let me be clear: this book will destroy you. it will make you ache in ways you didn’t think were possible to ache before. you will feel it heavy in your chest for days – maybe even weeks – after, certain words echoing in the empty spaces of your life.
and you’ll love it for doing so.
when i read books, i always have a little sheet of post-it flags tucked into the front cover. why? to keep up with things i want to remember, to make note of the particular ways in which a sentence was worded that fell just right on my tongue or my ears, to make note of little phrases that punch me in the gut in just the right way that i never want to forget them.
with this book by benjamin alire saenz, i wanted to put a little flag on every. single. sentence. and every time i come back to this book, i somehow manage to find another little bit i love but never noticed before, and i have to flag it, too.
now, don’t get me wrong. i have read at least a couple books that have emulated a similar near-obsession with their contents. i have read plenty of pretty stories, or stories that are told in pretty words.
but this book is beautiful.
i stayed up well into the a.m. several times reading it, simply because i physically couldn’t muster up the conviction to tear myself away from it.
at its core, i find that this book is simply about adolescence. adolescence and human connection and discovering all the secrets of the universe, in the simplest (and most meta) of terms. readers witness our main characters, ari and dante, open themselves up and shut themselves down – to both each other and their families. our boys learn how to swim and run around desert flats in the rain and save birds. they love and they hate and they learn so much and so quickly, because that’s what being 15 is.
what saenz manages to do with this book is truly capture the whirlwind and complicated and – at times – ridiculously trivial nature of growing up, in a way that somehow manages not to feel cheesy or unrealistic or… well, like it was written by a 60-year-old man. this book is feeling things you still don’t quite understand, feeling things you’re terrified of feeling. it’s how easily we allow ourselves to act without thinking, yet still manage to be pensive about things we really should have done a long time ago.
when asked about my favorite book, this one is the first that comes to mind. when asked about my favorite author, this one is the first name on my tongue. when thinking of things to look forward to, this book’s pending sequel and film adaptation are at the forefront.
this book is everything i hope to be and more as an author. this is how i hope to use my storytelling, and these are the stories i want to tell.
