The Letting Go -- Summer Book 19

By -
The Letting Go, by Deborah Markus

Apparently I'm at the age where all my friends start writing books.  This is the fourth or fifth recent book by somebody I know -- even if I only know this author virtually.  I got to know of Deborah Markus when she was publishing a wonderful magazine, Secular Homeschooling, several years ago, and now we've been Facebook friends for some time.  I saw her research and write and pitch this YA novel, and as soon as it was published I put it on hold at the library and checked it out.  So I did not receive a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, but I'll give you an honest review anyway.

Emily lives at a boarding school, the open-structure kind for kids who want a lot of time and space for working on their own projects.  Despite living with twenty other girls 24/7, she is not friends with any of them.  Emily pushes everyone away and never forms relationships, because she knows that everyone who gets close to her will die, murdered by whoever it is that decided that she doesn't get to have a family or friends, or even a pet.  Instead, she is friends with Emily Dickinson, whose words seem to say the things that she can't communicate.  When a murdered man shows up on the school's doorstep, Emily knows that it has to be a sign for her, even though she never met the guy.  And then this new girl doesn't seem put off by Emily's deliberate rudeness.  Emily is certain that making a friend (or more?) will only get somebody killed, but how to stop this girl who is so stubborn?  Besides, she's so lonely.

The novel is written as Emily's diary, mostly in little shortish entries that begin with a line of poetry from Emily Dickinson.  It can get really broken up, especially as Emily gets more distressed, so it's important to pay attention, but it's always possible to figure things out, even if it takes a little while.  I was wondering how the mystery could possibly be resolved, and the suspense is pretty terrific, but it does become clear and has a satisfying conclusion.  I thought it all came together really well.  Markus is also just a good writer -- she's not clichéd or muddled or bland, but clear and thoughtful and just good to read, and the Emily Dickinson obsession is an integral part of the story, not tacked on.  YA fans should pay attention, and also Jenny at Reading the End would really like it, I think.

Comments

  1. Jenny @ Reading the EndAugust 30, 2018 at 5:48 PM

    Well how can I resist when you've called me by name? This does indeed sound right up my alley, what with the boarding school and the epistolary business, so I'll definitely check it out!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more