Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands

5 out of 5 stars - Superbly written and hauntingly poignant, this novel is destined to become a modern day classic with a character who is authentic, vulnerable, and so honest that it will make a reader's heart ache with the desire to protect her. Shelter her. Save her.

Emily Shepard was 16-years-old the day Reactor Number One exploded on the second to the last day of her junior year of high school at Reddington Academy. She and her parents, who both worked at the nuclear power plant nearby on Cape Abenaki, lived comfortably there in Reddington, Vermont -- also known as the Northeast Kingdom. On the morning of the meltdown, Emily ran away from the temporary evacuation site where all the students had been bussed to wait until parents and show more guardians would come to retrieve them from a safe zone. What follows is her tale of life basically alone on the streets -- for her mother and father are surely dead. And, what's even worse -- her father is being blamed for the disaster. Afraid to reveal who she really is, and teetering on the edge of emotional breakdown, Emily lives mostly inside her head remembering the poems of her much-loved favorite poet, Emily Dickinson, as a relatable gauge of her emotions. She's always been impulsive and had been in trouble before because of her poor judgment, but now she has to stay alive in a world so different from her previous life "waffling between suicide and survival."

I loved this book and feel that it will be very appealing to all ages, especially young adults, because the heroine is so believable -- not superhuman but real. The story is one that could have come straight from recent headlines (Fukushima) and will linger as a reminder that "radioactivity lasts as long as the soul." The title serves as both a precaution and a leap of faith. I'll be recommending this novel to everyone.

Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the e-book ARC to review. show less

Given everything Emily experiences once the sirens sound, it is no wonder her life spirals downward as low as it does. Not only must she mourn the loss of her parents and her previous life, she also must deal with the anger and blame targeting her parents for the accident. As she so clearly displays, this is a combination of emotions that no teenage girl is capable of handling well. Her paranoia is justifiable and even admirable given the life she faces on the streets, something driven home by the reactions of others when they discover her true identity. That she succumbs to drug use and other unsavory acts is also completely understandable as she attempts to offset the guilt she feels on behalf of her father. In other words, Emily and show more the entire story is a psychiatrist’s dream.

Emily’s life on the streets is raw and intense and utterly heart-breaking. Her longing for her life as it was versus the reality of her life as it is now is palpable. Even though her choices are understandable, it does not make the consequences any easier to watch unfold. Her self-loathing is scathing, and the manifestations of her pain and anguish require sincere effort to read.

Just when a reader thinks the story cannot get any more intense or emotional, Emily shares a story about a recent tragedy that becomes a complete game-changer. In one sentence, the entire novel changes in dimension and meaning and not necessarily in a pleasant way. For, Emily’s anecdote is one that reminds readers of the worst things humans can do to one another and who the real victims are. It is one of the most profound moments in a novel this reader has ever experienced, one that changes Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands from good to great.

Mr. Bohjalian’s writing, as always, is wonderful. He captures Emily’s voice perfectly. She speaks with just the right amount of self-righteous indignation for a standard teenager with a growing awareness due to her increasing maturity. His focus on the Vermont setting is not quite as detailed as is his wont, but it is not necessary to the story for it to be anything other than an indistinct blur. For, the story is Emily, her thoughts, her experiences, and her emotions. It is painful, gut-wrenching, emotionally difficult, and brutally honest. It does not get much better than that. show less

As a fan of other Bohjalian books, I started out lukewarm on this one. It's about a fabricated but disastrous nuclear plant accident in Vermont, told through the eyes of a teenage, Emily-Dickinson-obsessed girl poet, whose father was chief engineer at the plant.

Initially I found the nuclear accident a bit preposterous but as I continued reading, I soon got past that. The book becomes much more a story about a homeless teenager and the dark side of how these young people survive, forced to make difficult and dangerous decisions on a daily basis about sex, drugs, trust, and intimacy.

Bohjalian achieves a feat I have seldom found in male-written books with female protagonists -- and that is, he has created a completely believable, show more stream-of-consciousness voice, that sounds like any teenage girl's diary you might read.

And the more I read, the more I became invested in this girl's welfare and fretted about what would happen to her. So, stick with this one, if you find yourself tempted to drop it. show less

As a fan of other Bohjalian books, I started out lukewarm on this one. It's about a fabricated but disastrous nuclear plant accident in Vermont, told through the eyes of a teenage, Emily-Dickinson-obsessed girl poet, whose father was chief engineer at the plant.

Initially I found the nuclear accident a bit preposterous but as I continued reading, I soon got past that. The book becomes much more a story about a homeless teenager and the dark side of how these young people survive, forced to make difficult and dangerous decisions on a daily basis about sex, drugs, trust, and intimacy.

Bohjalian achieves a feat I have seldom found in male-written books with female protagonists -- and that is, he has created a completely believable, show more stream-of-consciousness voice, that sounds like any teenage girl's diary you might read.

And the more I read, the more I became invested in this girl's welfare and fretted about what would happen to her. So, stick with this one, if you find yourself tempted to drop it. show less

The title was instructions to the Sandy Hook Children walking past the carnage at their school on the way to safety. Sad leap of faith and trust in each other that Emily and Cameron share in homeless struggle. This book was disorganised and rightly so, as it was the written as a teenager finding strength as she's going thru great loss and struggle after a nuclear catastrophy. Heartwrenching, but a really good book.

Chris Bohjalian does a great job of capturing a teenage girl's voice in this thought-provoking story. In fact, on the audio version, his own daughter is the narrator. Emily Shepherd is a troubled teen in the best of times, but when the meltdown comes -- literally -- the nuclear reactor in her idyllic Vermont town, where both her parents are employed experiences a Chernobyl-size disaster, Emily becomes even more messed up, and grown-up simultaneously. Forced to evacuate her hometown, bused out of school to towns outside the exclusion zone, and unsure of her parents' (and beloved dog's) fate, Emily strikes out on a journey of independence. Her father was the plant's main engineer, so he is blamed for the whole thing and that keeps Emily show more from coming forward to try to be found or connected with anyone who can help her. She has no other viable family (elderly grandparents in nursing homes)and feels too ashamed to seek out friends. Instead she decides to survive on the streets by herself, predictably in the few ways teenage girls can. After a few months, she befriends a young boy, Cameron, and that alters her survival mode to be more maternal and wary, but when he becomes deathly ill, her whole house of cards tumbles down. The title refers to the advice given to children evacuated from the Sandy Hook school shooting as they navigated the carnage. It is equally applicable to Emily and her journey of self-discovery and survival. show less

34. [Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands] by [[Chris Bohjalian]]

Such a sad and powerful story. When the nuclear power plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom melts down and explodes, Emily Shepard is in school. Herded out in mass evacuations, she realizes that with both parents working at the power plant, she has no one to take her in but even more terrifying, she may have been orphaned. It gets worse, much worse, for Emily. Quickly the fingers start to point to her father as the key problem in the disaster, with his past employment record including a suspension for being at work drunk helping to focus the public hatred. Fearing universal hatred and possibly interrogation about her father's habits, she runs and changes her name. The story is more show more a tale of a homeless teen - shelters, prostitution, living by the river in an igloo of leaf-filled trash bags, drug use, and despair-driven behaviors - as it is of nuclear disaster, but the meltdown provides an impetus and a framework within which Emily explores and explains herself.

Bohjalian's voice is on point with this run-away and screw-up girl that the reader quickly loves. We applaud her self-awareness, her struggle not to be sucked into the whirlpools of homeless life, the way she protects and cares for the young boy, Cameron, who comes into her care. We ache with her grief and understand her final resolution. Beautifully done, highly recommended. show less