Perfect

About Perfect

Perfect is a 2011 novel-in-verse by Ellen Hopkins, published by Margaret K. McElderry Books. It is a companion to her novel Impulse (2007), following four teenagers whose stories converge in northern Nevada. Cara, Kendra, Sean, and Andre are connected not by friendship but by the circumstances they share — each is striving to be perfect, and each will destroy themselves in the process.

Cara is a straight-A student and cheerleader from a high-achieving family, hiding a secret that would unravel everything her parents think they know about her. Kendra, a model, is developing an eating disorder in her desperate competition with girls who are thinner, prettier, and more desirable. Sean is a football star and a good son, hiding his attraction to men and his history of violence from everyone he loves. Andre is a gifted student with severe clinical depression, fighting impulses he cannot control while wrestling with an impossible decision about his future.

Hopkins builds the novel as four separate verse sequences that occasionally intersect, giving each character equal weight and equal interiority. As in all her books, the verse form allows a density of psychological observation that would be difficult to sustain in conventional prose. The novel is 656 pages long, and what makes it feel not exhausting but essential is the precision with which Hopkins tracks four distinct forms of interior disaster.

A Companion to Impulse

Perfect follows on from Impulse (2007), which followed three teenagers in a psychiatric facility after suicide attempts. Cara and Sean are among those who knew the characters from Impulse; Andre also has a connection to the events of the earlier novel. Reading the books in sequence provides important context, though Perfect functions independently as well.

The pair of novels together give an unusually complete portrait of the pressures — on ideal bodies, on academic achievement, on sexual identity, on family loyalty — that accumulate around teenagers in a culture demanding performance and conformity. Hopkins refuses to offer solutions; she offers honesty, which her readers consistently report is rarer and more valuable.

Why Perfect Has Been Banned

Perfect has been challenged in 3 states across 5 school districts, making it less frequently targeted than most of Hopkins's other novels. The challenges cite language, sexual content, and the novel's honest treatment of eating disorders, depression, and self-harm. The depiction of sexual violence in one of the narrative threads has also been cited.

As with other Hopkins titles, the readers targeted by removal of the book from school libraries are often the very students who most benefit from seeing their experiences treated with honesty and craft. Hopkins's books reach readers who are already living the realities she depicts — and who have consistently described finding her work when no other book in the library reflected what they were going through.