Away We Go

November 15, 2015
Intellectual boys' boarding school story meets near-future dystopia in this end-times tale. Like the other 600,000 American children and teenagers with Peter Pan Virus, Noah attends a school--of sorts. The "recovery centers" are a cross between internment camps and underfunded classrooms. They're badly misnamed, as well, as nearly all PPV sufferers die in adolescence. Blocked from phone calls, the Internet, and outside contact, Noah finds solace in banter and existential despair, hiding in the toilet stall-turned-library that's the best his recovery center offers. When he transfers to Westing, the sole prep school for PPV kids, Noah finds an idyllic New England haven where students read Whitman while seeking their inner Michelangelo or Sappho. The students, however, are just the same as everywhere else: dying teenagers. Noah nurses his alcoholism tenderly while exchanging droll repartee with the object of his affection. No, not with his girlfriend, Alice, but with Zach, the extremely ill and, predictably, straight boy with whom Noah's enjoyed several tender hookups. Meanwhile, a meteor's headed for Earth. Thin worldbuilding and confusing time shifts detract only slightly; the imminent apocalypse serves primarily to accelerate the claustrophobic immediacy of boarding school angst. Noah and his friends form loving, believably complex relationships, caroming from suicidal ideation to conspiracy theory to a quest for the sacred in mundane death. Lovers of self-consciously witty nihilist profundities will be thrilled; alas that the snark is mired in the stale trope of tragic gay romance. (Dystopia. 14-17)

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December 1, 2015

Gr 10 Up-In the future, children and young adults are contracting the Peter Pan Virus by the hundreds and thousands. The disease is airborne, and to protect the population, infected youths are sequestered in recovery centers and clinics. Noah Falls has just been transferred to the Ivy League of recovery centers, Westing Academy. Away from parents and his boyfriend, he pins his affections on a boy who doesn't reciprocate, tarnishing his other relationships and increasing his feelings of self-loathing. Surrounded by people who love him, Noah is miserably alone. The emphasis in this work is not on the dystopian future disease but on character development and philosophical questions about life, death, and meaning. Noah is a nihilistic existentialist to the world, but inside he's searching for something to reassure him that he is truly alive. His search for meaning is universal and will resonate with readers beginning to question their future. VERDICT The complexity of the writing and underlying themes, as well as the language and sexual situations, makes this best suited to mature readers.-Heather Miller Cover, Homewood Public Library, AL

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2016
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* In a near future, teens who contract the Peter Pan virus (they never grow up, you see) are quarantined in facilities kind of like schools, but why invest in kids' educations if they're going to die before they can contribute something to society? That's why Westing, where Noah is lucky enough to attend, is so revolutionarythey take education seriously despite their students' truncated life expectancy, though it's still a prison, albeit a shiny one. As the threat of mysterious hospice care looms ever closer, Noah and his friends try to thrive. Does love matter when you're doomed? What about freedom? In a lyrical, raucous narrative interspersed with flyers, posters, and letters, Ostrovski follows Noah as he falls hopelessly in love with straight Zach; adores his shy but fierce best friend, Marty; seeks out connection in a string of meaningless sexual encounters; teems with guilt over his girlfriend, Alice; and tries to navigate a world that's definitely ending, if not due to the asteroid aiming toward earth, then the virus that will eventually ravage his body. Noah's snarky repartee and constant jokes belie the depth of his struggle, and the oscillation between his heartfelt interior thoughts and sometimes careless actions and words is both moving and infuriatingin other words, vividly human. An intelligent, thought-provoking exploration of living in spite of futility.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)