This is Where the World Ends by Amy Zhang

Amy Zhang was in high school when she wrote her debut novel, Falling Into Place. She has followed this up with another ‘not-put-downable’ book, This is Where the World Ends.

Janie and Micah. Micah and Janie. That is how the world should be forever. Two opposites attracted. Janie, the imaginer. The doer. Micah, the follower. The support.

They lived next door to each other, bedrooms facing. Janie would slide a shelf between the rooms and shimmy across. They knew each other inside out…best friends, but nothing more. A world unto themselves.

Until it all fell apart. Right before the beginning of senior year, Janie moved across town to a bigger house that she hated. But she had no say in her parents’ decision. Although still at the same school, things had changed…dramatically.

Janie and Micah’s alternating narrative, the Before and the After, chronicle the disintegration of life, the apocalypse. The Journal of Janie Vivian, words and drawings, embedded in the story, mark the transition from fairy tale to harsh reality.

I’d say Amy Zhang is an author to watch, but with two great books to her credit she has already earned our respect. Now it’s a question of waiting…for her next novel. I know I am.

 

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The Memory of Light by Francisco X. Stork

Victoria woke up in a white hospital bed. The problem is that she wasn’t supposed to wake up. The night before she took an overdose of sleeping pills that she’d been accumulating. She was found by the elderly Juanita, her nanna, who she deeply loved. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.

Books about attempted suicide, the post-attempt individual and group therapy sessions and the bonding of the teens in the group are not uncommon. However,  put in the hands of Francisco X. Stork (author of Marcelo in the Real World) The Memory of Light is more than a young adult novel about depression. One reason it that it is semi-autobiographical, as per the Author’s Note at the end of the book. Stork was 24 years old when he took 60 sleeping pills in his suicide attempt. That knowledge makes the book more meaningful.

Also, Stork has created a diverse cast of characters. Vicky’s roommate is Mona, who comes from a broken home and is searching for her little sister Lucy. She needs meds to control her mood swings. Gilbert hears voices and there is the fear that he is schizophrenic and E.M. has an uncontrolled temper.

The contrast in illnesses is also a contrast in life. Vicky seems to have the idyllic life–coming from a wealthy family, having everything she could possibly want, private school, plentiful opportunities. Gilbert, on the other hand, has to help his grandfather with his gardening business because Antonio is getting on in years and can’t do it by himself. Gilbert’s grandmother is showing the signs of schizophrenia that Gilbert is starting to exhibit. E.M. comes from a family in which his father physically abused his mother.

The Memory of Light is realistic in its depiction of mental illnesses. In its realism, there aren’t necessarily the happy endings we typically read. However, Stork provides hope to those individuals who accept and treat their illnesses, whether it is depression, schizophrenia, or a myriad other illnesses.

Stork implores teens, especially, who know or suspect something is wrong or who just know they are hurting to talk to an unbiased individual or professional, someone who won’t judge them. Mental illness knows no income or educational or racial boundaries. Sometimes the pressures of day to day life in school or at home are too much.

I could not put The Memory of Light down. It was that good.

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Books

I’m on a roll here. The last three books I read are about:

1. Driving a car off a bridge, killing the passenger and leaving the seventeen year old driver with serious injuries and amnesia.

2. A teenager shooting himself in the school library in front of his former girlfriend (they broke up 2 days earlier), leaving her emotionally scarred, and

3. A teenager cutting herself.

I can’t imagine what’s next. Should I reread Wintergirls and read about eating disorders? I probably need something more upbeat, don’t you think?

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