A Review of Tegan and Sara Quin’s “High School”
“High” School
The cover of Tegan and Sara Quin’s high school memoir, strictly titled High School, is interesting in that it’s made of a foil-like substance that reflects like a mirror. You bend the cover a little bit, and the image distorts like something you’d find in a funhouse. You may even find yourself staring at an image of two of you, which is kind of apt because Tegan and Sara are twins. I’m not 100 percent sure what the duo is going for with this cover, except that maybe their experiences growing up are a reflection of the reader’s and that they’re inviting the reader to sympathize with their story by seeing themselves in it. Who knows?
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Tegan and Sara are a Canadian pop music act. I probably don’t need to mention it, as it kind of feels superfluous as a detail, but they’re both lesbians. (Who really cares about sexual orientation anyway? Whatever floats your boat, I say.) I have to admit that my exposure to Tegan and Sara’s music has been fairly limited. I know “Everything is Awesome” (add as many exclamation marks as you’d like to that) from The Lego Movie, and “Walking with a Ghost” was on the playlist of a gym that I used to work out at. (Which is kind of odd, since it’s kind of a mid-tempo song, not something to get the blood racing.) However, Tegan and Sara are queer icons and have a dedicated fanbase, which is probably going to gobble up High School.
The memoir is squarely set in the mid-‘90s of Calgary, Alberta, when the pair were students in Grade 10, 11 and 12. Those looking for a bit of a music-industry tell-all are probably going to be disappointed, because this book is squarely set in the time before they became famous — though everyone in the book seems to have kind of had this “I’ll be telling people I knew you guys when … “ vibe to the twins’ penchant for grasping for the brass ring of stardom. This is a book about lost love, coming out, and lots and lots of recreational drug use. The use of quote marks around the word “high” in the subhead is intentional because Tegan and Sara recount in this book using acid pretty exclusively in Grade 10, along with experimenting with speed and weed, and their fair share of binge drinking.
The book is told from the alternating viewpoints of the twins. Tegan will write one chapter, and Sara the next, and that goes on ad Infinium. For that reason, the memoir feels like a collection of vignettes. There’s not too much of a connective tissue between the chapters, except when a first love turns a little more serious (or not) or when Tegan and Sara discover a guitar in their stepfather’s room, leading to their evolution as serious artists in the Calgary music scene. What the book does particularly well is transport you back to your own high school years and all the teen angst that went with it. While I can’t relate to some of the book, because I went to a rural high school with all of its problems of its own, the pair definitely captures the vibe of what it’s like to be a teenager. It’s as though they were secretly keeping diaries all along that they raided to write this book.
The downside is that this all becomes a little exhausting. By the time the pair is recounting going to their third rave without their parents’ permission, you might find yourself wanting to put down the book and pick up another because there’s just so much angst here. While, in what little press I’ve seen from Tegan and Sara, they present a united front, in this book they argue, argue, argue, making their relationship more than a little love-hate. They argue not only with themselves, but with their mom, with friends, with teachers — just about everyone. It does get a bit tiresome to read about all of the fights they had growing up, though I would imagine that just about anyone can relate. Thankfully, the last third of the book gets a little more positive as Tegan and Sara enter (and win) a battle-of-the-bands contest that leads them to signing with a record label by the end of the book.
Whether it’s an asset or a liability — you decide — is the fact that there’s not too much opportunity in this memoir for navel-gazing. The book is written entirely from the perspective of the teenager, so there’s no chances to really reflect on what was going on back then as adults. This is a little unfortunate because the twins’ mother and stepfather eventually split up, and you don’t see that coming in advance, nor do you get any reflection on why they called it quits. It seems like such a profound thing, to deal with a divorce of sorts (the pair had never married, so use “stepfather” in quotes if you must), so I was hoping for a bit more reflection on how that impacted the musicians. None is really given aside from a perfunctory nod. Maybe some memoires are still too raw and painful?
Still, for what the book tries to do (capture a moment in a bottle), it succeeds remarkably well. I don’t know if Tegan and Sara were walking with a ghostwriter or two, but the book is coherent and remarkably well-written, even if it doesn’t go very deep. The dynamic duo effortlessly takes a snapshot of their formative years, and all of the things that influenced them as musicians, and those memories feel real and formed, even if they have a Polaroid quality to them. (Speaking of which, there are photos in the book from this period of the authors’ lives.) It’ll be interesting to read this book and then listen to the forthcoming album from Tegan and Sara that collects a great deal of the songs they wrote in high school exclusively, and see if that works as an effective soundtrack to the mood of this book. I read an advance review that called this book “moody” and truer words couldn’t have been written.
Those who adore Tegan and Sara will probably like this book the most, but give this book to the high school student of current vintage who is struggling. Even though Tegan and Sara didn’t have access to today’s technology, they honestly relate what it was like to grow up as lesbians — which is most well needed in today’s ever-changing world. All in all, High School is fun and entertaining, if not a little bit heavy at times, and should you ever want to revisit your own days as a student, this book is the perfect time machine to take you back and make you remember all of the glory, the good and bad times, of being a teenager. That’s all that needs to be said.
Tegan and Sara Quin’s High School will be published by MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux on September 24, 2019.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
