Jandy Nelson

Lennie's older sister Bailey died suddenly at age 19, leaving a grief-stricken younger sister, grandmother, uncle, and boyfriend behind. Unable to cope, Lennie takes to scribbling poems and memories on scraps of paper or trash and burying them around town or in the garden or woods, and she and Bailey's boyfriend Toby turn to each other for comfort. Though she knows it's wrong, Lennie also thinks that Toby is the only other person who understands her grief.

Though Bailey's death was show more devastating, it has also broken Lennie open to be herself in the world, not just Bailey's shadow. A new boy in school, Joe, falls in love with the new Lennie - crazy sad, musical, beautiful - and Lennie is torn between Toby and Joe.

Set in the same Northern California setting as I'll Give You the Sun, The Sky is Everywhere also shares its offbeat culture, unusual family arrangements, honoring of art and music, and closeness with the natural world. And, of course, there are some pretty top-notch kissing scenes. Ultimately, Lennie faces the question of how to build her own identity, even as she manages (or, sometimes, doesn't manage) her grief.

Quotes

What are we going to do with all this love? (Lennie and Toby, 31)

Grief is a house that disappears / each time someone knocks at the door / or rings the bell (fragment of Lennie's poem, 73)

When I'm with him, / there is someone with me / in my house of grief, / someone who knows / its architecture as I do... (Lennie's poem, 80)

But what if music is what escapes when a heart breaks? (86)

I told him I was looking at the sky. He said, "That's a misconception, Lennie, the sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet." (Uncle Big, 117)

How can the cost of this change in me be so great? It doesn't seem right that anything good should come out of Bailey's death. (144-145)

We can't keep wrapping our arms around a ghost. (148)

I heard this expression once: Each time someone dies, a library burns. I'm watching it burn right to the ground. (152)

How will I survive this missing? How do others do it? (168)

This is our story to tell. ...I've never once thought about the interpretative, the storytelling aspect of life, of my life. I always felt like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in its telling whatsoever. (185)

...missing her, missing the girl I used to be around her, missing who we all used to be. We will never be those people again. She took them all with her. (208)

I try to fend off the oceanic sadness, but I can't. It's such a colossal effort not to be haunted by what's lost, but to be enchanted by what was. (275) show less

Set in Northern California wine country (with a retelling of family history that started in Spain), this is the story of the Fall family and its cursed brothers. Filled with a kind of grounded magical realism (a man who floats, a man who glows, a woman with flowers growing out of her hair and wings, ghosts, an immortal black dog called Sandro), it's the story of a series of forced marriages, jealousy between brothers, infidelity, and competition; but also love for place and love for music. show more

*Spoilers*

In the present, the main characters are the three children of Bernadette and Theo Fall: Wynton, Miles, and Dizzy (all named after jazz trumpeters). Each, in their way, is almost miraculously rescued by a strange girl, who turns out to be Cassidy: Cassidy has her own troubled history, raised by loving but unstable Marigold in a camper van called Sadie Mae until Marigold unceremoniously drops her at the house of her father - a father she's always believed to have drowned. With her father, Cassidy has four wonderful years, but then she discovers two hidden boxes of papers, revealing a secret history and a connection to the Falls.

Quotes

"There is another world, but it's in this one." -Paul Eluard (one of several epigraphs)

You see as you swim through time that your whole life has been about your father's absence, about skin growing over a wound that never heals. (Wynton, 99)

She says she wants me to speak up, but really, she only wants me to speak up about things she wants to hear. (Cassidy, 111)

It's very hard to unbelieve stuff from when you were little, isn't it? So hard to shake off the stories we were raised on. (Cassidy, 113)

She didn't know what people were supposed to do with the leftover love that no one wanted anymore. (Dizzy, 197)

The conversation was a demolition derby inside him, wrecking everything he'd ever thought about his brother, about himself. (Miles, 220)

"Sometimes you live more in a week than you do in a lifetime." (Sofia to Alonso, 237)

I'm surprised colors aren't coming out of the violin, bright swirling paint filling the air, that's how beautiful the sound you're making is now, like you're walking through the house that is me flipping up shades, letting light in. (Cassidy with Wynton, 261)

He was such a rough draft, had no idea what parts of himself would make it, what crap parts would be cut. (Miles, 289)

The clock had had no hands, but now it did. Everywhere he went he heard time. (Alonso, 294)

Fall Family Tree (335)

Stories give our lives structure, and that structure is destiny. (Cassidy, 350)

...love doesn't go away when people do. It never goes away, does it? (Cassidy, 486)

I do believe now that when the world tips over, joy spills out with all the sorrow.
But you have to look for it. (Cassidy to Wynton, 495) show less

I’ve spent the past few days trying to come up with the perfect analogy for this book. So far all I’ve got is it’s The Sky Is Everywhere (see full review) meets Graffiti Moon (see more posts) meets Jellicoe Road (see full review) on crack. Or something like that. Or, put more simply, it’s magnificent.

This is the story of twins: Jude and Noah. Noah gives us his side of the story starting at age 13. Jude picks up her side of the story three years later, a very different person from the show more one Noah introduced us to. Somewhere in between the twins have gone from being each other’s safe place to virtual strangers who share a wall. As each twin tells their side of the story in alternating chapters, a larger picture unfolds where we’re taken on a trip through time, through art, through gorgeous language, family drama, romance, and heartbreak. To tell you much more than that about what happens would really just be stepping on Jude and Noah’s toes. This is their story.

Full disclosure: I’ve been waiting years for Jandy Nelson to follow up The Sky Is Everywhere, and when that day finally came I was more than a little worried that there was no way my high expectations could be met. In the end, though, this sophomore effort left my expectations in the dust, surpassing them several times over. It’s dazzling, crackling with emotion and intelligence, the sort of book you have to text a friend about as you read, because such deliciousness is really meant to be shared. So make sure to pass it on when you’re done. :-)

Reviewed for http://tatalonline.blogspot.com/2014/10/ill-give-you-sun-by-jandy-nelson.html. show less

At the age of 13, twins Jude and Noah are almost inseparable; Noah is quiet and isolated, always sketching and following around the neighbor boy, where Jude is daredevil enough for the both of them. Flash forward 3 years, and their relationship has completely disintegrated. As Noah tells the story of the past, and Jude tells the story of the future, the twins learn that the only way they'll be able to move forward is by reconciling their relationship.

The major aspect I think this book gets show more props for is its use of the multi-narrator. This narrative device has become all the rage in the YA world; looking through this section in any bookstore, a good majority of the books that you pick up are going to have at least 2, if not more, narrators. If done well, this isn't a bad thing, as it allows authors to bring more voices into their stories, maybe include more diversity, etc. This book stands out from those because the two narrators are also from two different points in the narrators' lives: when they are 13 and when they are 16. This device pulls the reader in right from the beginning, sparking curiosity and moving the plot forward at a nice pace.

This wasn't the only strength of this book: there were some really beautiful lines, and the characterization was phenomenal. As you get more and more into Noah and Jude's heads, you keep moving forward because you just want them to get back to where they used to be, to mend their relationship. Their pain, their struggles felt so real, and I think they're relatable, no matter who picks up this book.

I think the only major critique I have is that some of the supernatural stuff threw me off slightly at the beginning, but it didn't take long for me to adjust to it in the narrative. Otherwise, this is phenomenal read, and a story that will linger in your mind once it's over. show less