Falling in love with a book’s protagonist is pretty much for the course when you read a good book.
That’s largely because well-written books, almost by definition, come with winningly-articulated characters who propel the page-turning narrative, rather than the other way around, and spending all that time with them, you can’t help but feel closer than them than you do to some of your friends or family members (sorry, everyone, but it’s true).
Certainly, just a few pages, mere paragraphs really into Jennifer Dugan’s delightfully-awkward late teen romantic comedy Hot Dog Girl, you’re absolutely besotted with Elouise (Lou/Elle) Parker, a haplessly impulsive almost-high school senior who’s determined to have The Best Summer Ever, reasoning that the one after you graduate is always an anti-climax.
It’s an admirable sentiment, one driven by Elle’s – for the purposes of the review, we’re using her chosen nickname, which almost no one has adopted in preference to Lou, which everyone’s uses to her confected annoyance – gung-ho approach to just about everything.
The likely much mis-quoted phrase, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”, was pretty much written for her, and though she knows she should think first, act later, she regularly dashes into the fray without actually wondering if the fray actually needs or wants her.
“I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t get how he’s being so cool about this. That park is where he and my mom had their first date, and where he took me when she left. Not to mention every birthday I’ve ever had was spent there—except for the one time I went to one of those places where you could make a stuffed animal, a choice I still regret, by the way—and I know it’s silly, but I pictured my graduation party there too. And now it’s going to be gone, just like everything else, and he doesn’t seem to care.” (P. 37)
It’s a spirited approach that bemuses her now-single father – her mother left almost a decade before and continues, rather insensitively to keep sending postcards from her travels around the country, leaving Elle weirdly happy/sad every six months or so – frustrates and amuses best friend for all time and leaves her cleaning up all kinds of messes that a more cautious person might have avoided altogether.
But where would be the fun in that?
Elle is, by very virtue of lack of caution and vibrant enthusiasm for doing things whether it’s celebrating their small mountain town’s big annual festival Founders’ Day with gusto or finding Seeley a cute date from the roster of appealing young women at the ageing amusement park where they both work, an endless delight.
You might wince at Elle doing her best, her awkwardly hilarious best to impress Nick, the gorgeous diving pirate to notice her, despite him having an equally stunning girlfriend in pretty much perfect Jessa, or wonder why persists in trying to keep the amusement park open after the caring owner Mr P has decided it will close at the end of the summer, but she is never less than enthusiastically loveable, and not falling head over heels in love with her is never an option.
She is the beating heart of Dugan’s vibrantly fun and emotionally-resonant book which is equal parts desperately heartfelt – with her life on the cusp of great change, Elle is flailing she attempts to cope, rather badly, with it all – and laugh-out-loud funny, and a whole lot of queerly romantic.
That last perfectly-executed element helps elevate what would be a very fine book otherwise into an absolute classic as the romances the unfold in the book refuse to pay heed to heteronormative ideals.
Refreshingly, in a way that mirrors the much-needed romantic normalcy of graphic novel Heartstopper, Love, Simon and What If It’s Us? by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera, Hot Dog Girl refuses to bow to traditional ideas of who you or Elle can or can’t fall in love with.
It mirrors a wider trend in literature, movies and TV which is presenting queer love as, quite rightly so, just another entry in humanity’s vastly diverse expressions of love, romance and deep abiding affection.
It’s nothing special, and something beautifully special all at once, and in Hot Dog Girl, which waves its queer flag high and proud in an entirely un-self conscious way, Elle is its haphazardly-expressed standard bearer as she tries to be true to herself and her friends while coping with the inevitably chaotic fallout of growing up.
What gives Dugan’s near-flawless debut – to be fair the “near” has been tacked on purely because not to do so might make the review seem a little gushy although if any book deserves it, it’s this unalloyed delight – extra sparkle is that gets to the very core of its narrative bone how messy the late teen years can be.
You’re at the point where you know lots of stuff about people, love, romance, sex and living but you also don’t know a lot of stuff, something that only becomes apparent when, like Elle, you attempt to remark one last epic summer in your own idealised image.
“‘Tonight’s gonna be the best.’ I’m standing beside the carousel, waiting for Seeley to finish up cleaning her station so we can leave.
She shakes her head as she wipes off the last of the horses. ‘I don’t know why you’re getting all excited about a few fireworks and a bunch of fair food that you can literally eat here every day.’
I widen my eyes in mock horror. ‘Don’t you dare trash-talk the fireworks at the commons!'” (P. 215)
Too late it becomes painfully apparent that you don’t know quite enough to make a real success of the host of things you were previously so garrulously confident about executing perfectly, and as the pieces begin to fall around you, like they do with Elle who, realises a little too late (but god you love her for it, anyway) that there’s a lot she hasn’t accounted for, you wonder how you’re going to fix the mess of your own creation.
In many ways Hot Dog Girl, a reference to Elle’s unwanted and yet resigned to gig as a giant sausage wondering the park in ridiculously high summer temperatures, is a classic, ever-building rom-com farce that has the requisite number of soon to crash to the ground spinning plates in the air.
Elle is simultaneously trying to ignore how hurt she is by her mum’s departure and how rattled the impending big changes in her life are making her, trying to stop the park which is more an emotional anchor point than a theme park for her, doing her best to woo Nick and find her bestie Seeley a girlfriend worthy of her innate awesomeness.
That’s a lot for anyone to take on but Elle doesn’t realise that until it’s too late, investing the exuberant, heartfelt fun of Hot Dog Girl, with a thoughtful manic joie de vivre that speaks to the deep down, and it must be said very humanly irrational, need to we all have to push our lives forward while clinging to what we have with steely-eyed determination.
Being human, with its many emotional contradictions, never really makes much sense if we’re honest about it, but never more so than in the teenage years when what seems like a good idea, based on the knowledge at hand, isn’t always and when, like gorgeously enthusiastic, sweet, heart-on-her-sleeve Elle (stuck with the unloved and unused nickname to the end; she would be pleased), we find ourselves trying to fix it all while wondering if that’s even possible and hoping that everything will eventually work out somehow.
The best surprise of all is that life never follows the expected route, a truism that Hot Dog Girl, a quirkily contrary joy to its very genre-defying end, embraces with Elle-like gusto, happy to be both delightfully traditional and queerly revolutionary in ways that will make your heart sing, your soul laugh and your mind relax more than a little, assured that the bull in the china shop approach to life is not always an unmitigated disaster and can often, whether you expect it or not, be the making of you.