Rating: 3/5
Spoiler Alert! This review containers spoilers so please don't read on if you don't want to know how the book ends.
Clap When You Land is the tale of two sisters discovering each other for the first time when the plane carrying their shared father crashes into the ocean on his way to the Dominican Republic. From vastly different backgrounds, it tells of how they search for similarities in each other, and ways to re-connect with the father they have lost.
To anyone who has enjoyed Acevedo's work before, or is just aware of who she is in the literary world, it might not come as a surprise to you that Clap When You Land is written entirely in verse. It came as a massive surprise to me though.
I hadn't really connected the author of Clap When You Land with the author of Poet X. I was vaguely aware of the premise of Clap but hadn't actually looked into it; it was my sister who got the book for me in the end.
I like poetry.
I like a lot of modern poetry (also known as "instagram poetry").
I love when Nikita Gill combined poetry and prose in her collection Great Goddesses.
But something about Clap didn't work for me. Maybe it would have been different had I been prepared to read a whole book written in verse, but I often wanted more than the format offered. For some sections (and here I'm thinking mostly of the sexual assault scenes) it worked beautifully. Sometimes it's easier to express difficult things with less words; to get a feeling across rather than describe the physicality of a scene. At these points, it seemed only natural to speak in verse.
At other points, too much seemed to be missing to make the story. The verse slipped into a very traditional, story-like sentences but was forced to conform to the format of the rest of the book. It's like Acevedo felt she couldn't drop the verse so tried to fit the story into it. For me, I'd have enjoyed a combination of the two, with poetry used in the sections it fit best, rather than throughout the entire story.
On the other hand, I thought the story itself was really interesting. The idea of secrets destroying families is a common enough premise in fiction, but Clap When You Land took the idea of secrets within families and turned it on its head. What happens when most people know the secret already? What if people want to explore the secret instead of deny it? How do you handle finding out that the things you want are within your grasp?
Both Camino and Yahaira were really interesting characters to me. For one, they weren't stereotypes. Yahaira loved fashion and chess. (And okay, chess was her connection with her dad, it was a source of competition, etc etc. In fact, she actively says she never loved chess. But just go with me here). It might seem small, but those things aren't often seen together in fiction. The characters seemed to be whole beings, as if they had been formed in Acevedo's mind as whole beings, growing with their environment, rather than being created from a single interest they had that would serve the narrative. They could exist outside of the story we are told about them - and that is a real achievement when it comes to characterisation.
Their struggle with what sisterhood meant was also really interesting. To have a sister thrust upon you is something not many of us could imagine so to watch the way two people, brought up in very different ways, handled the revelation was fascinating. It never came across like they thought it was a bad thing, but they evidently didn't know how to bring somebody else into their life. There were moments of ignorance and pride which felt so real that I sat shaking my head at them, wishing they could just talk to each other.
I found a special definition of sisterhood in Clap, beyond what Camino and Yahaira were beginning to mean to one another. That scene on the beach where Tia, Mami, and Yahaira stand with Camino and defend her was inspiring and heart-breaking. Heart-breaking because you know that's not how it goes for so many girls. Because so many people in that situation don't have that way out. But inspiring because there was so much tension, still so much that needed to be said, and yet every one of them stood with Camino. And that's the kind of sisterhood the world needs more of.
Despite not getting on with the format, I enjoyed Clap When You Land. It told a good story and I spent time with some great characters (shout out to Dre who, though thus far unmentioned in my review, was a lovely addition to the cast). I can't say that your opinion on poetry will necessarily affect your opinion on the book, and don't let it stop you trying it out - sometimes experimenting with form offers people different ways to see a story - but for me it Clap When You Land didn't quite live up to its potential (or it's beautiful cover).