"Life is Short": How Book Reviews Play and Important Role in Everything, Everything

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    In Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon, the main character, Madeline Whittier, suffers from a disease known as Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (or SCID), which basically means that she is allergic to everything. Throughout the novel, we see how Madeline has had to adapt to a world where she can only experience things through books, movies, and the internet, and specifically through writing book reviews. 
    In the novel, Yoon uses a variety of writing styles to show us how Maddy is feeling or what she is thinking. Yoon includes graphics, lists, book reviews and many other styles of writing to help us see who Maddy truly is as a character. Through the different writing styles we are also able to understand how Maddy navigates a world that she cannot fully experience. In order to explain her own world Maddy frequently compares her life to other novels. Yoon titles six different chapters "Life is Short," and in each of those chapters Maddy gives a review of the book that she is reading. In each review there is only one thing: a spoiler alert. For each book review that Maddy does, it highlights the different  experiences that she has throughout the novel and her feelings towards her those experiences. The first book review that she writes is on Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. This first book review highlights how Maddy feels about her life at that point in the novel. Maddy is content with her life, and her routines. She feels as if she has nothing to look forward to other than a life where she is stored away from the outside world. The second book review is done on Lord of the Flies by William Golding. In this review Maddy simply states that "boys are savages," which reflects how Maddy is feeling about her new neighbor, Olly, whom she desperately wants to meet, but who also rejects her when she first tries to make contact with him (53). The next book review in the novel is on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carol. Maddy writes "Beware the Queen of Hearts. She'll have your head" (114). This review is a reflection of how Maddy feels about Olly once she meets him. She likes him, yet she is scared of how to deal with the feelings that she has for him, because her life is so different from others. She does not know how to navigate her feelings while she is inside the confinement of her home. The fourth book review is on the Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and takes a major turn from the third review. In this review, Maddy states that "you don't exist if no one can see you," meaning that if she disappears it will be the best thing for her relationship with Olly (307). At this point in the novel, Maddy feels as if she is better off being confined to her home than living a life that she could only dream of having. The fifth book review is on three different novels. The novels are The Stranger by Albert Camus, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, and Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre. At this point in the novel, Maddy has given up completely on love and the hope that her and Olly can be together. Maddy writes for the conclusion of the three books that "everything is nothing" (311). Maddy feel hopeless and each of the novels reflect her hopelessness. Finally, the last book review that Maddy writes is on The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, in which she writes "love is worth everything. Everything" (371). The final review reflects Maddy's feelings of love at the end of the novel. Maddy no longer feels like love is a distant dream, but that love is everything. 
    Yoon uses each of the book reviews that Maddy writes to show us how Maddy changes throughout the novel. Yoon also uses the book reviews as a way to show us how Maddy compares her life to the stories that she reads, and creates a series of reviews that help us to know how Maddy is feeling throughout the different parts of the novel. Finally the reviews allow the reader to see how novels affect the way Maddy navigates her own feelings as the novel progresses. 

Yoon, Nicola. Everything, Everything. New York, Delacorte Press, 2015. 

Comments

  1. Chelsea KOctober 14, 2020 at 8:24 PM

    “Yoon also uses the book reviews as a way to show us how Maddy compares her life to the stories that she reads, and creates a series of reviews that help us to know how Maddy is feeling throughout the different parts of the novel.”

    I like the way this book seems to demonstrate how adolescents can form connections between literature and their personal lives. Yoon’s work almost sounds like a perfect model for how to read and draw comparisons. This is not a skill that comes naturally to all students and it sounds like Maddy’s narrative could offer an opportunity to teach this technique directly. Particularly when students have to reach to make those connections. Having not read the novel, I don’t know how explicitly or implied Maddy’s connections to the books she reads are. But if Yoon left some ambiguity the text could provide a perfect training ground for students to suss out those relationships.

    “Everything, Everything” also provides an excellent opportunity for students to practice a related writing skill. The book reviews Maddy writes could easily be segwayed into a creative writing assignment in which students write their own book reviews of “Everything, Everything.” It sounds like a multipurpose text that could serve a variety of functions in a high school classroom.

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  2. Candace BeebeOctober 16, 2020 at 7:53 AM

    I agree with you Mikayla, Yoon uses these book reviews to show how Maddy is feeling throughout the book. But, it also shows how her perspective has changed. For instance, at the beginnning Maddy says that she never understood why the "Little Prince" chose to die for someone he loved but by the end of the book, she understands that the Prince was not choosing that person, but he was choosing love because without love, life doesn't mean anything.

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