I don't say that lightly. You remember reading John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, right? You probably finished it thinking, oh God, what now? You despaired, wondering how anything else was going to even come close to that good. I was there, friends. I know those feels. Of course, we found other books and enjoyed them like the soul comfort-food they are. Maybe we happened upon one that grabbed us by the collar just as fiercely as TFIOS, and instantly told our friends, neighbors, and bank tellers, "YOU MUST READ THIS." Or, perhaps nothing so wondrous has fallen into your hands; you're still browsing your personal library and the shelves of indies, guessing at which of the myriad covers contains the next story you won't ever want to finish.
Well, get the gosh-damn ready, because this is it.
Jandy Nelson's second novel, I'll Give You the Sun is so consistently good, you'll be plowing through it well past midnight. One might call it a "realistic" novel, which is to say that no one's going to magic school, or leading a resistance against a dictator. Without the flashy back-drop of evil-doing, this one's about love, loss, beauty, creating beauty, the vitality of art, and the courage of owning your own life. We've got two heroes, twins Noah and Jude. They are raised in a nuclear home with two parents: A stoic father and whimsical mother. Together, they provide opposing backdrops against which the kids develop, abandon and rediscover their creative potential among other qualities that blossom in hazardous fashions in that ever-loved coming of age period of life.
The characters are as captivating as real, breathing people. Each one is composed to feel immediately familiar despite their stranger-ness--the kind of people you lay your eyes on for the first time and know right away they'll be with you for life.
Noah is a wonderful, scattered boy. Nelson's imagination flows from her to him like a bloodline. His lines contain small bombs of wild thinking, describing the world around him as if covering the black and white pages with a mess of color and gashed lines. The text hits your head in the way some paintings hit your ears.
Jude blooms later than her brother, artistically speaking. The trope of the sibling-in-shadow takes on an interesting dynamic here, as Nelson places Jude's story three years into the future from Noah's. It's as if her story literally follows in the wake of her more gifted twin. The temporal jumps between chapters are crafted excellently, leaving us unconfused, yet just clueless enough as the two siblings appear throughout each other's narratives. The stark difference between the Jude in Noah's stories and the Jude in her own stirs curiosity the way a tragic accident sells papers. At thirteen, Jude is a thrill-seeking, surfer babe with hair so long "everyone in Northern California has to worry about getting tangled up in it." Three years later, it's gone, and her surfer friends have been replaced by a ghost--a couple actually. As if she anticipated her readers' incessant need to know what the hell happened to her, she teases us with more and more info as the chapters progress. You won't be disappointed with the delivery.
With this book, we see through the eyes of two deeply gifted and troubled artists. Except, rather than bore us with the ineffective, emo, look-at-me-don't-look-at-me tortured soul, we get Noah, who turns his sister's hair into snakes, a boy's face into pure electricity, and a calm home into the center of a hurricane. Jude's art is un-discovered throughout most of it. Despite significant resistance, she evolves into a voracious sculptor, able to chip at the edges of rocks to reveal the petrified life-form within. Both she and her brother follow treacherous paths in and out of each other's lives in an attempt to bear witness to the merciless, yet gorgeous reality of their lives. A search for truth that delivers pain and understanding in perfect tempo.
That's what Give you Sun is really about: the tedium of truth. The weaving, temporally jumping narratives stretch over 370 pages to explain how reality has far more than two sides, which proves an incredible obstacle for Noah and Jude, since there are only two of them. Truth becomes multi-faceted and its sides multiply so fast you'd have to start numbering them backwards.
I can't help but see the hopefulness in such an overwhelming number. For lack of a better reason, it promises that our curiosity and appetite for exploration of unknown things will always be satiated, since the sides of what's really there will be countless. Nelson's shape-shifting, and dazzling narrative explodes forward with imagination, spinning humor, beauty and mental bedlam in its wake--a cosmic stew concomitant to a life filled with indulgence, whim and the dripping desire to connect with those who send thunder through your chest.
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