Book Review: Everything, Everything

It's recently come to my attention that I love doing book reviews where I can talk about the movie or TV show adaptation as well (see Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher). I am planning to do a review of Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda as well, but I just finished Everything, Everything this morning and the ending gave me chills. I had to write about it right this second.

WARNING: SPOILERS ARE COMING. If you haven't read the book, you will learn things you shouldn't until the end of the book. Read the book or watch the movie, then come back and read this entry.

Book info:
Title: Everything, Everything
Author: Nicola Yoon
Year Published: 2015
ISBN: 9780553496642
Interest Level: Grades 9-12

Plot Summary (From Goodreads):

My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla.

But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly.

Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster.

I have to be honest when I tell you how my reading this book came about. I saw the movie and thought it was vapid, shallow, and not at all realistic. I mean, an 18-year-old gets approved for a credit card online and her first thought is to rack up huge debt flying to Hawaii with a boy she's known for a few weeks. Her mother is a doctor with a large settlement from the accidental death of her husband and son, but there's still no way she would be able to afford that huge, white, air-locked house with all kinds of specialized accommodations made for her daughter's illness in Southern California, plus paying a full-time nurse's salary and benefits. Mostly, it was like the movie writers had themselves never been out in the real world, and lived in a bubble where money doesn't exist and plane flights and air circulation systems just appear for free when you need them. But we have to explain where they came from, so sure, that seems like something you could charge on a credit card with no spending limit from a magical credit card company who never sends bills. 

I left the movie theater feeling cheated, to be honest. I had heard nothing but good things about this book by Nicola Yoon, and while I hadn't read it yet, I couldn't imagine Hollywood would screw it up too badly. I should have used my past experiences hating almost every movie adaptation I've ever seen and saved my $13.

My negative feelings about the movie is why I saw it in May 2017 and just got around to reading the book this week. I wasn't planning to read it at all, but a little voice in the back of my head kept telling me to try it. "Don't donate that copy you bought on sale at Target," it whispered. "Pick it up and read the first 20 pages." So, I did.

The book still doesn't make my list of all-time favorites, but oh my god, it was SO MUCH BETTER than the movie (as if anyone is surprised. The book it always better). 

When I reviewed Th1rteen R3asons Why, I said the 13-episode TV series could have been pared down to a feature-length film. I feel the exact opposite way about Everything, Everything. The movie didn't go into nearly enough detail. I would, without hesitation, binge a 13-episode series based on this book. 

The beauty of this book is in the details, and we see almost none of them on screen. The reader sees pages from Madeline's journal, IM conversations between Madeline and Olly, pictures of plane tickets, entries from Madeline's blog, and most importantly, the inscriptions she writes in all of her books. This is a small detail, but by the end of the book it has become integral to the plot. After Mady (spoiler) finds out she isn't really sick and (spoiler) goes to New York to find Olly, she sets up her copy of The Little Prince for him to "find" in a used book store. 

The last words in the book are "Found your book," spoken by Olly, the implication being that they now get to be together (forever? As much forever as you can find in a teen book?). We get NONE OF THIS in the movie.

I'm not saying the book is a masterpiece, but I would say I high-level-liked/low-level-loved the book, while I only tolerated the movie. 

Another thing I want to address is one very important character who appears in one scene of the book and zero scenes of the movie. When Madeline and Olly run away to Hawaii (another thing that feels a little more realistic in the book), they meet up with Olly's old friend Zach. From the moment he is introduced with his "dark umber skin and enormous dreadlocks and a smile that's almost too big for his face," I loved Zach. It turns out he is disappointing to his straight-laced parents for two reasons: 1. he is gay, and 2. he wants to be a rock star. We only know Zach for six pages, but I can think of ten thousand reasons he should have been included in the movie, and ways to do it that wouldn't catch them in the position of paying an actor to do only one scene. I won't bore you with those, but ask if you're interested. I am passionate about Zach.

I am passionate about Zach because he understands the lives of both Madeline and Olly in a way that those two characters might not even understand, themselves. He has seen firsthand the evolution of Olly's family from loving to nuclear, and knows what it's like when your parents don't understand you. He would also be capable of helping Mady navigate the world she knows nothing about through the lens of being a person of color. (In the movie Madeline's mom is black, but in the book, they allude to her being light skinned and something other than black). Madeline's only experience with society is through her computer; she's never had a stranger judge her for the color of her skin or ask to touch her hair, because she's never met a stranger. An elongated friendship with Zach would be helpfully educational when it comes to aspects of black culture that she has missed. Also, getting more symbolic, Zach feels figuratively trapped in the oppressive walls of his family and can identify with Mady being literally trapped in her home. 

I feel like I should address the elephant in the room: Madeline's illness. Or, spoiler, lack thereof. Madeline has grown up thinking she has SCID, an incredibly rare autoimmune disorder that comes with environmental triggers that can be fatal. For this reason, her mother has rigged their house with an airlock and multiple decontamination systems that separate Madeline from the outside. Even though Madeline is the narrator, and this is a YA novel, and teens are supposed to read it and identify with the love story between Mady and Olly, I feel like this is really a story about Madeline's mother.

Madeline's mother lost almost everything when her husband and son died. She was left with only baby, chronically ill Madeline. Of course, her instinct was to keep Mady safe and healthy so she didn't lose the one family member she had left. She let this instinct eat away at her until it was her only personality trait; it was everything. She perpetuates this lie throughout her daughter's entire life. She never lets her daughter go outside. Her daughter will never have a first day of kindergarten. A prom. A best friend. She has convinced herself that even though her daughter's entire life will take place inside the walls of their home, it's okay because she won't be dead. Madeline decides the opposite when she (spoiler) decides to run away.

Madeline's mother would rather her daughter survive than live. Madeline herself risks her own survival to thrive in the real world for even a short period of time.

If the book were longer, or if the intended audience weren't teenagers, maybe Yoon would go into this part of it. I do know that Munchhausen by Proxy and SCID awareness groups are not happy with the way either disorder is depicted in the book; maybe if they were portrayed more realistically these ideas would be expanded upon as well.

As it stands, I would give the book a solid 7/10. Could be better, but I've definitely started and never finished much worse novels. 

Patron Interaction: On Being an Outcast

I was working at my desk in the staff area of the library, when my phone rang. It was a question from one of our Library Assistants currently at the Service Desk. They had a teenage patron looking for books about being an outcast, misfit, or misunderstood. Preferably nonfiction. Our LA said she sent the patron to a section in nonfiction, but wasn't sure she had found exactly what she was looking for. I gave her a few vague suggestions before we hung up, but a few minutes later, the LA came back and asked me to come meet the patron and see if I could help her.

The patron was a younger-looking teen girl with glasses and an enviable afro. I realized I've helped her before, when she was looking for certain numbers in the Dork Diaries series, so we recognized each other and had an instant rapport. I tried to get more specifics about what she was looking for, but she couldn't seem to tell me much more than, "I'm looking for books about when you're kind of a misfit, or don't really fit in with the people around you." It turns out her mom suggested she come to the library to look for books on this topic.

After a few more questions, I got a little more information:

• She doesn't feel like she fits in with the other kids at school
• She searched "misfit" in the library catalogue and saw some Juvenile Fiction books that sounded good
• She recently read Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli and loved it
• More specifically than being a misfit, she wants books about when you are being bullied

These are facts I can do something with! I am a die hard Jerry Spinelli superfan, so I was happy to hear how much she loved Stargirl. I asked if she knew that book has a sequel called Love, Stargirl; she did not. We even found it on the shelf, and her face lit up with excitement!

I was also able to find her misfit book from the catalogue: The Misfits Club by Kieran Crowley.

In nonfiction, we located a book called Uncool: A Girl's Guide to Misfitting In that she thought looked okay. I think the part that attracted her was that it has quotes from real teens.

Instead of finding a nonfiction book about bullies, she thought she'd rather look in our YA fiction section to see if there were any stories about overcoming bullying. We found a couple she thought looked okay, but ultimately ended up putting them back. She was not interested in romances or anything violent or overly sad, which narrows down your choices considerably in YA. 

This morning, I was reading a profile on the author Jacqueline Woodson and her profound impact on diverse YA literature for the last 2 decades. While browsing with this patron, I came across If You Come Softly, which I have never read, but felt good recommending because of what I had recently learned about this book specifically and the author in general. She thought the book sounded good, and I told her I'd recently put it on my list as well so she should come back and tell me what she thinks about it.

Then she asked a question that sort of threw me: "When I'm just browsing, what should I be looking for in a book that tells me it's about the subject I want?"

I had to think this over for a minute, because I've never really considered this before on the level of just checking out book covers. Funny enough, the old trope "Don't judge a book by it's cover" couldn't be more untrue at the library. We create displays specifically so you'll judge a book by it's shiny, interesting cover and check it out. So, what should this patron be looking for when she's browsing the YA fiction section looking for uplifting stories on being a social outcast?

I think she was looking for me to give her buzzwords to find in the titles. Instead, I gave her the best advice I could think up in the moment: "This is not a complicated subject, but it's very broad. You have a small stack of books in your hand that relate to the subject in one way or another. At this point I recommend you keep browsing, and try out anything that sounds good to you. If you relate to them, great. If not, no worries. I am going to think about this subject more, so if you need more guidance feel free to ask for me at the desk whenever you're here."

She promised to let me know what she thought of Love, Stargirl and If You Come Softly, and then I left her to browse. 

This interaction felt really special to me, because she was looking for something so specific and relatable, but somehow elusive. Why aren't there more books in YA nonfiction about empowering the "misfits" and the outsiders? Are there, just not on our shelves? Are they on our shelves and I just missed them in the catalogue?

I would LOVE some opinions on this subject. I will definitely be seeing this girl around the library again, and I would love to have a list of suggestions ready for her when I do (especially if she likes the ones we found today). Do you think these books were good picks? What would you have done differently during this reader's advisory interaction? If you are a librarian, educator, parent, writer, etc, comment on this post or contact me on the Welcome page with any thoughts or title suggestions.