Having not read Jandy Nelson’s previous successful novel “The Sky is Everywhere” I had no clue what to expect stylistically, but regardless I was so immediately enthralled by “I’ll Give You the Sun”. The novel follows the story of a set of twins, Noah and Jude during their teenage years where they are both best friends as well as mortal enemies. It’s complicated. What attracted me to the novel almost instantaneously was the the lush prose and diction which was some of the most lyrically written I’ve read in a YA contemporary (though I did draw comparisons to Leslye Walton’s “The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender”: one of my favourites books - a list to which “I’ll Give You the Sun” is joining). The characters in Jandy’s novel are so unbelievably complex; not entirely lovable nor turn-offish, and just like all their interpersonal relationships, they’re all beautifully flawed and romantic in their own ways. I think I cried a couple of times. Definitely. However that all being said there were aspects of the book that did bother me, namely towards the end, where I felt the story had lost some of its initial momentum and charisma.
At around the 40% mark, I had decided: this book is a fucking piece of art. With her poetic writing style, Nelson takes the very essence of feeling and emotion and places it into another realm, especially in Noah’s chapters. The chapters are dense with vivid metaphors and hyperboles, and I could see how this type of writing style could bother someone as Noah’s narration and the reality of the world he physically lives in seem to be completely separate so I could see how it would be disorienting but I L I V E D for this. It is this vivid honesty and creativity, through which Noah narrates that, for me, gave this story its charm. I go back and I find the one liner-phrases I’ve highlighted like the one I opened this review with, but none of them encompass the magical-realism element that reading the book actually gives you, so here’s an extract from the first chapter just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
“Devil’s drop, the second-highest on the hill, which they aim to throw me over, has the name for a reason. Beneath it is a jagged gang of rocks and a wicked whirlpool that pulls your dead bones down into the underworld. I try to break Zephyr’s hold again. And again.
“Get his legs, Fry!”
All six-thousand hippopotamus pounds of Fry dive for my ankles… I need my skull in one piece… So I grow. And grow, and grow, until I head-butt the sky. Then I count to three and go freaking beserk, thanking dad in my mind for all the wrestling he’s forced me to do on the deck, to-the-death matches where he could only use one arm and I could use everything and he’d still pin me down because he’s thirty feet tall and made of truck parts.
But I am his son, his gargantuan son. I’m a whirling ass-kicking goliath, a typhoon wrapped in skin.”
It’s this element of other-worldliness that made me love Noah’s chapters. Jude’s chapters did pale in comparison stylistically compared to Noah’s - but what her narrations lacked for in magic, she made up for with her actual fiery personality which you just end up cheering for. What did end up bothering me however, was more of the timeline split in narrations between Noah and Jude – Noah narrates the earlier years when they are 13-14ish whilst Jude narrates age 16 onwards, where the POV’s shifted back and forth between Noah and Jude and between early years and later years. The shortcoming of this is that whilst Jude narrates the older years, she has the ability to look back and fill in the gaps of the past that Noah has narrated, but Noah’s older years’ experience is narrated entirely by Jude. This unfortunately left me finishing the book with a kind of feeling this book was more Jude-centric, though it most definitely isn’t. As a reader, this felt like having a back-itch that you just can’t scratch – this book would have benefitted so tremendously much from even 3 pages of Noah’s input and narration of what he felt about the events that arose at the end, apart from what he tells Jude (if we learn anything about the pair, it’s that they do lie to each other). Perhaps I just wanted to get lost in Noah’s narration one last time, rather than face the cold reality that Jude’s narrations brought, and maybe that’s the message of growth and growing up that I completely missed but I don’t believe so. It seemed the resolution of the novel would have made a lot more sense coming from Noah than from Jude. It’s just this tiny imperfection that ended up bothering me a lot more than I thought something like this would.
The interpersonal relationships in this novel however are supreme. This was a highlight of the novel, as the complexity of twin relationship is really delved into, as well as the relationship between NoahandJude and their parents, and also the two main beautiful romances in the novel. All the relationships blossom and grow so messily and perfectly it’s just got to be a YA contemporary novel. Each relationship changes drastically throughout the course of the novel, and each character appropriately learns and develops from them which is, of course: so great.
As for the actual story, it perhaps rounded out a bit too nicely, but otherwise was filled with quite few suspenseful and heartbreaking moments. Though the novel does peak for me during the first 60% before it gets a tinsy bit “eeeeh”, this book is a must-read for poetic souls and just if you need a book to take you on a small journey to another reality (which I guess is most books… but please). Do yourself a favour and read “I’ll Give You The Sun”.
