You & you & youby Per Nilsson
Publishers Weekly
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Starred Review. Nilsson (Heart's Delight) uses an alternating third-person narrative to build suspense as he threads together the lives of three memorable young people: sixth-grader Anon ("short for 'anonymous,' " he overhears his mother tell a friend), sensuous 17-year-old Zarah with a volatile boyfriend, and Nils, whom readers first meet as his friend shuts him inside a coffin (at Nils's request). The characters may be offbeat, but the author renders them completely credible. The trio's lives intertwine subtly at first. Anon finds a wallet belonging to a girl named Sara (the author drops a hint when Zarah mentions a "mirror sister" named Sara); Nils observes Anon walking into a lamppost through a coffee shop window; and Zarah randomly picks out Nils in a bar as the object of a ploy to make her boyfriend jealous. At times, Zarah's sexual adventures with Victor become quite graphic; in one such incident, Victor and Zarah have sex in the woods—on the very spot where Nils is temporarily buried (to once again experience what death might feel like). Nilsson's well-honed sense of irony leavens the novel's darker themes, and the triumphant merging of the trio's lives brings about unexpected and uplifting epiphanies for all three characters. With no tidy wrap-up, the novel will keep readers thinking about these characters' lives long after the final page. Ages 12-up. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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School Library Journal
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Starred Review. Gr 9 Up–Swedish magical realism comes alive in this mature, sometimes graphically sexual and violent, ultimately breathtaking and inspiring tale of three unconnected, deeply cerebral misfits whose complicated paths cross in a life-altering way in the end. How a 12-year-old who always wears blue galoshes and thinks that his father is a god, a beautiful but lonely young woman, and a dreamy teen who is obsessed with death become acquainted and have a huge impact on one another is at the heart of this quirky and lovely novel. There's a heady mix of light and dark themes, gritty language and whimsical behavior, disturbing moments and transcendent beauty. Many of the older YA readers to whom this book is directed will likely come away with a feeling of being somehow transformed or at least being given much to ponder. This is an outstanding offering that will stand proudly next to such YA literary gems as Aidan Chambers's Postcards from No Man's Land (Dutton, 2002), Kate Morgenroth's Jude (S & S, 2004), Stephen Chbosky's ThePerks of Being a Wallflower (MTV, 1999), and Garret Freymann-Weyr's My Heartbeat (Houghton, 2002).–Jeff Katz, School of Library, Archival, & Information Studies, University of British Columbia Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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