I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
My rating: 4/5 cats
“I love you,” I say to him, only it comes out, “Hey.”
“So damn much,” he says back, only it comes out, “Dude.”
♥
i think this one was also a 3.5 for me. there were things i liked SO MUCH about it, and then there were things that bothered me a little. (and not just my fear of twins this time)
first to the good.
i enjoyed the unusual structure – the fact that it alternates between the voices of twins noah and jude where noah’s story takes place when they are 13 and jude’s takes place when they are 16. in the three years separating the stories, a number of circumstances have driven them apart to the point where they have gone from being spookily twinclose to barely speaking.
both threads are compelling – in noah’s, we see an introverted young artist falling in love for the first time; discovering that with brian, he is able to really be himself, gawky dorky bits and all. this is the first time in his life he has been able to make an emotional connection with someone he hadn’t once shared a womb with, and their scenes are all giddy excitement and quiet uncertainty and incredible attraction. it is perfectly written. but things in his life are not all puppy love and romps through the woods. the twins have always been competitive for their parents’ attention, and at this point in their lives, the feisty cliff-diving surfer girl jude is daddy’s favorite, while the talented noah is the apple of his artist mother’s eye. their parents are going through a rough patch, fighting constantly. jude is growing into a young woman and carrying her wildness and risk-taking into new realms, and she’s in a reckless emotional tailspin as she begins to covet what little noah has of his own – his mother’s affection, a spot at the art school he desperately wants to attend, and even brian.
three years later, so much has changed. jude is living a life of self-imposed penance, dictated by superstitious rituals, wearing only baggy jeans and sweatshirts, talking to the ghost of her dead grandmother, and on a complete boycott from boys. she is attending the school of noah’s dreams, but is wracked with guilt over what she has done to get there, and what has happened between herself and noah to drive them apart.
the writing is very gimmicky in noah’s thread. it is full of these little imaginative flourishes like
Jude barfs bright blue fluorescent barf all over the table, but I’m the only one who notices.
and
Mom picks up a knife and thrusts it into his gut, twists. Dad forges on, oblivious.
and
We’re sprinting at the speed of light when the ground gives way and we rise into the air as if racing up stairs.
and he captions every scene as though it is a painting:
PORTRAIT: Jude Braiding Boy After Boy into Her Hair
PORTRAIT, SELF-PORTRAIT: Gray Noah Eating Gray Apples on Gray Grass
PORTRAIT, SELF-PORTRAIT: Brother and Sister on a Seesaw, Blindfolded
which can be cloying after a while if that kind of thing irritates you, but once you get past the first couple of instances, you just kind of roll with it and it didn’t personally bother me overmuch. however, because of this writerly quirk, this is one of those books i hope they never ever try to make into a movie, because the temptation to film those bits would be there, and would be the worst kind of student-film indulgence to attempt to reproduce visually. seriously – big shudders when i think of it.
okay, now on to the other stuff that i wasn’t crazy about.
oscar. oh, oscar. i assume we are meant to swoon over oscar, a boy who appears in both noah’s 13-year-old and jude’s 16-year-old storylines, but i just couldn’t take him seriously. oscar is the boy who tests jude’s boy boycot, and he’s essentially just a collection of every stereotypical teen-girl dreamboy list.
– older man
– english accent
– motorcycle
– scars
– tattoos
– dark past. says things like “I’m pretty sure the things I’ve done are far worse than whatever it is you’ve done.
– bad boy vices
– romantic cheesy lines: “Your eyes are so ethereal, your whole face is. I stared at pictures of you for hours last night. You give me chills.
– leather jacket
– james dean slouch
– tomcat tendencies but oh-so capable of troo luv if given the opportunity
– tough-guy posturing but also soooo sensitive
– orphan
– enigmatic
– unconventional good looks
– charismatic and passionate speechifier: he’s like a roller coaster that talks.
he’s just a little silly, to me. but i am not a teenage girl, so that probably accounts for it.
here is something else that bothered me: View Spoiler »
and another rant about something that seems to happen in every book ever and MAKES NO SENSE: View Spoiler »
there’s one or two other things that bothered me – their father’s transformation, the convenient arrival of oscar at the end, that other novelistic convention of characters making revealing speeches when (ostensibly) alone that other people overhear, a couple of other things i can’t recall just now…
but overall, i liked it. i don’t think i looooved it as much as most people seem to, but the early scenes between noah and brian are themselves worth the price of admission. which in my case was free (thanks, nancy!) but you get my point. it’s a sweet and sad little book that gets a little cloying in parts, but its heart is in the right place, and it’s ultimately a charming little book.
“When Castor died,” he says, “Pollux missed him too much, so he made a deal to share his immortality with him and that’s how they both ended up in the sky.”
“I’d do that,” I say. “Totally.”
“Yeah? Must be a twin thing,” he says, misunderstanding.
…I feel my face flush because I’d meant him, duh, I’d share my immortality with him. I meant you, I want to holler.
sigh. NOAH!
you kick oscar’s ass in the “romantic dude” contest.
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
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