A Germ of an Idea

Jennifer Niven

Jennifer Niven's character Violet Markey, who had written a successful blog with her sister, Eleanor, summons the courage to start an online magazine of her own called Germ. Niven decided to start an actual magazine by the same name. We talked with her about the relationship between life and art in All the Bright Places.

That opening scene with Theodore Finch and Violet both contemplating suicide from the roof of their high school is both funny and also a nail-biter. How did you decide to start there?

The book is inspired by real-life events. It's a story I've carried around for a long time. I'd just come off a series of books for adults, and I'd just lost my agent. I wanted to write something that really mattered. When I got the idea for the story, I sat down and wrote the first chapter just to see what would happen. I thought, "What would it be like to write from a boy's point of view?" Originally, Violet was not on the ledge; Finch was up there by himself. The first line just came out, and it just kept going.

How did you find the voice for Finch?

I think one of the things that really informed the writing is knowing people--one boy in particular who I was close to--who had struggled with the same thing, bipolar disorder primarily. I have done a lot of research for nonfiction and historical novels. If I hadn't known people who were struggling with this, I don't know that I could have written it the way I did because there's only so much you can learn through research.

Tell us about the seeds of Violet's online magazine called "Germ" and the online magazine that you're involved with.

I was into revisions on a manuscript and I was thinking, "Wouldn't it be cool to have a real Germ magazine?" I started sketching it out, and flash-forward to now, and we have an all-volunteer staff. There are 45 of us, the age range is between 14 and 40, but the majority  are 14-25, and they're amazing. We have editors and social media people, and a literary section as well. We're getting wonderful submissions from around the world. We handle some of the harder issues, some great writers have written about their experiences with an eating disorder or being bipolar... and then also decorating your locker.

Of the kinds of books you've worked on--fiction and nonfiction for adults, this novel for teens--is there one area that's proven more challenging?

There are challenges with each book and each genre. I will say that it felt very natural to write YA. I lost my ex-boyfriend to suicide a long time ago, and my dad died of cancer during the same calendar year. I was allowed to grieve about my dad, but I couldn't grieve about the boyfriend. Writing this book was really cathartic.

I went to visit a high school and we asked everyone to think about their bright places--your dog, or your mom, or a movie you love, or a book or word you love. We put their bright places on Facebook, and you can go on Twitter and Instagram to see some of the places others have come up with. I'm so grateful for everything that's happening.

This is an excerpt from a longer interview that first appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.

Testing Boundaries

Una LaMarche

In Like No Other, Una LaMarche lets readers inside the traditionally private Chabad-Lubavitch community for a rare view of its traditions. Readers enter through the experience of 16-year-old Devorah Blum, whose chance encounter with Jaxon, an African-American young man her age, prompts her to question some of those traditions. Brooklyn's Eastern Parkway marks the boundary between their two communities, but they meet in the hospital that serves them both when the elevator breaks down.

Devorah would never, under normal circumstances, be with a boy her age unchaperoned, let alone a boy outside of her community. They talk about their families, music, and through their alternating first-person narratives, readers watch their mutual attraction develop.

LaMarche reveals the complexity of the mores behind the Chabad-Lubavitch way of life. Devorah jokes that yichud (the rule against two members of the opposite sex alone together) stems from the belief, "Plop two teenagers in a confined space, let them get to talking, and sooner or later the conversation will go to a sinful place..." Yet their attraction bears this out. These rules are rooted in life experience. 

But when does Devorah get to test these boundaries for herself and gain her own life experiences? She's smart and curious and willing to take responsibility for her actions. The author, without didacticism, explores the territory between faith and doubt, fate and free will. Can one's faith strengthen without doubt? Can one respect boundaries without testing them? These are all questions that teens innately raise for themselves, and LaMarche's romance about two 16-year-olds curious about and attracted to each other, gives teens an apparatus for examining these questions for themselves.

Carry On

Miranda Kenneally
Photo: Ars Nova Images

The narrator of Breathe, Annie Breathe! by Miranda Kenneally, is in pain over the recent death of her boyfriend, Kyle, and decides to complete the marathon he'd set out to run. Annie feels guilty because she wants to go to college. How does one grieve and also move forward without feeling like she's somehow wronging the one she loved?

Through flashbacks, we learn that Kyle had wanted to marry Annie. Annie loved Kyle but wanted to complete college first. Then he dies (in a car accident) right after their reconciliation. Annie, who hates running, decides to train for and complete Nashville's Country Music Marathon in his honor. When Coach Woods sees Annie running on a Saturday morning, she offers to put Annie in touch with a friend who prepares runners for marathons. Matt Brown, Annie's running coach, sets down a plan for her so detailed that readers themselves could train for a marathon. Annie tackles her goal in a way that lets readers see why she excels in whatever she sets out to do.

In this way, Miranda Kenneally bears a strong resemblance to her heroine. In an interview, she said that, from the age of eight, Kenneally knew she wanted to be a writer. "I spent my recesses writing really bad stories about poodles that wanted to join the circus," she said. "I worked hard, figured out what I needed to know, and went after it." The author herself trained to run the Marine Corps Marathan in 2005. She writes from experience, as someone who did not think of herself as an athlete, to someone who now can run a marathon (and has also published five YA novels).

In pursuit of her goal, Annie meets other like-minded people, working to complete a marathon for all sorts of reasons. She also meets her coach's brother, a womanizer who develops true feelings for Annie, her perseverance and her dedication. She calls him on his recklessness and--as with her running--opens up to the possibility of life after Kyle.

Somewhere along the way, Kyle's mission becomes Annie's. She wants to complete the marathon as much for herself as for him. Kenneally wisely shows, as Annie works through her complex emotions, that it's possible to hold grief and hope at the same time. One does not negate the other.

A Family Intact

Erin McCahan in Grand Haven, MI

It is rare in young adult fiction to find a family that gets along well, in which an author portrays teens with parents who respect them and allow them autonomy. Erin McCahan paints such a family portrait in Love and Other Foreign Words.

Josie Sheridan likes routine, predictability, consistency, and she dislikes surprises. Yet everything is changing. Her sister Kate is getting married, and Josie does not approve. Josie must work hard to do the things that come naturally to others. She practices the signature hug for her volleyball team (at home, in private) so that she can belong, but then everyone wants a "Josie hug," which was not the goal she sought.

Josie's father really "gets" her, and provides some much-needed compassion for his youngest daughter. But he also knows when to draw the line, when to point out that she's in the wrong. And he does it in such a way that she must do some soul-searching. He does not make anything easy for her, because he knows she likes to--even needs to--puzzle things out.

So often novels aimed at teens explore the rift between parent and child once he or she enters adolescence. Here's a novel in which the parents give their teen space to become the person she's yearning to become. They trust her and have faith in her, even when she's acting badly. Maybe it's because she's the third of three children. Maybe they've learned with their first two that their children have to figure it out for themselves, but this mother and father have an approach that works.

Josie's mother and father know that along with their daughter's genius come some social challenges, and they are there to guide her, but they also know she must learn from her own missteps. Yes, the friendship, the portrayal of sister relationships, and the awakening of romance are terrific, but the strong, loving relationship between Josie and her parents may be most memorable of all.

Story within the Story

E. Lockhart

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart is right there with Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein and the film The Usual Suspects, in that you think you have your bearings, and then suddenly you don't. But the author's sure hand steering the story keeps your complete faith nonetheless. And her dexterity with language is a marvel.

Lockhart's novel stars three wealthy cousins: narrator Candace, Mirren and Johnny--and Johnny's socially conscious best friend, Gat. Together, they form the Liars of the title. Gat questions the things the cousins take for granted, and slowly chips away at their once unshakeable faith that their privilege can secure their happiness. This transition from inheriting values from one's parents to questioning them and then forging one's own values lies at the core of this coming-of-age novel.

We believe the conversation between these 15-year-olds. Candace falls in love with Gat, then has an accident and is left with no recollection of it. Lockhart weaves in Shakespeare plots and fairy tales, Cadence's constructions to puzzle out what occurred and why she has no memory of it: Granddad Sinclair as Lear; Beauty sees the glory in the Beast, but her father "sees a jungle animal." Did the overwhelming loss of her father's abandonment and her grandmother's death, together with her forbidden love for Gat lead to Cadence's accident and amnesia?

Adults will appreciate Lockhart's consummate storytelling, but teens will relate to the unfamiliar and unwanted role of parenting one's parent, and trying to become who they truly are, which is not necessarily who the adults want them to be.

Futuristic Fairy Tales

Marissa Meyer

Marissa Meyer sets her fairy tales in the future, turns the victims of the classics into agents of change, and provides a lens through which to view the present. Cress, her third in the Lunar Chronicles, reimagines Rapunzel, trapped in her tower, as a brilliant hacker and programmer drone sequestered in a satellite. Cress made a cameo appearance in Cinder, as the one who revealed Queen Levana's diabolical plans to Cinder.

In Cinder, the heroine retains the classic fairy tale position of least valued in her household, but she nonetheless supports her stepmother and stepsisters as the most gifted mechanic in the Commonwealth. She's also a cyborg--considered second-class citizens in their society. Prince Kai seeks out Cinder to repair his android, and that is how they meet--at her workplace. The heroine of Scarlet, in the second book, is a talented pilot searching for her missing grandmother, and a hybrid named Wolf helps her solve the mystery.

Meyer deepens her characters well beyond fairy tale archetypes and also develops plot twists that keep readers guessing. Dr. Erland, for instance, turns out to have a history that adds another layer of complexity to his motives for assisting in and encouraging the Emperor's cyborg draft to "aid" in finding an antidote to the letumosis plague raging across Earth. Captain Thorne reveals a sense of morality when tended by Cress's affection. And Wolf proves his fierce loyalty when Scarlet is taken prisoner by Queen Levana's chief counsel.

All the while, Meyer weaves in themes relevant to modern teens sorting out their views on immigration policy (Cinder's society wishes to ban or segregate cyborgs), security and privacy (Queen Levana has hidden cameras on Earth that deliver information to her on Luna). The framework of these stories owes a debt to fairy tales, but as readers delve more deeply, they discover subtle commentary on the structure of society and may use the questions raised in the stories to examine its core assumptions and values.

Fallout

Laurie Halse Anderson draws from her own experience as the daughter of a World War II veteran for The Impossible Knife of Memory, a highly perceptive novel about how PTSD can wreak havoc on intimate relationships.

Laurie Halse Anderson
Photo: Joyce Tenneson

As with her book Speak, Anderson bears all--feelings, physical responses to those feelings, and complete shutdowns around those feelings. Hayley Kincain has moved around so much she has rarely had to connect with anyone but her father (who ergo has also rarely had to connect with anyone but Hayley). One of the few times she did connect with someone outside the family, her father's girlfriend, Trish, it ended in disaster, with Trish abandoning Hayley and her father. So Hayley has learned to trust no one.

She knows her father loves her, and in his sober stretches, he shows her that he does. But his behavior is inconsistent and confusing, and Hayley frequently steps up to be the adult. So as her new friends in high school gradually establish themselves as trustworthy, Hayley begins to show more confidence and to trust again.

Few authors write more psychologically truthful novels than Anderson does. She is unafraid to expose the most revealing moments of intimacy--whether in friendships, parent-child relationships, or romantic relationships. She shows readers how secrets and shame can isolate one human being from another in the most crippling ways. Yet there is a great deal of repair in her books, always realistically, but enough to offer hope to her readers. Her message is that you do not have to be isolated; you can and will connect with others if you do the work to connect with them.

A Violation of Trust

Robin LaFevers

In this second of the His Fair Assassins series (set in the 15th century as Brittany tries to fend off France) by Robin LaFevers, Dark Triumph, Sybella is sent back by the abbess to her childhood residence. The book stands entirely on its own, but for those who first encountered Sybella in Grave Mercy, readers learn why she seemed so haunted.

Sybella reveals that her brother Julian started out by protecting her from their violent father, but, in exchange, came to expect a physical intimacy from her. LaFevers handles this complex topic respectfully and responsibly. She clearly depicts Sybella's lack of choices in an abusive household. She needed her brother's protection in order to survive her father's ruthless and mindless violence. Then Sybella goes to the convent seeking refuge, and the abbess sends Sybella right back to her abusive family (as a spy), violating any sense of trust Sybella might have begun to form at the convent.

The difference is that this time Sybella knows how to protect herself; she operates from a place of strength and intelligence, and begins to acknowledge that she is as skillful a healer as she is an assassin. As difficult as Sybella's past is, LaFevers shows how these seemingly insurmountable challenges now aid her in her calling to help defend Brittany and the duchess. Sybella is a survivor, and an uncanny judge of character. Now, as a mature teen, she knows almost instantly whom she can trust and whom she cannot. So when she meets Beast, the last of the duchess's soldiers to fall in conflict with her father's men, Sybella immediately recognizes him as a friend and ally.

Her wish to confide in Beast is hindered only by her fear that he will think less of her for all that she has endured in her father's house. This is a redemptive book for its example of how telling one's darkest secrets starts the beginning of the healing process and how one trusted friend can more than compensate for an army of enemies.

Accumulating Wisdom

David Levithan

The narrator of Every Day by David Levithan, neither male nor female, simply called “A,” has literally lived the idea of “walking two moons in someone else’s moccasins.” Well, maybe not two moons, but 24 hours. And in those 24-hour snippets of someone else’s life—5,994 of them, by the time we meet A—the narrator has accumulated a great deal of knowledge about what makes us human.

A is also in the unique position of altering the host’s life. A essentially tries to live the Hippocratic Oath, “First do no harm.” A tries, for that day, to live the host’s life as the host himself or herself would. A keeps an e-mail account that serves as a journal, and seems to have acceptance around this experience of 24-hour immersions in someone else’s life—until Rhiannon comes along. For the first time, A wants to make the effort—and it requires a great deal of effort, since A changes bodies every midnight—to form a lasting relationship with someone.

A’s musings range from wondering about the nature of dreams—as when A dreams of Rhiannon: “I wonder: If I started dreaming when I was in Justin’s body, did he continue the dream?”—to thoughts of what would happen if A’s host died while A occupied it (would A have died, too?). But the narrator also thinks about what the experiences of thousands of days have taught A about the human condition.

On day 6000, when A goes to church as Roger Wilson, A shares a powerful insight that begins with religion but extends to the experience of what it means to be mortal: “Religions have much, much more in common than they like to admit…. Everybody wants to belong to something bigger than themselves, and everybody wants company in doing that…. They want to touch the enormity….” A suggests that no matter what religion or gender or race or geographic background, “we all have about 98 percent in common with each other” and we humans like to focus on “the 2 percent that’s different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that.” For A, “The only way I can navigate through my life is because of the 98 percent that every life has in common.”

A makes us, as readers, the beneficiaries of the wisdom A has accumulated, day by day. We get to walk in other people’s moccasins together. We come away from Levithan's extraordinary novel asking ourselves what makes life meaningful, and how to be more active participants in our own lives. A reminds us that love "isn't the question... but it's not the answer either.... Love can't conquer anything. It can't do anything on its own. It relies on us to do the conquering on its behalf."

High Society

Keeping the Castle by Patrice Kindle is a wonderful, witty farce that could well lead your teen to Jane Austen. If he or she already knows Jane Austen, then they will appreciate Patrice Kindl’s understanding of the issues at stake for young British men and women at that time. The book is funny and smart and offers teens a way of thinking about how society is set up and the values its members place on things like beauty, intelligence, gender, wealth and a family’s position.

Althea Crawley, as the young woman who’s uniquely placed to keep her family’s castle by marrying a wealthy man, has to consider sacrificing her own happiness for the sake of preserving her family’s lifestyle—and indeed their very survival. This is complicated by the fact that she cannot keep herself from saying what she truly thinks. She scares off one suitor after another.

Many British books and films revolve around class. What you’re born into, and how you get around that. The most humorous scenes in the book arise from the angst of trying to serve food for everyone who comes to Crawley Castle to pay a social call. The people who kindly decline sugar for their tea, because they know the family has very little money and can’t afford such luxuries. Then to come across Mr. Fredericks, who has no finesse at all, who critiques Althea’s family holdings--and who brings Althea to a rude awakening when she realizes how long her family has been low on cash. Mr. Fredericks’ observations about the tapestries and portrait frames reveal to Althea that her father was slowly selling off their valuables to keep the castle even while he was alive.

Mr. Fredericks and his mother are the most like Americans. Practical, hardworking folks in a world in which other people coasted on title and inherited wealth. Althea is in her own way hardworking, certainly resourceful, and has much to recommend her. With character names such as Lord Boring, Prudence and Charity, Kindl telegraphs the depth (or lack of depth) of each. One of the great pleasures of the novel for readers will be knowing who the right match is for Althea before she does.

Letting Go

With Why We Broke Up, Daniel Handler ties a relationship to the objects that have been meaningful to (at least) one of the parties involved. Maira Kalman animates those objects in her artwork so that they almost seem to take on the emotional life of the two people involved in this ill-fated romance. When Daniel Handler discussed the seeds for this project (with a gathering of teachers, librarians and reviewers), he said it began with Maira Kalman.

Handler and Kalman had collaborated on a picture book, 13 Words, and Handler asked Kalman what she’d like to work on next. She showed him paintings of ordinary objects that she’d done. If you look at her picture-book biography, Looking at Lincoln, that’s what she does there, too. She enters President Lincoln’s story through the stovepipe hat she spies in the park, the $5 bill on the table at the diner, then delves more deeply into the details of his life. Handler said that he tried to think of what makes ordinary objects seem a bit magical, and felt that “endowing them with significance because of a romance” would do it.

Min and Ed form a pie-in-the-sky connection—two people from opposite ends of the high school popularity scale who meet because the co-captain of the basketball team is hiding out after his team’s loss at a party hosted by the “arty” crowd. (Ed never uses that term to describe Min, she does; he simply calls her “different.”) But the tangible objects that give their connection meaning keep their interactions credible. The couple operates most smoothly outside the daily rhythms of high school life. When they try to pull each other into their individual orbits, trouble brews.

Ultimately, Min cannot change Ed. She brings out his best but she cannot keep his best. He would have to wish to change, and he either cannot or will not (we know not, because we only see Min’s side). Through Min’s eyes, we see that Ed tries, and perhaps even wants to sustain it, but he does not. And that is why they broke up.

With her “Dear John” letter, the basis of the entire text of the novel, Min describes the objects in the box that she is returning to Ed and replays the key moments of their relationship. Her letter and her returning of the objects allow Min to begin the process of letting go. She expects nothing back in return. She allows herself to reflect on the meaning Ed had for her, and the best parts of him that she brought to light, and why she couldn’t see then what she sees now. She’s very human and very healthy about it. By doing this physical and emotional housecleaning, she will be able to move on. Don’t we all wish we’d had a Min to guide us through high school?

Crazy Love

Remember what it was like to fall in love as a teen? The obsession? The inability to think about anything else? Interpreting every word, gesture and pause?

Well 14-year-old David Gershwin embodies those feelings. He just happens to be in love with Zelda, one of his psychiatrist father’s patients, in How I Stole Johnny Depp’s Alien Girlfriend by Gary Ghislain. “She’s pretty in a scary sort of way,” according to David. “Like something you’d really like to touch but that will probably bite.” Zelda insists she’s from the planet Vahalal, and she’s on a mission to find her “chosen one” and bring him back with her. When she points him out on the Internet it’s… Johnny Depp.

Haven’t we all felt that the object of our obsession is from another planet? Or is Zelda schizophrenic (though the hero’s father insists, “No one is ever crazy, David”)? But then how do you explain her superhuman strength to slip out of unbreakable handcuffs and her talent for Space Splashing (“the ability to be at two points in space at the same time”)? David’s in love, and he sees what he wants to see, so as readers, we do, too.

The strength of Ghislain’s story is that he defines David’s psyche well, and because we never leave David’s head, we’re as invested in his mission to win over Zelda as David is. Zelda’s superhero attributes and David’s funny and obsessive viewpoint will hold the attention of even teens who don't think of themselves as readers.

This original take on an all-consuming crush will appeal to guys for its comics-humor quotient, and to girls because of Zelda’s feminist stance (and superhuman strength). Will the nerdy boy win over the otherworldly beauty? Read on and find out.

Before the Monster

This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel is scary, which makes it timely as Halloween nears. But it’s scary all year round. As a precursor to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the novel’s fear factor arises from the tensions between the characters.

Oppel’s twist on the classic story is the invention of a twin for Victor Frankenstein, Konrad, and they are both in love with Elizabeth Lavenza. That’s one source of tension. Victor wants to be better than Konrad, even though he loves Konrad. That’s another tension. When the twin brothers together with Elizabeth discover a secret passage that leads far beneath the Chateau Frankenstein, and a recipe for an Elixir of Life—that leads to further tensions with Victor and Konrad’s father, who forbids them from returning to the cellar and from reading the books stored there. And then there’s the tension between Victor, the siblings’ friend, Henry, and Elizabeth when they seek help from a troubled, reclusive alchemist.

More classic scary scenes emerge during their search for the Elixir’s ingredients: white-knuckle encounters with the vulture-like Lammergeier, which has a 10-foot wing span, and also a prehistoric coelacanth (their pursuit of the fish through tiny tunnels will make even hearty readers feel claustrophobic). But the true terror arises from Victor and his unpredictability. We watch his inner struggle as he wrestles between his jealousy of and loyalty to his brother, his desire to attract and even possess Elizabeth’s affections, and finally his hunger for power.

At the same time, the world is changing around the 15-year-old twins. The author probes the societal shifts in thinking in late 18th-century Switzerland. Konrad yearns to visit America, the French people have fomented a revolution, and scientific breakthroughs have begun to overshadow Roman Catholicism. When Victor, an atheist, worries that he could lose his brother to illness, he almost envies Elizabeth her devout beliefs. His thoughts as he observes her in the church expose the tug-of-war between fact and faith, in both religion and science: “Wine to blood. Lead to gold. Medicine dripped into my brother’s veins. The transmutation of matter. Was it magic or science? Fantasy or truth?”

Frankenstein still holds our attention, centuries later, for good reason. And Kenneth Oppel’s perfectly sets the stage for the man and the monster to come.

The Student Body

Have you ever considered that it’s often the changes in a student’s body that determine his or her place within The Student Body? Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach puts that reality at the center of Felton Reinstein’s story. For his entire 15 years, Felton has been the butt of the jocks’ jokes (they call him “squirrel nuts”). But during a spring gym class, he sprints the entire 600-yard dash, outrunning the best runners. That summer, as Felton continues to get taller and meatier, the jocks claim him as one of their own. Felton’s physique earns him a place with the popular crowd.

The same holds true for young women. The ones who get curvy first draw the attention of their male peers (whether they want it or not) and win the loyalty (or envy) of most girls. They become the popular girls. These changes arrive seemingly overnight, often during the summer, and change everything for those individuals.

Herbach probes the complex feelings of being thrust into a world that was previously off-limits and, in Felton’s case, completely unsought. There are advantages and disadvantages. As his mother falls apart, Felton has another place to go. On the other hand, immersing himself in this alternate refuge can feel like a betrayal to his family. His crush, Aleah, also has a calling and a discipline as a pianist. While he lifts weights, she practices scales. For those of us who were late bloomers, this can be a confounding time, just waiting for your body to “catch up.” You have no control over when the changes will take place or if they will happen in the way that you would like. The book describes the emotional purgatory of not quite belonging where you once did and not quite fitting into a new realm, but moving forward anyway. Sometimes Felton jumps to wrong conclusions, sometimes he’s right. But he has to keep going. And that’s not a bad message either. Felton grapples with the balance between friends and family and his newfound athleticism, and sometimes that kind of mindful grappling is the best we can do.

Griefstricken

Grief is such an all-consuming experience. When grief strikes, the ground shifts like an earthquake, and then the tremors continue for days, weeks, months, often when we least expect them. It’s hard to see or hear anyone or anything else. Jandy Nelson captures that experience so beautifully in The Sky Is Everywhere when Lennie says, “It’s as if someone vacuumed up the horizon while we were looking the other way.” When her sister, Bailey, dies, Lennie looks for ways to feel intense alternative emotions, like getting involved with her sister’s boyfriend, and then creating a love triangle with Joe Fontaine—and shutting out everyone else. And then there’s that feeling of, why do I deserve to make a life when my sister’s has ended?

All of us who have lost someone close to us know that the intensity of the feelings may lessen with time, but the feeling of loss never really goes away. We just learn how to carry that person with us. Lennie does it through her poems to her sister, set adrift in the river or aloft on a breeze. We find ways to honor their spirit, the music they loved, the dreams they dreamed. The tension in The Sky Is Everywhere resides in the question of whether or not Lennie will allow herself to pursue the music she herself loves and her own dreams.

When my mother died, a friend who had also lost her mother told me, “It’s like living underwater.” And it was. It felt like everything was happening at a remove. I could see that the world was still spinning and that life was going on around me, but I felt separated from all of it. Gradually, I surfaced again, but it took time, and everything was different when I did. In The Sky Is Everywhere, we watch Lennie during her underwater period—loving and laughing but at a remove, seemingly unaware of the consequences of her actions. And then we see her come to the surface. It’s how she gets there that makes Lennie’s story such a moving and healing experience.