Author: Nicola Yoon
Source: Paperback
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Published: 2015
*Not entirely spoiler free
Goodreads summary
My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla.
But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly.
Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
“It's a hard concept to hold on to--the idea that there was a time before us. A time before time. In the beginning there was nothing. And then there was everything.”
With Everything, Everything Nicola Yoon has woven a tale of love, and betrayal. A tale of risk, and deceit. A tale of what it means to live, and what it means to be alive.
The way in which the story is stitched together: in spoiler reviews, journal entries, fragments of chapters etc... is creative and allows Yoon a fresh and experimental platform to propose the tale of Maddy. I say the tale of Maddy, rather than the tale of Maddy and Olly because the love story to me lacked depth and I found myself uninterested in the outcome. The synopsis on the back of my edition explains that the plot of this story is focused on 'the crazy risks we take for love' and I would argue that this is indeed a fair summary, but it is not a romantic love - it's a self-love. We experience Maddy - the main character - falling in love with herself, and her life, and eventually, the world. The real world.
“Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything.”
You see: Maddy has lived her entire life inside of a bubble. The bubble is her medically sealed and approved home, that is specially built to cater for her needs. Maddy suffers from a medical condition that 'is as rare as it is famous'. She is allergic to everything. Everything.
“I was happy before I met him. But I’m alive now, and those are not the same thing.”
As if being a teenage girl wasn't problematic enough. Maddy has to deal with her burgeoning hormones, her increasing questions of life and love, and her desire for something more inside the repetitive safety of her home. I can't even begin to imagine how difficult that would be. Can you?
Luckily for Maddy her monotony is interrupted in the form of the-boy-next-door. Olly is a risk taking anomaly that walks into Maddy's life and everything changes. The trouble was that their relationship was just a bit bland for me. I did approve of the pacing that they moved at. It wasn't instant love, and their interactions felt true to their characters - I just felt that they lacked any real depth. However, it's a sweet love story, and I believe that young readers will fall in love with their story.
For me, I was much more interested in the relationship between Maddy and her Mother.
“I decide then that love is a terrible, terrible thing. Loving someone as fiercely as my mom loves me must be like wearing your heart outside of your body with no skin, no bones, no nothing to protect it”
For certain an undercurrent theme within this novel is that of parental abuse. We see Olly's father be emotionally and physically abusive towards his family, and we see this mirrored with Maddy's mothers psychological abuse. Where Olly's father lashes out, Maddy's mother smothers. And eventually, as events within the novel unravel, we see to what lengths Maddy's mother's abuse goes. I appreciated the time spent building the relationship between Maddy and her mother: they have their set routines, and their phonetic scrabble, and we see the bond between them. I became invested in their relationship. Even though I saw the twist coming.
And then the worst happens.
Events unravel, lies are revealed, the abuse is public. AND MADDY IS LEFT IN HER MOTHER'S CARE.
No. Not okay. Nope.
Young adult novels in particular have a duty to address issues such as parental abuse with appropriate care. There is a duty among writers in general to focus on issues such as this with a caution that includes holding Maddy's mother accountable for her actions and providing Maddy with the necessary tools to recover - including actions that she may not immediately see as desirable.
If finally getting the thing that she desires most costs her the only thing she has ever truly had (her relationship with her mother) then I think this novel had a duty to resolve this conflict appropriately. And I think it failed to do this.
Nicola Yoon's writing is not the issue: she writes beautifully, creatively, and poetically in places. I think it is the fine detailing of the ending that let this novel down for me. That said I hear impressive things about Yoon's latest venture The Sun Is Also A Star, and I will certainly be checking this out!
“We are lips and arms and legs and bodies entangled. He raises himself above me and we are wordless, and then we are joined and moving silently. We are joined and I know all of the secrets of the universe.”
Author: Nicola Yoon
Source: Paperback
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Published: 2015
*Not entirely spoiler free
Goodreads summary
My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla.
But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly.
Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster.
But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly.
Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
“It's a hard concept to hold on to--the idea that there was a time before us. A time before time. In the beginning there was nothing. And then there was everything.”
With Everything, Everything Nicola Yoon has woven a tale of love, and betrayal. A tale of risk, and deceit. A tale of what it means to live, and what it means to be alive.
The way in which the story is stitched together: in spoiler reviews, journal entries, fragments of chapters etc... is creative and allows Yoon a fresh and experimental platform to propose the tale of Maddy. I say the tale of Maddy, rather than the tale of Maddy and Olly because the love story to me lacked depth and I found myself uninterested in the outcome. The synopsis on the back of my edition explains that the plot of this story is focused on 'the crazy risks we take for love' and I would argue that this is indeed a fair summary, but it is not a romantic love - it's a self-love. We experience Maddy - the main character - falling in love with herself, and her life, and eventually, the world. The real world.
“Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything.”
You see: Maddy has lived her entire life inside of a bubble. The bubble is her medically sealed and approved home, that is specially built to cater for her needs. Maddy suffers from a medical condition that 'is as rare as it is famous'. She is allergic to everything. Everything.
“I was happy before I met him. But I’m alive now, and those are not the same thing.”
As if being a teenage girl wasn't problematic enough. Maddy has to deal with her burgeoning hormones, her increasing questions of life and love, and her desire for something more inside the repetitive safety of her home. I can't even begin to imagine how difficult that would be. Can you?
Luckily for Maddy her monotony is interrupted in the form of the-boy-next-door. Olly is a risk taking anomaly that walks into Maddy's life and everything changes. The trouble was that their relationship was just a bit bland for me. I did approve of the pacing that they moved at. It wasn't instant love, and their interactions felt true to their characters - I just felt that they lacked any real depth. However, it's a sweet love story, and I believe that young readers will fall in love with their story.
For me, I was much more interested in the relationship between Maddy and her Mother.
For me, I was much more interested in the relationship between Maddy and her Mother.
“I decide then that love is a terrible, terrible thing. Loving someone as fiercely as my mom loves me must be like wearing your heart outside of your body with no skin, no bones, no nothing to protect it”
For certain an undercurrent theme within this novel is that of parental abuse. We see Olly's father be emotionally and physically abusive towards his family, and we see this mirrored with Maddy's mothers psychological abuse. Where Olly's father lashes out, Maddy's mother smothers. And eventually, as events within the novel unravel, we see to what lengths Maddy's mother's abuse goes. I appreciated the time spent building the relationship between Maddy and her mother: they have their set routines, and their phonetic scrabble, and we see the bond between them. I became invested in their relationship. Even though I saw the twist coming.
And then the worst happens.
Events unravel, lies are revealed, the abuse is public. AND MADDY IS LEFT IN HER MOTHER'S CARE.
No. Not okay. Nope.
Young adult novels in particular have a duty to address issues such as parental abuse with appropriate care. There is a duty among writers in general to focus on issues such as this with a caution that includes holding Maddy's mother accountable for her actions and providing Maddy with the necessary tools to recover - including actions that she may not immediately see as desirable.
If finally getting the thing that she desires most costs her the only thing she has ever truly had (her relationship with her mother) then I think this novel had a duty to resolve this conflict appropriately. And I think it failed to do this.
Nicola Yoon's writing is not the issue: she writes beautifully, creatively, and poetically in places. I think it is the fine detailing of the ending that let this novel down for me. That said I hear impressive things about Yoon's latest venture The Sun Is Also A Star, and I will certainly be checking this out!
“We are lips and arms and legs and bodies entangled. He raises himself above me and we are wordless, and then we are joined and moving silently. We are joined and I know all of the secrets of the universe.”
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