I’m reading a young adult novel.
As I get further in to the novel, I start to change my mind. After a while, I realise that the novel is set during the 1980’s. This seems a bit strange for a young adult novel as this period is not history and not contemporary but somewhere in between. Populated by strange clothing such as knickerbockers, references to bands and movies that the current generation are unlikely to have heard of (Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes to name two), descriptions of the glass and steel furniture typical of the period, and the black and white, egg shape TV that Plum covets, seem to just add to the sense of not knowing where you are. As someone who was a teenager during the 1980’s, it is not an era that I particularly want to revisit now that I am an adult, and I can just hear my teenage son – “it’s so dated”.
I found Plum’s relationship with her parents difficult to understand. With one TV per house in those days, I would not have stayed up as late as Plum gets to do at thirteen and even if I had, I would have been watching what my parents watched. The parents are portrayed as subservient to their children, while the other adult in the story encourages Plum to be a friend even though they had little contact in the past. I found this hard to believe as my recollection was that my father was always right, and while children had a lot of physical freedom there was not as much interaction with adults. I think that parents today are more likely to try to be friends and to discuss choices with their children than they were when I was growing up.
The novel mixes the trials of adolescence with the more mature themes of one of the brothers having a love affair with neighbour, and the brother's use of drugs, neither of which sat comfortably with my assumption this was a novel for young adults. I found Plum to be a character that I didn’t believe in, certainly not very likeable. I don’t enjoy reading a novel where the character is written in such a negative way, as Plum is in this book. It’s like a comedy movie where you’re laughing at someone rather than with them. I also found the author’s constant use of metaphors to be very annoying and affected my ability to take in the plot. I hate to say it but I cringed a lot as I listened driving around Melbourne.
All in all, I can’t say I think it is a good example of young adult fiction, and as an adult I’m not sure that I would want to read this for pleasure. If this hadn’t been an audio book version that I listened to in the car, I think I would have given up on it. To me, Butterfly seems to be for readers who like a lot of “literary” in their fiction, and read for the words, not for the story.
