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starladyHorner, Emily. A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend. New York: Dial Books, 2010.
Disclaimer: I am personally acquainted with the author. But I'd think this book was as awesome as it is even if I didn't know her from Eve.
So, A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend. One sentence review: Does what it says on the tin, and it's awesome.
The longer version: Rising senior Cass Meyer's life is upended completely when her best friend Julia is killed in a car accident the spring of their junior year of high school. Cass and her circle of friends, in an attempt to cope with Julia's death, decide to produce the musical she wrote, Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad, at their school, but when Cassandra's old bete noir Heather is cast in the lead part, and Julia's boyfriend Oliver says one too many things to Cass that cut too close to the quick, Cass decides that instead of working on the musical she's going to bike to California with Julia's ashes, recreating the summer roadtrip they'd planned.
What happens on the bike trip is, of course, half the novel, and the other half is what happens when Cass gets back and takes up the role Julia intended her to have, that of set-designer and propmaster, and has to deal with Heather again for the first time since eighth grade. Suffice it to say that nothing winds up quite as anyone might have expected.
Yeah. This is a really, really great book; like Karen Healey's Guardian of the Dead, but in a slightly different way. Though Horner's characters don't talk about social justice as explicitly, it comes out in who they are (Haitian-American, gay, straight, nerdy, Quaker) and what they do. I particularly liked Cass's Quakerism, and for my own tastes I could have stood much more of it, but Horner does a good job exploring what it's like to grow up as a Quaker in the midst of what Quakers used to call "worldly" people. Cass's parents are a little stricter than most of the parents of Quakers I knew in school growing up, but not unusually so, and certain things (sparkly anti-war signs for the protests, ranting about the military-industrial complex at the drop of a hat) are spot-on among many Quakers I've known regardless of age.
Horner also really nails the experience of what it's like to be in high school, to be trying to decide who you are and what that means even as things are shifting within yourself and your friends on a daily basis. Cass's strained relationship with their friends after Julia's death and her continued efforts to come to some sort of resolution, even provisional, about her own sexuality are rendered wrenchingly well; at one point I actually teared up, which is partially because I went to a funeral yesterday but also because the scene in question really is just that real. Awesome.
So, in conclusion: Quakerism, queerness, biking, ninjas, fake blood, musical theater, what more could you want? Go read it now, seriously.
(Also, note to SFF: if YA can show that it is this easy to incorporate social justice and protagonists who aren't either straight or white or thin or normative but who nonetheless not defined by their non-normativity into great books, there's no reason for you not to step up, IJS.)
Disclaimer: I am personally acquainted with the author. But I'd think this book was as awesome as it is even if I didn't know her from Eve.
So, A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend. One sentence review: Does what it says on the tin, and it's awesome.
The longer version: Rising senior Cass Meyer's life is upended completely when her best friend Julia is killed in a car accident the spring of their junior year of high school. Cass and her circle of friends, in an attempt to cope with Julia's death, decide to produce the musical she wrote, Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad, at their school, but when Cassandra's old bete noir Heather is cast in the lead part, and Julia's boyfriend Oliver says one too many things to Cass that cut too close to the quick, Cass decides that instead of working on the musical she's going to bike to California with Julia's ashes, recreating the summer roadtrip they'd planned.
What happens on the bike trip is, of course, half the novel, and the other half is what happens when Cass gets back and takes up the role Julia intended her to have, that of set-designer and propmaster, and has to deal with Heather again for the first time since eighth grade. Suffice it to say that nothing winds up quite as anyone might have expected.
Yeah. This is a really, really great book; like Karen Healey's Guardian of the Dead, but in a slightly different way. Though Horner's characters don't talk about social justice as explicitly, it comes out in who they are (Haitian-American, gay, straight, nerdy, Quaker) and what they do. I particularly liked Cass's Quakerism, and for my own tastes I could have stood much more of it, but Horner does a good job exploring what it's like to grow up as a Quaker in the midst of what Quakers used to call "worldly" people. Cass's parents are a little stricter than most of the parents of Quakers I knew in school growing up, but not unusually so, and certain things (sparkly anti-war signs for the protests, ranting about the military-industrial complex at the drop of a hat) are spot-on among many Quakers I've known regardless of age.
Horner also really nails the experience of what it's like to be in high school, to be trying to decide who you are and what that means even as things are shifting within yourself and your friends on a daily basis. Cass's strained relationship with their friends after Julia's death and her continued efforts to come to some sort of resolution, even provisional, about her own sexuality are rendered wrenchingly well; at one point I actually teared up, which is partially because I went to a funeral yesterday but also because the scene in question really is just that real. Awesome.
So, in conclusion: Quakerism, queerness, biking, ninjas, fake blood, musical theater, what more could you want? Go read it now, seriously.
(Also, note to SFF: if YA can show that it is this easy to incorporate social justice and protagonists who aren't either straight or white or thin or normative but who nonetheless not defined by their non-normativity into great books, there's no reason for you not to step up, IJS.)
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-12 19:56 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-14 13:48 (UTC)Thanks for the rec!! ^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2010-06-14 17:38 (UTC)