The View From Who I Was

November 1, 2014
She's beautiful, popular, athletic, brilliant, rich and in love-yet Oona Antunes feels herself divide into two selves at the Winter Formal on the night she takes her own life. Frostbitten, battered and bruised, Oona is rescued after her heart stopped beating. Both selves undergo a harsh, invigorating rebirth, and one starts to rebuild relationships: with her unhappy parents (distant father, embittered mother), the best friend she's outgrown and the boy who loves her. Partly healed, Oona (already admitted to Yale) agrees to spend a week providing college-application advice to gifted students at an American Indian boarding school in New Mexico. The experience-especially her friendship with a Navajo girl-grounds Oona, pointing her way forward. The unnamed narrator, one of Oona's halves (she terms the other "Corpse"), has a gripping, elegiac voice that invites readers' trust. The wintry Colorado-mountain-town setting and enormous, cold Antunes mansion skillfully echo the water tropes in plot and theme. The story winds to a peak of tension, then collapses at the end like a house of cards. Big questions remain-why Oona chose this night, this route; why she split in two-whereas explanations provided not only fail to justify suicide, they consign her to secondary status in her own story. Beautifully written-but after such polished, elegant storytelling, the end feels like a betrayal. (Fiction. 13-16)

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January 1, 2015

Gr 9 Up-Wealthy, beautiful high school senior Oona Antunes gets good grades, has a loving boyfriend, and hangs with the popular crowd, yet she flees the Winter Formal dance and lays down to die in the Colorado cold. Rescued and revived, she loses some fingers and toes to frostbite and struggles to make sense of the pain behind her suicide attempt. Unfortunately, readers will also struggle, since Oona's distant relationship with her parents, and the envy she engenders in her classmates, seem to be the only sources of conflict in an otherwise smooth life. Told in brooding first person by Oona's disembodied soul (a clunky device that never quite coheres), the rest of the book is a jumble of high school drama, Oona's physical and psychological recovery, and intergenerational tragedy. A big reveal about Oona's father near the end of the book comes across as far-fetched rather than providing insight into the family dynamic. The self-consciously literary writing is heavy on metaphor and cliche, sapping Oona's story of emotional immediacy. Furthermore, Latino and Native American characters play stereotypical roles in helping European-American Oona to heal. For example, a Navajo teen gives Oona an eagle feather to acknowledge her strength. Much better books about teen mental illness and suicide exist: try Ned Vizzini's It's Kind of a Funny Story (Hyperion, 2006), Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now (Random, 2004), Jay Asher's 13 Reasons Why (Penguin, 2007), or Leila Sales's This Song Will Save Your Life (Farrar, 2013) instead.-Sarah Stone, San Francisco Public Library

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2015
Grades 9-12 One night, Oona Antunes splits in two. Her spirit, weary of a life lived without love or meaning, exits her body but does not leave altogether. She watches herself dance with an unwanted date, sneak out of the winter formal alone, and then curl up in the woods near her house to quietly freeze to death. But Oona's body is found before it's too late, forcing her down a path to recovery she is not convinced she wants to make. As her body heals, she watches herself tentatively build a new life, but she will have to face some very hard truths about herself and her family if she truly wants to live. Approaching teen suicide directly and honestly, this debut novel packs a walloping emotional punch. Alternating Oona's first- and third-person narratives is a brutally effective device illustrating just how detached teens can feel from their own lives. Raw but with insight and tenderness, this story deftly explores life's varied riches that come from the connections we build with others.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)