The Line

by Courtney Brandt

When I located Courtney Brandt's The Line, I thought, "Hey, it's a story about drum corps! Awesome!" I'd always wanted to read a piece of fiction that focuses on such an unusual sport, where young adults risk tooth and limb to put together a show consisting of percussion, brass, and marimbas, all wrapped together by flags (not literally). The fact that there are so few out there is shocking, to me, since it's ripe for story-telling. So, can you imagine my disdain when, upon reading through The Line, I discover it's not really a story about the struggles and entertainment that can come from drum corps? In fact, it's about not being able to pick who to date. Great.

Main character Lisa Karate, an oddly named individual who really doesn't match the kick-ass nature of karate, starts the story with a deep yearning to become a marching drummer in her high school's marching band (Forrest Hills High School). Fair enough, we all need a goal to strive for and something to head towards. After a few pages of building her and her feelings up in a decent sort-of way, she ends up achieving her dream and becoming a bass drummer in the band. So far, so good. Except, it all felt very... flat. The reason being is that the author goes for a 'tell, don't show' approach. Now, whilst this may seem obvious for a book, it's more like she, as the character Lucy Karate, is telling you the story of how it happened and how things went, rather than experiencing them with her. As such, we don't get a lot of her intensity in any of her feelings (but one, but we'll get to that in a minute), and it all feels very perfunctory. Case in point - her first band camp. This first camp should be exciting and visceral, but is instead skipped over in favour of a diary entry recount of the weekend. Lame. It really sucks the excitement out of the story. Not only this, but the entry, itself, is more focused on her attention over the 'cute' cymbalist, Nevada.

So here we go, Lucy's one 'intense' feeling shown throughout the story - her love, er, no, lust. She likes the red-headed Nevada. Okay. Except, after a very forced random trip to the cinema, by herself (who does that after an exhausting band camp, anyway?), she meets a guy there and ends up somehow liking him, too. I really hated this. She randomly meets a stranger in the cinema and they end up all over each other, all touchy-feely, even though they know very little about one another. His name is Sam. There's even a forced awkward conversation about Swedish fish, of all things. It goes something like this:

Sam: I see you're drumming. Are you a drummer?
Lucy: SWEDISH FISH.
Sam: How much have you had to drink?
Lucy: LET'S MAKE OUT.
Sam: I drum for your rival high school's band.
Lucy: I LUST YOU.

And so on. I exaggerate with the wording, of course, but it's just as ridiculous.

Thus, the entire story becomes about Lucy dating both guys at the same time, then having to choose one. The author makes this easier for us by making one of them into a complete creep in the second half of the story, for absolutely no reason at all. The story also makes the decision easier by making really stupid things happen like a storm making all the lights go out and then Lucy bumping into the crotch of one of them, who then proceeds to make a cringe-worthy comment. I won't spoil the choices made and who Lucy ends up with, but I strongly disagree with the resulting decision.

This brings me to my last point. Whilst the book become relatively predictable as soon as it set itself up as the love, sorry, lust-triangle story, it did have one redeeming factor. The Line was actually quite enjoyable in a mindless sort-of way. I kept reading because it was so bad. Does their drum corps have trumpets and tubas like every other band? Who knows, because they're never mentioned, not even once. Do we ever find out who her best online friend of Cartwright123 is? Nope, even though the story points towards resolving it, but never actually does so. But what the story does have, in amongst some typoes of missing letters, incorrect words and missing phrases entirely, is a lot of enthusiasm. Albeit, this is in a 'I'll tell you my story' kind of way, rather than experiencing it with Lucy, but it's enjoyable for what it is. It's just a shame the focus was the same focus that's in countless of other stories, non-related to the world of drum and bugles corps.

For those that may enjoy The Line, however, Ms. Brandt did write an entire anthology of books in the same series: A Fine Line, Keeping in Line and The Line Up. I'm sure the Cartwright123 story will be resolved in one of them, but I'm just not invested enough to continue. If you want to, then more power to you!