What I Leave Behind by Alison McGhee
2018; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 71; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/bcc.2018.0279
ISSN1558-6766
Autores ResumoReviewed by: What I Leave Behind by Alison McGhee Melanie Kirkwood Mcghee, AlisonWhat I Leave Behind. Dlouhy/Atheneum, 2018 [208p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4814-7656-0 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4814-7658-4 $10.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12 We all have our own ways of coping with life and its many ups and downs, and for sixteen-year-old Will his thing is walking—walking all the sorrows of the day right out of the soles of his feet in the nighttime. It began with his father's suicide, but when his old friend Playa is raped at a party both of them were at, by three boys they know, the grief becomes more than he can handle. Lodged in the back of his walking mind are the places he won't go, the places that are too painful to walk past—Playa's house, the Chinese blessing store where Will and his father would contemplate the display of 100 blessings, and the bridge on Fourth Street where his father died. In this tale of teenage contemplation, McGhee artfully illustrates the tangled web wherein grief intertwines with the mundane. Will's character reads outwardly as typical teenager—indifferent, unbothered, cool. His reality, however, as conveyed through introspective thought and memory, proves him to be more complex, caring, and emotionally adept than he lets on. The book unfolds in a series of 100 vignettes, each 100 words long, each marked by a Chinese number. There's no sweet ending here, but there is resolve in friendship and in the lingering words of Will's father—"Carry on, my wayward son." MK Copyright © 2017 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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