I will confess, I read this book like a wildfire, in one sitting and then I told everyone I knew about it. This book is a piece of treasure, to be passed around on street corners and in warehouse dance clubs and under the table at fancy dinners. I want to preach its gospel on every street corner and hand deliver it to every person out there that it could maybe teach something, anything.
I don't think I'll soon (or ever) forget what I read on these pages. I read it, bookmarked a number of pages to go back to, and then went out and bought my own copy the next morning (after reading well into the night).
It's the story of Elise, a high school student who is irreparably labeled "weird" by her classmates and struggles with the idea that she'll never fit in with them, despite her efforts to educate herself in the ways of the popular. She feels alone enough to almost commit suicide, and her almost is enough to land her on a suicide watch in a hospital. Elise's story felt masterfully real to me. Sales didn't skate over anything in this book, the realities of high school and life and relationships spilled out over the page.
I am always driven to character built stories, and every character in this felt real to me. Elise and her thirst for projects. Char's inability to commit and desperate need to be needed. Sally and Chava's obsession with the lives of those they wish to be. Her parents, who were of the more realistic YA parents I've read recently. They were worried about they daughter but they were trying and they had problems but they worked on them. It was a truly great feeling to see that her parents weren't villains or monsters or absent, they were real people.
But it was mostly about Elise.
Here are a few of the gems that stuck out to me:
"My entire childhood, I embarked on projects. Big, all-encompassing projects. When I was eight years old, my project was a dollhouse... When I was eleven I became fascinated by collages... My last project was becoming cool. That one didn't work so well. I don't know why, exactly. I put as much effort into becoming cool as I ever put into my collages, but my collages turned out beautiful, while becoming cool turned out ugly and warped."
"My parents separated when I was four years old, and Mom blames the dissolution of their marriage entirely on Dad... She felt that I was now old enough to understand what went wrong between them- which is reprehensible, by the way. You are never old enough to hear details about your parents' marital problems."
And maybe my favorite:
"Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don't know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn't you. That isn't you at all."
This book made me feel a lot of feelings, and I was truthfully barely comfortable with some of the depth of emotion I felt because Elise's situations and emotions were so relatable and right that they were nearly overwhelming.
Pick this book up today, and be ready to see the world in a slightly different (or very different) lens.
-April
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