Every Day by David Levithan
Apr. 11th, 2023 08:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amado1The premise: A genderless entity known as A wakes up in a new body every morning. They don't get to choose who. It's always a kid more or less the same age as A, in more or less the same geographical area (which is currently Maryland, and the age is 16). A has been doing this all their life, with no idea why, or who they are, or who their parents are, or what happens if... or how to...
(None of these questions get answered)
Early in the book, A hops into the body of a Toxic Boyfriend named Justin, who is dating the most bland girl in the world, Rhiannon. Rhiannon's entire personality can be summed up as Toxic Boyfriend + Kind Of Homophobic Sometimes. But A falls in love with her at first sight, and this True Love connection remains the basic plot of the whole book, while Rhiannon does absolutely nothing lovable.
With one exception to the Rhiannon focus: at one point, A hops into the body of a boy named Nathan. Although A usually takes care not to do anything OOC for their hosts (they can access all their memories, they do their homework, they're nice to their friends, etc.), they hijack Nathan's body and Nathan's dad's car and drive hours away to a party Rhiannon might attend. A can't make it back to Nathan's bedroom before midnight, so Nathan awakes confused on the side of the road, reeking of beer and cigarettes, with a police officer shining a flashlight in his eyes. Nathan quickly declares he must have been possessed -- the devil made him steal his parents' car and go to a party! Worse, he finds A's email on his laptop at home, because A never made it back to wipe their history. So now Nathan can email A threatening messages like CONFESS SINNER and MY REVEREND WILL GET RID OF YOU.
😑 IDK. That could've gone somewhere interesting. At one point I actually thought the author MEANT for Rhiannon to be bland and kind of a dick, and that we were SUPPOSED to start rooting for a Nathan/A romance instead. Nah. Then we met a new cool character, a body-hopper like A who has figured out how to live in the same body for more than one day at a time. This entity has taken over the body of Reverend Poole, Nathan's advisor.
That's DEFINITELY going somewhere interesting! Right?
No!! That's it!! A just meets this guy and goes "huh no thanks I don't want to know anything more about that." The best Levithan gives us is "A couple days later, A sent an email to Nathan asking for Poole's email address, and Nathan sent the email address back right away, they shot off some questions, and they got some answers."
Sir?? What questions?? What answers??? Why did you spend more time explaining how A got Poole's email address than you did on the questions and answers?????
In the end, A wakes in the body of a supremely ~likable~ 16-year-old named Alexander, who keeps his room neat and tidy, owns three guitars (one electric!), has a badass treehouse (with electricity and a pulley system and a FOURTH GUITAR inside!!), owns nothing but classics on his bookshelf, covers his room in Post-Its with dreamy literature quotes, has procured a supremely thoughtful gift for his parents' anniversary, and is adored by all his friends, to whom he is always kind and selfless. A decides to meet Rhiannon as Alexander and make the two of them fall in love. That's it, that's the end. A goes on a "first date" with Rhiannon as Alexander and makes sure Alexander remembers it (he can do that now) so that Alexander and Rhiannon can get married one day. They meet in a bookshop; he asks her what her favorite place in the world is and offers to show her his; they go grocery shopping and get to know each other (in summary, only!! it is vital that the reader never gets to know these characters, I guess!); they return to Alexander's house and spend a romantic night eating dinner in his candlelit treehouse and sleeping in his bed. The next morning, Alexander will wake up with a pleasant memory of a chance meeting in a bookstore and a romantic first date, and Rhiannon will know that A is gone but an equally cool non-body-hopper personality remains.
Idk! Idk! Idk!
The rules of the universe are very wishy-washy. To borrow a bit from a review on Goodreads: there's a geographical limit, right? So what happens when A gets to be 90, and there's just not a lot of 90-year-olds to jump into in their 4-hour radius? What happens if A jumps into an astronaut on launch day? And A jumps at midnight -- is that tied to a time zone? Does A spend exactly 24 hours in every body or no? What if they just went West really fast, would they never jump? What happens to the hosts after A leaves -- what do they remember, and why? What happens to the hosts while A is inside them? What happens if A dies inside a body? Are there more entities? Where do they come from? How are they born? All of these questions are raised, but none are answered. 😐
Hm, on the good side though: it's a fun concept, I love Quantum Leap, and I enjoyed the daily hops a lot more than Rhiannon and A, as characters. The same reviewer I cribbed those questions from had a real issue with the diversity of the daily hops and called it "agenda-driven". Well, I have a hard time seeing how you could possibly write this book realistically and not have it be at least this diverse. Having A hop into a morbidly obese body isn't "an after-school special" -- it's pure statistics.
I'd also say this was a pretty damn good metaphor for just being queer -- or at least, it was, until the ending. There was a clear parallel drawn between A and a trans man he hops into named Vic, and it SEEMED significant to me that Rhiannon is especially vicious toward Vic: "What even are you right now?" and "Can you please just walk a little behind me?" A describes how Vic's partner sees him as HIM, without the blur of boy/girl, and wishes Rhiannon could see A as A without the blur of an unwanted host body. Later, too, when A is briefly broken up with Rhiannon, he hops into the body of a lesbian in a committed, healthy relationship. The lesbian characters are so tender and likable that I thought we were meant to compare/contrast how they treat each other, and how easily lovable they are, with Rhiannon, who is moody, defensive, self-pitying, and self-righteous, with no good traits sprinkled in.
(Well, she showed a new girl around school once, and A rhapsodized about her kindness for pages).
Anyway, no, we're NOT meant to compare/contrast Rhiannon with the lesbians, so that was a let-down. But I liked the parallels drawn, at least; the inherent queerness of the narrative; the fact that ending was sad, even if it wasn't exactly the mature sad ending I wanted. At various points, the author dropped plot bunnies for what sounded like far more interesting books. "What if A murdered someone and then just hopped bodies, and the poor host got blamed for it?" for example. Or "Who mourns an entity like A when they die?" The entire concept of Reverend Poole, an entity possessing a priest who's creepily close to a boy who was possessed by a DIFFERENT entity, and he tells him that entity is the devil...
This is not to say that I disliked the book simply because it was YA romance. I think this could have been an outstanding YA coming-of-age book if it had dared to examine the ethical issues closer, or if Rhiannon and A had come across as real people rather than mutable plot devices acting out Levithan's latest whims (the scene where A jumps into a "beautiful black girl, basically Beyonce" and uses her to flirt with Justin and prove that he's not worthy of Rhiannon was just bizarre). If this had been told, for example, as the story of a trans teenager's first ill-fated infatuation with a straight girl who is kind, but is also only 16, and not prepared to be seen in public with a trans kid, then even with Levithan's bland prose, it could have been incredibly moving. Watching A go through the stages of young love, for a bittersweet ending where he grows and moves onto better things, maybe helped by the queer relationships he's glimpsed along the way? That would be an achingly sad but hopeful story. And really, he had all the parts right there; he just opted to tell a sort of off-kilter Nice Guy stalker story as a fluffy romance. It even ends with the Nice Guy nobly sacrificing his own happiness so The Girl can have true love (but only with a guy the Nice Guy picked out!)
Another lost opportunity: Justin. Why does Rhiannon love him? He has no redeeming qualities, in A's eyes. But when A jumps into Rhiannon's body one day, he accidentally glimpses a memory of Justin and Rhiannon reading The Outsiders for English class. Rhiannon is unimpressed with the book (describing it as a "relic") but Justin is totally absorbed and strangely moved. When the book ends, he talks about the line "Nothing gold can stay" and how true it is, and then musters up a smile for Rhiannon and tells her, "You and I will just be silver, then." From then on, in private, he always calls her "Silver."
I was hopeful that this might be a turning point. A would realize they'd misjudged Justin to an extent and start to see his other good traits -- the reasons Rhiannon is in love with him. But that's it. Justin remains a dick, using Rhiannon to get her mother's pills, getting into fights, being a selfish homophobic sexist asshole. One of various missed opportunities for a plot that would have been more engaging and more human, imo, more real, than what we got between Rhiannon and A.
This was recc'ed to me by a friend who has previously only recc'ed bangers: Octavia E. Butler's Xenogensis trilogy; Carolyn Ives Gilman's Halfway Human; Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow; and now she's recced me The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. I figured I'd pick up "The Mad Scientist's Daughter" next!
(None of these questions get answered)
Early in the book, A hops into the body of a Toxic Boyfriend named Justin, who is dating the most bland girl in the world, Rhiannon. Rhiannon's entire personality can be summed up as Toxic Boyfriend + Kind Of Homophobic Sometimes. But A falls in love with her at first sight, and this True Love connection remains the basic plot of the whole book, while Rhiannon does absolutely nothing lovable.
With one exception to the Rhiannon focus: at one point, A hops into the body of a boy named Nathan. Although A usually takes care not to do anything OOC for their hosts (they can access all their memories, they do their homework, they're nice to their friends, etc.), they hijack Nathan's body and Nathan's dad's car and drive hours away to a party Rhiannon might attend. A can't make it back to Nathan's bedroom before midnight, so Nathan awakes confused on the side of the road, reeking of beer and cigarettes, with a police officer shining a flashlight in his eyes. Nathan quickly declares he must have been possessed -- the devil made him steal his parents' car and go to a party! Worse, he finds A's email on his laptop at home, because A never made it back to wipe their history. So now Nathan can email A threatening messages like CONFESS SINNER and MY REVEREND WILL GET RID OF YOU.
😑 IDK. That could've gone somewhere interesting. At one point I actually thought the author MEANT for Rhiannon to be bland and kind of a dick, and that we were SUPPOSED to start rooting for a Nathan/A romance instead. Nah. Then we met a new cool character, a body-hopper like A who has figured out how to live in the same body for more than one day at a time. This entity has taken over the body of Reverend Poole, Nathan's advisor.
That's DEFINITELY going somewhere interesting! Right?
No!! That's it!! A just meets this guy and goes "huh no thanks I don't want to know anything more about that." The best Levithan gives us is "A couple days later, A sent an email to Nathan asking for Poole's email address, and Nathan sent the email address back right away, they shot off some questions, and they got some answers."
Sir?? What questions?? What answers??? Why did you spend more time explaining how A got Poole's email address than you did on the questions and answers?????
In the end, A wakes in the body of a supremely ~likable~ 16-year-old named Alexander, who keeps his room neat and tidy, owns three guitars (one electric!), has a badass treehouse (with electricity and a pulley system and a FOURTH GUITAR inside!!), owns nothing but classics on his bookshelf, covers his room in Post-Its with dreamy literature quotes, has procured a supremely thoughtful gift for his parents' anniversary, and is adored by all his friends, to whom he is always kind and selfless. A decides to meet Rhiannon as Alexander and make the two of them fall in love. That's it, that's the end. A goes on a "first date" with Rhiannon as Alexander and makes sure Alexander remembers it (he can do that now) so that Alexander and Rhiannon can get married one day. They meet in a bookshop; he asks her what her favorite place in the world is and offers to show her his; they go grocery shopping and get to know each other (in summary, only!! it is vital that the reader never gets to know these characters, I guess!); they return to Alexander's house and spend a romantic night eating dinner in his candlelit treehouse and sleeping in his bed. The next morning, Alexander will wake up with a pleasant memory of a chance meeting in a bookstore and a romantic first date, and Rhiannon will know that A is gone but an equally cool non-body-hopper personality remains.
Idk! Idk! Idk!
The rules of the universe are very wishy-washy. To borrow a bit from a review on Goodreads: there's a geographical limit, right? So what happens when A gets to be 90, and there's just not a lot of 90-year-olds to jump into in their 4-hour radius? What happens if A jumps into an astronaut on launch day? And A jumps at midnight -- is that tied to a time zone? Does A spend exactly 24 hours in every body or no? What if they just went West really fast, would they never jump? What happens to the hosts after A leaves -- what do they remember, and why? What happens to the hosts while A is inside them? What happens if A dies inside a body? Are there more entities? Where do they come from? How are they born? All of these questions are raised, but none are answered. 😐
Hm, on the good side though: it's a fun concept, I love Quantum Leap, and I enjoyed the daily hops a lot more than Rhiannon and A, as characters. The same reviewer I cribbed those questions from had a real issue with the diversity of the daily hops and called it "agenda-driven". Well, I have a hard time seeing how you could possibly write this book realistically and not have it be at least this diverse. Having A hop into a morbidly obese body isn't "an after-school special" -- it's pure statistics.
I'd also say this was a pretty damn good metaphor for just being queer -- or at least, it was, until the ending. There was a clear parallel drawn between A and a trans man he hops into named Vic, and it SEEMED significant to me that Rhiannon is especially vicious toward Vic: "What even are you right now?" and "Can you please just walk a little behind me?" A describes how Vic's partner sees him as HIM, without the blur of boy/girl, and wishes Rhiannon could see A as A without the blur of an unwanted host body. Later, too, when A is briefly broken up with Rhiannon, he hops into the body of a lesbian in a committed, healthy relationship. The lesbian characters are so tender and likable that I thought we were meant to compare/contrast how they treat each other, and how easily lovable they are, with Rhiannon, who is moody, defensive, self-pitying, and self-righteous, with no good traits sprinkled in.
(Well, she showed a new girl around school once, and A rhapsodized about her kindness for pages).
Anyway, no, we're NOT meant to compare/contrast Rhiannon with the lesbians, so that was a let-down. But I liked the parallels drawn, at least; the inherent queerness of the narrative; the fact that ending was sad, even if it wasn't exactly the mature sad ending I wanted. At various points, the author dropped plot bunnies for what sounded like far more interesting books. "What if A murdered someone and then just hopped bodies, and the poor host got blamed for it?" for example. Or "Who mourns an entity like A when they die?" The entire concept of Reverend Poole, an entity possessing a priest who's creepily close to a boy who was possessed by a DIFFERENT entity, and he tells him that entity is the devil...
This is not to say that I disliked the book simply because it was YA romance. I think this could have been an outstanding YA coming-of-age book if it had dared to examine the ethical issues closer, or if Rhiannon and A had come across as real people rather than mutable plot devices acting out Levithan's latest whims (the scene where A jumps into a "beautiful black girl, basically Beyonce" and uses her to flirt with Justin and prove that he's not worthy of Rhiannon was just bizarre). If this had been told, for example, as the story of a trans teenager's first ill-fated infatuation with a straight girl who is kind, but is also only 16, and not prepared to be seen in public with a trans kid, then even with Levithan's bland prose, it could have been incredibly moving. Watching A go through the stages of young love, for a bittersweet ending where he grows and moves onto better things, maybe helped by the queer relationships he's glimpsed along the way? That would be an achingly sad but hopeful story. And really, he had all the parts right there; he just opted to tell a sort of off-kilter Nice Guy stalker story as a fluffy romance. It even ends with the Nice Guy nobly sacrificing his own happiness so The Girl can have true love (but only with a guy the Nice Guy picked out!)
Another lost opportunity: Justin. Why does Rhiannon love him? He has no redeeming qualities, in A's eyes. But when A jumps into Rhiannon's body one day, he accidentally glimpses a memory of Justin and Rhiannon reading The Outsiders for English class. Rhiannon is unimpressed with the book (describing it as a "relic") but Justin is totally absorbed and strangely moved. When the book ends, he talks about the line "Nothing gold can stay" and how true it is, and then musters up a smile for Rhiannon and tells her, "You and I will just be silver, then." From then on, in private, he always calls her "Silver."
I was hopeful that this might be a turning point. A would realize they'd misjudged Justin to an extent and start to see his other good traits -- the reasons Rhiannon is in love with him. But that's it. Justin remains a dick, using Rhiannon to get her mother's pills, getting into fights, being a selfish homophobic sexist asshole. One of various missed opportunities for a plot that would have been more engaging and more human, imo, more real, than what we got between Rhiannon and A.
This was recc'ed to me by a friend who has previously only recc'ed bangers: Octavia E. Butler's Xenogensis trilogy; Carolyn Ives Gilman's Halfway Human; Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow; and now she's recced me The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. I figured I'd pick up "The Mad Scientist's Daughter" next!
no subject
Date: 2023-04-11 01:33 pm (UTC)I had picked it up from the library together with "We Were Liars" and read both in a series of lengthy subway rides during the day. Hardly any memory of what the plot was about, other than my confusion over it - I'd flip pages to make the main character's behaviour make sense, but nooope. Hardly even cleared a thing about the world-building, either.
(Also for some unrelated reason I remember a random paragraph about the character describing eating some food only to find out that the body they took possession of that day was allergic to it HOWEVER I am almost entirely sure my brain made that part up.)
no subject
Date: 2023-04-11 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-04-11 04:56 pm (UTC)First off, 5th grade me thought strawberries are such a weird thing to be allergic to (Tho then again this was only a couple of months before I found out I can't eat peaches, so I guess I deserved it for thinking it weird xD)
And secondly I was like waaaaiiit didn't you spend the first god knows how many pages being like "o welp i already know everything that's gonna happen. the alarm is gonna go off soon. oh i see the furniture arrangements of the room and i know everything about the personality of the teen whose body i'm inhabiting now. oh that must be the dude's gf. etc, etc, etc"
no subject
Date: 2023-04-11 05:09 pm (UTC)