My Beautiful Failure

October 22, 2012
Billy wants to be a psychologist; he’s already lived through his father’s serious depression in Young’s first book, The Opposite of Music. Now that his father has perked up and started painting again, Billy begins volunteering at a suicide prevention hotline. Although some of the rules bother him (no ongoing relationships with repeat callers; no contacting emergency services without the caller’s permission), he’s eager to help, perhaps even save a life. Increasingly worried that his father’s mood is verging on mania, Billy grows distant from his mother and sister and closer to Jenney, a frequent hotline caller whose problems get more florid as the book progresses. In her third novel about mental illness, Young proves she isn’t afraid of dark topics, but while she persuasively depicts Billy’s overinvolvement with Jenney and his certainty that his family is in denial, she offers little counterweight to Billy’s judgments (Gordy, Billy’s saintly best friend, occasionally offers advice). Readers wondering why Billy, a smart high school sophomore, never questions either Jenney’s stories or his own take on his father’s situation may not fully connect with him. Ages 12–up.

October 1, 2012
This account of a teen suicide-hotline volunteer is brimming with wry humor and whimsical charm, but as somber events unfold, that light tone feels uncomfortably inappropriate, as if it belongs to some other novel. Last seen in The Opposite of Music (2007), the Morrison family has weathered father Bill's mental breakdown. He's painting again, confident he's recovered, but Billy, 16, has doubts; he's determined to prevent a repeat. Having immersed himself in psychology texts, Billy follows a friend's suggestion to volunteer with the Listeners suicide hotline. Disappointingly, most callers prove merely lonely, bored, eccentric or sexually deviant. Then Jenney calls. Depressed, she's dropped out of college; her therapist, Melinda, is guiding her to recover memories of parental abuse (readers will wonder if Melinda herself manufactured these). Jenney's praise leads Billy to fantasize their future relationship and share his parental worries with her. Jenney herself never comes into focus; Billy's character drives the story. He's a case study in teen-psyche contradictions--self-centered and altruistic, grandiose and helpless--above all, agonizingly self-conscious. The Morrisons are vivid creations, though these sly, observant portraits may resonate better with adults than teens. Short chapters with enigmatic titles and abrupt, nonlinear shifts in storytelling combine to suggest a graphic novel missing its art. Young's a talented original yet to find her niche. Despite the clever characterizations, the title says it all. (Fiction. 12 & up)

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2013

Gr 9 Up-Billy's family is still recovering from last winter, when the teen's father sank into a deep depression that he's only now just coming out of. Billy, 16, channels his frustrations and worry about his father's mental health into his sophomore-year project, volunteering as a friendly, welcoming ear for the depressed, lonely, and/or bored callers to the Listeners hotline. He plans to be a psychologist, so he's pleased with the work, but he soon breaks the biggest rule of Listeners: he gets involved with a caller. Billy knows he should pretend each call with Jenney is the first one, that they don't have a history, but he can't help falling for her and believing that they are the answer to each other's problems. Jenney's calls become more and more desperate right up to the very last one, when Billy does everything he can to be the one to save her. The premise is interesting and unusual, but flaw in the plot makes it unrealistic: the hotline takes teen volunteers with very little training. Plus, while readers are supposed to find Billy insightful and empathetic, instead he comes across as a pompous know-it-all whose ordeals do not help him grow.-Brandy Danner, Wilmington Memorial Library, MA

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2012
Grades 8-11 FEELING DESPERATE? CALL US NOW. When sophomore Billy Morrison reads the sign for the Listener's suicide hotline, he is brought back to the previous winter, when his father suffered through a deep depression, and Billy supported him through long hours. Thinking that he has the listening skills needed for the volunteer hotline, Billy signs up, and one regular caller, Jenney, calls Billy Hallmark for the warm feelings he brings. Soon Billy begins obsessing over Jenney, even as he worries that his father's antidepressants have triggered a manic episode that is manifesting in all-night painting sessions. While Billy is confident that his judgment concerning both Jenney and his father is sound, the reader is clued into Billy's self-serving, immature diagnosis. The insider view of a suicide hotline is a poignant one. Like the realistic novels of Todd Strasser, this compelling title places a young person in a moral quandary that could literally mean the difference between life and death.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)