When our little SBS cohort got together to duke it out over which of our two books was going to move forward, I expected some spirited debate and maybe some agonizing reversals before we finally made our decision. But alas, there would be no duking or teeth gnashing. We all just flat out enjoyed Holding up the Universe better and there are certainly lots of things to like about it, but I think we all seemed a little befuddled that we weren’t more taken with The Hate U Give. I mean, it is timely as all get out. It speaks directly to the sorrow and anger that many of us feel when we look to our neighbours to the South and see the deep divisions in class and race -and the intensifying violence in word and deed - overseen by the tweeter in chief. I was really expecting to love this book and I am feeling a bit confused (and maybe a bit guilty) about why I didn’t. It certainly wasn’t for want of an interesting central character; I loved Starr and thought she was a fully realized character who was asked to deal with both the mundane and the tragic throughout the course of the novel. The other characters, and there are many, are perhaps not so well-developed, although they are all given distinct voices and each serve a discernible purpose and I guess that while those two things are areas of strength, they may also be its downfall. This is an exceptionally dialogue heavy book, so we hear a lot from these characters, but Starr, as the narrator, is ultimately the only one who has a truly resonant voice and I was left wondering if the structure of the novel maybe let’s us down a bit. Thomas handles the dialogue very well and there is a consistency in dialect that really helps ground the novel in place and time and is key to showing how Starr needs to navigate a host of different realities within her teenage world. The effect, however, of Starr serving as the centre of the universe with these other characters (each with powerful and complex stories of their own) orbiting her is that the book feels a bit didactic at times. I can’t believe I’m writing this -as I’ve often railed against those prose poem, multi-voice YA novels -but I think that if there were more opportunities in this book for other voices -and the nuances of the stories behind those voices -to come to the fore, we might have been able to appreciate the complexities of Starr’s life just as much, but also felt a little more like we were meeting unique characters rather than learning an, admittedly, important lesson in sociology. It’s still a book I’d recommend reading, both for the aforementioned lesson and for some genuinely poignant moments, but I don’t think it offered any of us the same level of reading engagement as Holding Up the Universe.
The premise of Holding Up The Universe, while unique, didn’t seem to hold a lot of promise for me at the outset, but I was taken in by these characters, particularly Libby, right from the start. Jack’s voice emerges, perhaps more slowly, but this is in keeping with a character who seems to be continually in the midst of a pause, which makes complete sense as we learn about Jack’s condition which stops him from an immediate level of connection - recognizing faces - that most of us take for granted. (Hold Up: Is it really possible that 1/50 people have this affliction? If so, wouldn’t all of us educators with thousands and thousands of kids taught come across it more? Or is that a reflection of the insidious nature of the disorder, in that most people simple cope and keep it hidden, knowingly or unknowingly? Please discuss and get back to me). One of the things our group discussed was that this book had a more of that compulsively readable factor than The Hate U Give and here I think this too had to do with the structure of the novel. The alternating narrative structure is pretty common in the YA universe from what I can discern and it is predictably hit or miss, but here I think it allows for some mounting tension and a progression of the narrative. As we get to know each character better we start to fill in some blanks about them, but they also fill in some blanks about each other, in sometimes surprising ways. Jack has a literal connection and level of understanding of Libby that she only fully appreciates at the end, and while Libby learns of Jack’s condition fairly early on, she reveals a profound understanding of him that lets her reveal her empathetic nature. Does her highly recognizable life allow her some insight into the struggles he faces through his failure to recognize even those closest to him? It seems so. There are ebbs and flows in their burgeoning relationship, but there is a very real sense of these characters moving both together and towards something bigger than themselves. As one of our group noted, we were “rooting for them” and it wasn’t just that we were rooting for them to fall in love (although we were), but I think we were rooting for them because as they battled through indignities both small and heartbreakingly large they symbolized a struggle that every kid we know goes through in one way or another, and (spoiler alert) they were able to find their way through with kindness and love. One last plug for Starr in The Hate U Give: everything I just wrote applies to her as well. Both books offered us a glimpse of young people grappling with issues that required real personal sacrifice, but for our group Holding Up the Universe is the book we’d like to see move forward.
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