New York : Razorbill, c2012.
1 v. (unpaged) : ill.(chiefly col.) ; 25 cm.
I really like a lot about this genre-blending novel. It combines evocative photography/images/drawings, scrapbook-like formatting, links to YouTube videos, and IM shots to create a novel/pastiche of a teen piano prodigy's disappearance, mental troubles, family backstory, and passionate love affair with a mysterious and elusive teen from Argentina. (The flavor of the book can be sampled at its Tumblr website.) The story is told with sparse text and the "novel" can be read in about 30 min to 1 hour - and it is compelling. So far so good!
But for me the novel has significant shortcomings. The idea of unreliable narrator is carried to the next level in this book by making the visual narrative itself (images of photos, plane tickets, menus, invitations) very unreliable. After finishing the book and wondering about the ending, I found myself looking more closely at the visual text of the book. Contradictions and incorrect documents and dates are taken to such a point as to render the very images potentially false. At a point I came to be so aware of being manipulated by the authors that I couldn't really enjoy the narrative of the book. Ultimately the book seemed more interested in its technique and appearance - and lacking in heart.
All this is in some ways all right with me. This is a book that would be fun to have several readers read and then discuss (and argue about what they think happened - or didn't happen for that matter). I also like that the book is easy to read and yet can really get readers to question what it means to trust the narrative of a book - fiction or non-fiction.
When I checked out reviews of the book, they seem to fall into two general camps: people love the book (see Kirkus and Reading Rants) or they like the book, but ultimately find it lacking (see Oops and Never Ending Bookshelf [note spoilers]). I'd have to say I fall into the latter camp. I find the novel to be more of a intriguing appetizer, but not a main course that satisfies. Nevertheless, I'll be curious to see how students react to this book.
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