The Sky Is Everywhere

The Sky Is Everywhere, which I borrowed from the library for book group, has obviously been well-read and well-loved. The spine is supple, the pages are soft with the texture of paper that has been thumbed over and over. People -- teenage girls, let's face it -- clearly adore this book.

In one sense, there is a lot going on in this YA novel: Lennie's beloved older sister Bailey has died suddenly, leaving her family and her fiance in shock. The sisters' mother is missing in action, having abandoned them years before. And there is a hot new boy in town, leaving Lennie confused -- how can she be interested in a boy when she's so immersed in grief? In another sense, not much happens at all: girl meets boy, boy likes girl, they play music together, girl has more feelings than she can handle, misunderstandings ensue... oh my god, the feelings.

This is probably why this book is so popular -- it is dripping with emotion. No flicker of feeling is left undescribed. There is no restraint here. Even the adolescent poetry is included! I can remember being thirteen-fourteen-fifteen, swimming in an ocean of hormones and frustration and big emotions, and having nowhere to put them, and The Sky is Everywhere took me back there. But I don't think it's a country I want to live in any more -- in fact, I didn't much enjoy living there at the time, and I'm quite content to leave it behind.