Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything

Lockhart, E. Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything. 2006. 182p. ISBN 0385732813. Available as an eBook on Overdrive.

Gretchen Yee is having a terrible time. She attends the Manhattan School for Art and Music, but since everyone is different, Gretchen feels ordinary. She’s not special, she doesn’t stand out. All she likes to do is draw cartoon characters, and her hero is Spider Man. She dated Shane, the new student, for a few weeks at the beginning of school, but now it’s like she’s got the plague and is studiously ignored by the opposite gender, even though she’s completely engrossed in Titus. Even her best friend, Katya, is not available to get together anymore since she’s babysitting her younger siblings.

Then all hell breaks loose. Her parents announce they’re getting a divorce. Her drawing teacher hates that she draws everything in a cartoon style. And gym, where the girls have to shower and dress afterwards, is torture as Gretchen finds every girl better looking than she is. Talking to Katya in the changing room, she announces she wishes she were a fly.

Lo and behold, she is turned into one, and she ends up spending a full week in the boys’ locker room, where she learns more about boys than she ever thought possible, from seeing them naked to hearing their conversations when they think girls are not around. She even discover things about herself she didn’t know. However, will she ever change back into a person, or will she be condemned to end up in the spider web in the upper corner of the locker room?

Absolutely hilarious, Fly on the wall is an interesting take on Kafka’s Metamorphosis and the power that wishes have.