YA New York

Okay, I’ll admit it. When I found out Emily Wing Smith had written a YA book, I was … jealous.

I was jealous because, about a million years ago, Emily Wing went to the prom with my boyfriend. That was before he was my boyfriend, of course, back when the two of them were growing up in Bountiful and West Bountiful, Utah. It is a town that is so Mormon that the students get a break during public high school to go attend seminary, which is the Mormon version of … intensive Sunday school, I guess. Or, if you’re Jewish, it’s probably more like Hebrew school. ‘Cos you only go to Sunday school on Sundays.

Adam just got home from a trip out west to see his family. He brought Emily’s book back with him, and I’m so glad he did. In addition to being a fantastic read, The Way He Lived gave me an inside look into the suburb where Adam and Emily both grew up.

Also, there’s a character in the book named Adam who (a) wears sweatpants all the time and (b) takes public transit. You should know that in suburban Utah, very few people take public transit. But Adam — the real life Adam — did take public transit. And he wore sweatpants.

Emily, if you should read this, I want you to know that Adam has upgraded to nice-fitting jeans (dark wash), American Apparel T-shirts, and good old-fashioned Chuck Taylors. Oh, and his scraggly goatee? Is now a full-on, awesome beard.

But her book isn’t really about Adam. She just slipped him in as one of the characters she seems to remember fondly from her walks down memory lane.

Instead the novel — I would call it a novel, though it resembles a collection of short stories — is about how seven different teenagers cope with the death of their friend/lover/brother, Joel. Emily’s writing is fantastic, and she deals with all sorts of complex issues: suicide (not that Joel’s death was one; I’m really not giving anything away here), homosexuality, mental illness. It’s the part about mental illness that really sucked me in, because you can tell that Emily wrote truth, which is the best kind of writing there is.

It’s a good book. A great book. Blurbed by Sara Zarr and Carrie Jones. And worth reading. A little jealousy might be natural, too, if only because Emily is so very talented. But it’s the good kind of jealousy, the kind that propels the reader along his or her own road, instead of the kind of jealousy that makes a person fester.

So. Go forth and read. Look here for an interview with Emily’s high school friend, Adam, who probably has many more insights than I do. And who also can’t escape his impending interview. I know where he lives. (Insert evil cackle here.)

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 15th, 2009 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.