I'll Give You the Sun
I’ve had trouble getting into most young adult fiction that I’ve crossed paths with lately. Certainly you have to bring some laxity to the reading of any novel geared to a teenage audience, but despite my cautious, lowered expectations, it wasn’t until I landed upon Jandy Nelson’s brilliant second novel I’ll Give You the Sun that I finally found some young adult fiction I could truly sink my teeth into and devour.Nelson’s novel centers around twins Jude and Noah, told from their alternating perspectives. Part of the appeal was in the three year time gap between points of view; Noah’s story is delivered from the vantage of their 13 year old selves, while Jude’s perspective is offered three years later when they reach age 16. Nelson devoted great attention to each story line before her transitions so readers get to intimately know Noah, then delve deeply into Jude’s world, rather than having the more constant, banter-like back-and-forth. Nelson’s plot twists and turns were very carefully revealed; one twin’s knowledge was withheld from readers (and the other twin) far longer than a more traditional novel would allow. Like Jude and Noah themselves, we readers were trying to piece together two sides of the larger story at a tantalizingly slow pace.
The basic gist is that Jude and Noah are wildly different but deeply connected twins at the tender age of 13. Living on the Northern California coast, Jude fits in with the middle and high school crowds, an adventurous surfer girl who isn’t afraid to keep up with the guys but is right at home surrounded by a gaggle of girls. Noah is more of an outsider, an extremely talented and artistic kid whose main focus is attending a prestigious arts high school and hiding the fact that he has discovered his own homosexuality. Once we hear Jude’s side of things from the vantage of 16, however, we find that the twins’ identities have been practically swapped and their connection all but severed by endless hurt, misunderstanding, and jealousy. Jude gets into art school and secludes herself from her old crowd and the rest of the world, while Noah attends the local public school and hides his true sexual orientation in an effort to secure his fragile social status. The two are practically estranged by this point but Nelson wisely only doles out the slightest clues as to why at her own pace, keeping us readers completely hooked.
The cause of the rift and resulting personality switch is a family tragedy, the details of which I’ll let Jandy reveal to you herself in her poetic, imaginative, engrossing work of literary art. There’s little more that I want to say plot-wise because the characters are so vividly, realistically, and complexly written into the story; it would be a disservice of me to spoil your pleasure of discovering them and their contributions to this fictional world on your own. I’ll Give You the Sun is just so damn beautiful that I don’t think any review could adequately encapsulate how powerfully Nelson’s gift for literature comes across in her work.
Themes of art, family, loss, identity, and misunderstanding are tenderly woven into the twins’ story as they struggle with their relationship, the power of creativity in their lives, and the common realities of coming of age. Certainly the book rings a bit formulaic, but I had no trouble forgiving Nelson this fault, given the target audience and the otherwise overwhelming profundity of this book. Similarly I could see some of the twists coming from a mile away, but that’s what watching too many R-rated movies and reading too many family dramas will do to a person; I’m more jaded than the average teen. I think I’ll Give You the Sun would be truly a delight for young adults, if not a gentle introduction to some more adult topics, in it’s mixture of innocence, tragedy, and misunderstanding.
Reading should take you to another world, one that is heartbreaking and compelling and imaginative and breathtaking. A gifted novelist can challenge you, engage with you, and move you for years with a single piece of fiction. It should never feel like a chore to read, but more like a gift, a pleasurable state of being that you want to revisit over and over. Every unopened book holds this potential to me, but I always find myself truly surprised and deeply grateful when I actually complete a book the delivers. I finished I’ll Give You the Sun with the much sought after but rarely experienced desire to flip back to page one and immediately read it all over again. Instead I chose the alternative – sharing it with the world and/or my mother because stories like this are far too special to be kept to oneself.
