Review: Every Day by David Levithan

Mid-June, I read David Levithan's Every Day. I've been getting through several YA novels this summer that are on the state reading lists for the upcoming school year, and this was one of them. Sadly, I ended up not liking the book very much. I say sadly because I was really interested and excited about the idea of the book . . . but the execution did not appeal to me. You can find many other reviews on the book that give you a synopsis, but I'll give a short one here:

Narrator/main character "A" wakes up every day in a different body. A resides in each body for one day only, and usually just tries to fit into the person's regular routine and not shake things up. The reader follows A through a couple of months at age sixteen (A only wakes up in the bodies of people the same age as A). One day, A falls in love with Rhiannon, the girlfriend of Justin, a boy who A inhabits. A wants to try to keep seeing Rhiannon, but as you can imagine, A's situation makes this difficult. (Luckily A swaps between people usually within a few hours of one another.)

The idea was really neat I thought, and I wanted to see how the author explained how A would deal with the difficulties this kind of life would bring. I will not be too wary of spoiling things, so watch out.

Positives: The interesting idea. Each chapter is a different day, a different person, and there are a couple that are really touching in how A deals with the person's situation (for example, deciding to "interfere" and tell a suicidal girl's dad how she feels, when A usually tries not to interfere too often). And, the few "bonus" chapters at the end detailing some days before the novel starts were pretty good as a short story on their own.

Negatives: Almost everything else. Number 1, which most of the other reviews I read after finishing the book hit on as well, was that the narrator is too "preachy." Really, it sounded like I was just reading the author's thoughts instead of a distinct voice for A. The reason for this probably stems from the fact that author David Levithan is gay, and in this novel he makes a LOT of statements through A about tolerance and acceptance. Now, I'm not against those ideas being in YA novels. However, to me it felt like the author was telling me how to feel through his narrator, instead of letting me decide for myself or make a judgement based on the actions of the characters. Plus, there were some times when I just didn't agree with the main character's ideas on those subjects. That's my own personal opinion, I know, but it colored my reading, so I'll be honest about it here.

A is especially repetitive about convincing Rhiannon that A sees him/herself as neither a a boy nor a girl. I can understand the reasoning behind that, given that A switches between the two all the time. It is harder for Rhiannon to wrap her mind around this - which I can also understand, because living 16 years in one body would make it hard to understand. I imagine A as a boy, probably because A first appears in the body of Justin (Rhiannon's boyfriend), so even though the author probably would not like it, I'm going to call A "he" from now on for consistency and ease of writing. I noticed that a lot of reviewers also automatically called A "he" and did not mention that A sees him/herself as neither, so I felt like I at least wanted to mention this fact. (I do wonder if the love interest had been a boy rather than a girl whether I/others would have viewed A more as a girl.)

So, one thing that bothered me stems from the above point. When A meets up with Rhiannon in a girl's body (often going to great lengths and breaking that vow of not meddling with the body's life), it is harder for Rhiannon to show A affection. A seems to try to make Rhiannon feel guilty about this. That's bothersome. Rhiannon is clearly a heterosexual female, and has lived so for 16 years. Even if you agree (like A seems to think), that we should just "love who we love" regardless of gender or anything, that does not negate that fact that most people are attracted to one over the other, and it's not Rhiannon's "fault" that she feels awkward being with A as a girl.

Also, I don't like that A is so selfish. He tries to make it like he's not, but he is. This is realistic, but hard to read in the first person and still "like" the narrator. He falls in love with Rhiannon while in Justin's body and he just "knows" that Justin is a jerk and Rhiannon deserves better. A acts like he is far beyond his years, which I guess is believable considering the way his life has been lived, but he sounds pompous sometimes. Besides just seeing Rhiannon more often, then finally spilling his secret, he tries to persuade her to break up with Justin, and not even very subtly (maybe that's better, though). He pretends it is for her own good, and maybe it is because Justin kind of is a jerk, but clearly A is also being selfish. Then he wants Rhiannon and him to be able to have a relationship, and ignores how difficult this will be for her - she is clearly unsure about it and finally makes it clear that it just can't work, him trying to see her all the time and dragging all these bodies all over the place. She can see that this is selfish, and he only seems to see his desire for her. Ok, a couple of times he debates and maybe realizes that this is not fair to his hosts, and I will grant that it does not seem fair for A that his life has to be lived the way it does and he can't really have a stable family and friends - but another part of me was like, well, this is the hand he has been dealt and he is going to have to live with it, as cruel as that may be.

MAJOR END-OF-BOOK SPOILERS AHEAD

Towards the end, A wakes up in the body of a boy he deems a nice guy, and he asks Rhiannon to meet him and pretend it is their first date. He has, by this time, figured out how to sort of implant what memories he wants the body's real inhabitant to keep the next day. So, the boy A is in will remember meeting Rhiannon and going on a stellar date with her. That night, he basically tells Rhiannon to stay with this guy and start a new relationship with him. Yeah, he basically picks out a guy for her since he can't be with her. Weird, controlling, and silly.

Last, the final thing that made me most angry with this book. Here is a specific passage that may illustrate the preachy-ness and how the book is really not-so-tolerant-as-it-purports-to-be in some cases.

Day 6023: "Even before I open my eyes, I like Vic. Biologically female, gendered male. Living within the definition of his own truth, just like me. He knows who he wants to be. Most people our age don't have to do that. They stay within the realm of the easy. If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it."

Problems with this passage:

A) I have a more objective view of "truth." While I realize that some things we call "truths" can be subjective (say, I might say "Math is hard" and that may be "true" for me but not for someone else) I think "Truth" needs to be objective or how can we have it? So I'm not sure what A means, "the definition of your own truth." I guess he means that you could be born female, like Vic,  but feel that in "truth," you are male.

B) The bigger issue: I feel the author is basically saying that anyone who is cisgender (I think I am using that correctly: someone whose "mental" sex aligns with their physical sex, as opposed to transgender) is limited, scared, or wrong. As if because I was born female, identify as female, and am attracted to men, I am taking the "easy" path. I'm sorry, but this does not mesh with everything I hear about people being "born" the way they are, their identity and desires not necessarily up to them to "choose." Levithan's narrator says "find," I guess, but what does that mean? I have to go out and try everything out to figure out what I already knew about myself? And if I don't choose to do this or don't "have to do that" as he says, am I somehow inferior than those who did have to do so? I can understand that the types of people he is referring to go through a lot of angst and perhaps persecution for "living in their own truth" ... but I am offended by this passage that makes it seem like I am taking the easy (suggesting inferior) path.

Levithan may not have meant consciously to make his writing sound this way, but to me it does. I felt continually bombarded by A's thoughts and opinions without room to make my own conclusions. I think drawing conclusions rather than being told what to think or how to feel is important in a YA novel. Yes, in school we (I'm a teacher) guide students to understand certain readings of books, but hopefully we do so in a way that helps them make their own assumptions and conclusions. Plus, I hope most of us let them keep their own opinions about the story, even if to us personally that opinion is skewed or missing something. We present the ways of looking at the story, but we don't force them to change their beliefs or morals or opinions about situations. Levithan's book made me feel like I was being forced to listen to the narrator's beliefs on everything and like if I had a differing opinion, I was being stupid, like Rhiannon when she could not show affection to A as a girl as easily.

I was sad that a book with such an interesting and promising premise turned out difficult to read. I tried imagining that A, being a teenager, is just spouting his own ideas, like teenagers do, and it was up to me to look at him as a person with flaws (selfishness, rash action) as well as good things, and make my own judgements on what he said ... but at the same time I felt that despite the fact that A is flawed as a character, the author wanted me to completely agree with all his opinions. It's hard to explain this. I guess I feel like an impressionable young reader might just take the word of this narrator as gospel without really thinking about what is being said or who is saying it because it is said in a more eloquent tone of the "teenager that every teenager wants to be," smart, funny, witty, etc. Overall, I like the idea and one or two interesting or poignant chapters, but overall Levithan's writing and A's voice made it not enjoyable for me.

Calibre/Library Update

Made some new "art" (ok, it's just a bar graph, nothing too special) in Inkscape to compare the number of books we own* versus those we've read or want to read.

Just wanted to share!

P.S.: I created the graph to lay horizontally, but so that it is easier to see and read on the blog, I rotated it.

*By own, I mean books we own that are currently in the library at our house. There are more at Matt's parents' house still. I had to have all mine with me and he graciously allowed mine to move in first, leaving not enough room for all of his.

Elizabeth's Reading List

Here are some of the books I want to read, most of which we already own:

1. Blood of the Fold by Terry Goodkind
2. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (actually, I have an old copy that says "Samuel Clemens" as the author)
3. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
4. The Arabian Nights
5. Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
6. Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
7. Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood
8. Bonhoeffer: Pastor Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas
9. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
10. Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl
11. Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
12. Dear John by Nicholas Sparks
13. The Explicit Gospel by Matt Chandler and Jared Wilson
14. The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
15. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
16. Dracula by Bram Stoker
17. The  Jungle by Upton Sinclair
18. The Last of the Mohicans James Fenimore Cooper
19. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
20. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien (read partway through years ago but did not finish)
21. Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick
22. Misery by Stephen King
23. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
24. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
25. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
26. The Prince's Pen by Horatio Clare
27. The Silver Cow: A Welsh Tale by Susan Cooper
28. Star Guard by Andre Norton
29. The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
30. White Ravens by Owen Sheers
31. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
32. Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
33. Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming
34. True Grit by Charles Portis
35. The Complete Works of Shakespeare: Tempest, Two Gentlemen, Merry Wives, Measure for Measure, Comedy of Errors, Much Ado, Love's Labour's Lost, Midsummer Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Taming of the Shrew, All's Well, Twelfth Night, Winter's Tale, King John, Richard II, Henry IV 1, Henry IV 2, Henry V, Henry VI 1, Henry VI 2, Henry VI 3, Richard III, Henry VIII, Troilus and Cressida, Coriolanus, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Timon of Athens, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, Pericles, Five Long Poems, and The Sonnets. (There are so many I thought I'd feel better to mark off one at a time which ones I have gotten through. Those Histories are going to take forever.)
36. How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
37. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
38. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
39. Time Cat by Lloyd Alexander
40. The Fault in Our Stars or Paper Towns by John Green


Ethnic American Lit and Gender, Genre, and the Gothic for Summer 2013:

1. Pushing the Bear by Diane Glancy
2. Malinche by Laura Esquivel
3. Beloved by Toni Morrison
4. Auto-Biography of an Ex-Colored Man by J. W. Johnson
5. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
6. The History of Caliph Vathek by William Beckford
7. Caleb Williams by William Godwin
8. The Monk by Matthew Lewis
9. The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
10. Zofloya, or The Moor by Charlotte Dacre
11. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner  by James Hogg