The Story is About   +  young adult

Love is the Higher Law by David Levithan

Love is the Higher Law by David Levithan

Release Date: August 25, 2009
Publisher: Knopf
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages: 176
Source: Publisher
Interest: author/story
Challenge: None
Buy the Book: Amazon|Barnes & Noble

First there is a Before, and then there is an After. . . .

The lives of three teens—Claire, Jasper, and Peter—are altered forever on September 11, 2001. Claire, a high school junior, has to get to her younger brother in his classroom. Jasper, a college sophomore from Brooklyn, wakes to his parents’ frantic calls from Korea, wondering if he’s okay. Peter, a classmate of Claire’s, has to make his way back to school as everything happens around him.

Here are three teens whose intertwining lives are reshaped by this catastrophic event. As each gets to know the other, their moments become wound around each other’s in a way that leads to new understandings, new friendships, and new levels of awareness for the world around them and the people close by.

David Levithan has written a novel of loss and grief, but also one of hope and redemption as his characters slowly learn to move forward in their lives, despite being changed forever.

This is my first Levithan novel... I know is probably a surprise to some of you. (sorry Khy... are you proud of me.. I read one!) But I have to say I'll definitely be picking up his novels... and even plan to do so in the near future, with Will Grayson, Will Grayson.

Any way back to the novel at hand. This novel really stuck a cord with me. I honestly cried while reading most of it... ok, i cried through the entire thing actually. Thank god it wasn't all that long. I guess I just remember that day all too well. I like Jasper almost slept through the entire thing. Not that I could have seen the towers from my house in Indiana, but I remember waking up around 9 o'clock... I had an exam that day... I was a college freshman. I got online and as soon as I did my Aunt told me to turn on the television. I was home alone, both of my parents were at work for the day and my sisters were in school. I turned on the television to a live news feed, right as the second plane hit the towers. I still remember that image like it was yesterday. I never would have commuted to school that day had I not had an exam. The campus was deserted... there were televisions on every floor in every building... we took our exam and our professor excused us. The rest of my classes were cancelled that day. I remember the way the air felt that day... it stood still. If it was like that some 650 miles from New York... I can't even imagine what it must have been like there.

To watch it happen from the eyes of these three characters was almost too much... I felt like I was right there with them. I felt their confusion, their anxiety, their worry... their despair. I loved how every character had a distinct voice... how they all dealt with the aftermath in the only way they knew how. I loved watching their three different stories intertwined into one. How in the end they were connected more than they could have possibly fathomed.

It was beautifully told, with an important message.

And it's always an inspiration to be reminded of the goodness humanity is capable of.