Love Is Both Wave and Particle

June 19, 2017
After a suicide attempt, Sam Vash enrolls in an alternative high school in Ithaca, N.Y., where she’s given a long-term assignment with another senior. The two are to gather stories about themselves from friends, family, and others, and create autobiographies. “It was English and writing, with maybe some psychology and personal history thrown in,” Sam explains. What follows is a series of first-person narratives from the teens’ parents, classmates, and counselor, which provide material for the memoirs and offer varied perspectives on Sam and quiet, handsome Levon Grady, who is “maybe somewhere on the broad spectrum of Asperger’s,” as he puts it. Through these shifting points of view, which can at times be difficult to keep straight, readers get hints about why Sam slit her wrists at boarding school and how Levon’s upbringing with his scientist mother has affected him. Part romance, part psychological study, adult author Cody’s first book for teens thoughtfully conveys Sam and Levon’s complex mental states, the evolution of their relationship, and their journeys of self-discovery. Ages 14–up. Agent: Faye Bender, the Book Group.

June 1, 2017
Two teens find healing through a senior writing project at an upscale school serving gifted youth with psychiatric disorders in Ithaca, New York. Levon is a loner; some speculate he's inherited Asperger's from the father he's never met. Recently hospitalized after a suicide attempt, Samantha remains fragile. Meg, their English teacher/therapist, instructs them to write about their lives, sharing their work with each other. Separately, she solicits written input from their families and others. These collective writings form the novel. The project makes little academic or literary sense. New essayists repeat what readers already know, rewinding the narrative to catalog academic and professional accomplishments--before marveling at Levon and Sam, who are widely admired. (Each is tall, attractive, sensitive, and gifted). Their world feels hermetically sealed: inhabited exclusively by white, privileged, good-looking, high-achieving students and adults whose possessions manifest Eurocentric good taste. The few not born to affluence have ascended to it via natural gifts. (In mind-blowing reverse-stereotyping, a professor tells Sam's Catholic father that his intelligence and good taste prove he has Jewish blood.) The repeated emphasis on characters' beauty, brilliance, and wealth is distancing. This effect is compounded as Sam, Levon, and their peers are admitted to Ivies and other top-tier colleges, success achieved without visible effort. (When one's admitted to the New England Conservatory, friends are astonished to learn he plays the cello.) Strictly for fans of Miss Porter's, Wegmans, and the Vineyard. (Fiction. 14-17)

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June 1, 2017

Gr 9 Up-Even at their high school for gifted but troubled students, Levon and Samantha stand out for their intelligence, so much so that their English teacher invites them to take part in a special assignment. The two will write their autobiographies, sharing their work with only each other and their instructor. Told from the perspectives of the teens and their friends, parents, and teachers, this ambitious novel explores the characters' lives as friendship and romance blossom. Readers learn about Levon's self-imposed social isolation and his desire to discover his father's identity and about Sam's suicide attempt, depression, and dissatisfaction with her family's privileged existence. Balancing so many points of view requires a deft hand; unfortunately, the voices are indistinguishable and bog down the narrative. Cody has a tendency to oversimplify or romanticize mental illness ("This beautiful sixteen-year-old kid. Her hand and wrist wrapped in white"), and a gleefully lurid note often creeps into the clumsy prose ("even the kids who seem to have everything are often as broken and lonely as dolls, naked, missing limbs and eyes"). While the author has attempted a nuanced, layered psychological portrait, the characters are firmly entrenched in the realm of cliche, from Levon's coldly detached scientist mother to the preternaturally perfect protagonists. VERDICT Better titles have tackled the subject of mental illness; try Meg Wolitzer's Belzhar, John Corey Whaley's Highly Illogical Behavior, or Teresa Toten's The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B instead.-Mahnaz Dar, School Library Journal

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2017
Grades 10-1 For their senior project, Levon and Samantha have been asked to write about their lives and get others to write about them, too, showing their work only to each other and their teacher. Opening up to a stranger is easier said than done for Levon, known as a mysterious figure at their alternative high school, as well as for Sam, who's joining her new classmates after a year dealing with a serious bout of depression. Over the school year, however, the project becomes a lifeline for the pair. Cody's first book for teens is engaging and well written. The novel constantly shifts perspectives, and while telling the story from the point of view of a parent or teacher isn't unheard of in YA, too often the sections devoted to adult narrators distract from the teen story line. The multiple-narrator approach keeps the story interesting, but it also leads to some repetitiveness. This is a novel for anyone interested in the labels we are given, and the ones we give ourselves.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)