mewinzer

[mewinzer]

he’s done it again!!!

A Breon In Time (or: The Peon Can Rhyme)

[mewinzer]

yes

[mewinzer]

take me with you when you go by david levithan, jennifer niven

Take Me With You When You Go, written by David Levithan and Jennifer Niven, is a young adult novel that explores themes of family, grief, and independence through an epistolary format of emails between the protagonist Ezra and his sister, Bea. There’s a lot to dive into with this novel—beyond its unique formatting, the story itself has twists, unsettling displays of abuse, and plenty of secrets—however, one of its most important assets is how it navigates complicated motivations of young adult characters.

The story kicks off with Ezra realizing his older sister has run away. Living day-to-day in an unstable family dynamic, the reader is automatically introduced to some strong feelings of betrayal and resignation on Ezra’s part. Couple this with the bits of information offered about Bea’s reasons for running away—warning no one, not even her brother or her boyfriend, about her plans to leave, the secret she uncovered that spurred her disappearance, and more—she leaves the impression of a character who’s making bad decisions. Maybe even selfish ones. It’s easy for the reader to echo Ezra’s frustration and dislike Bea for her impulsive judgments, but there is much beyond the surface-level events to reflect on, and it’s this nuance that truly bolstered my appreciation for the novel.

Bea is essentially as much of a kid as Ezra is. They are both young adults set up with harsh circumstances without a clear way out at their age. Neither one of them are offered much in the way of means of support by the adults in their lives—and so, trapped in a cycle of emotional abuse within an unstable home, they establish a unique, nebulous connection of support between the two of them, threaded through the understanding that the world is a difficult place and sometimes you have to do what’s best to look out for yourself. Both Ezra and Bea make bad decisions. They push people who do care for them away. They respond combatively to new conflicts. But as things fall apart, Ezra reaches out and Bea opens up. This novel doesn’t say: these kids are real messes, huh? It says: look for the real villain. They had nothing better to do. The authors give their characters permission to be lost, to not have to work for redemption when they had no clear guidance to begin with, and to still be able to grow in new and formative ways. This, of course, is often explored in adult literature as well, but there’s something special here about a book made for younger readers portraying its main characters as flawed and adrift without needing to perfectly patch up their circumstances.