Fly on the Wall

Synopsis

16-year-old Gretchen Yee is a talented artist attending The Manhattan School for Art and Music. But she’s talented in a way that most people don’t seem to understand. Her comic book style isn’t sophisticated enough for her art teacher, so instead of feeling talented, Gretchen feels ordinary and out-of-place. It doesn’t help that her best friend has been acting distant and that Gretchen’s crush barely seems to know she exists. In a twist fit for a comic book heroine, however, Gretchen’s life changes in an instant when she’s turned into a fly and ends up trapped in the guys’ locker room. What follows is a series of both hilarious and poignant insights about Gretchen’s classmates, and a metamorphosis that really does change Gretchen forever.

Behind the Scenes

“I wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall …”

Code for: I wish I knew what they’d said about me, right? Well, you’ll get more than an earful when you check out Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart.

Gretchen Yee is living a pretty ordinary life as a student at the Manhattan High School for the Arts. And when I say “ordinary,” I mean it. In fact, that’s just the problem: Though Gretchen is supposed to think of herself as talented and extraordinary, she actually feels ordinary and out-of-place and awkward … especially around guys.

In true fantasy-meets-reality fashion, however, Gretchen is reading Kafka’s Metamorphosis for English, when one night, POOF!, she undergoes a pretty stunning metamorphosis of her own. Through some bizarre piece of magic, Gretchen is suddenly a fly on the wall of the guys’ locker room.

Cue the red-cheeked, giggly girl comments about male anatomy.

OK, so there is a little chuckling over “guy parts,” but that’s not the focus of Gretchen’s wild transformation. Instead, Fly on the Wall really concerns itself with the emotional parts of ourselves that we keep hidden, and the parts of others that we aren’t willing to see.

No, being a fly on the wall doesn’t solve all Gretchen’s problems, but it does impel her to think more expansively about her classmates—and it might just do the same for you.