history is all you left me by adam silvera

The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends.

The conversational yet profound tone of the book highlights the author’s ear for the musicality of language and his ability to convey deep emotion through attention to its cadence and flow. As he unravels the puzzle of his relationships with Theo, Jackson, and Wade, he feels like a coin someone tossed “into the air to settle something once and for all but didn’t catch.” Griff’s quirky tics and compulsions and his unanswered correspondence with Theo are bringing him precariously close to mental illness as he tries to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Griff’s narrative, addressed to Theo, goes back and forth between the past and present, echoing the alternate universes that they used to ponder. Griff’s trauma and heartbreak are compounded by his knowledge that Theo had developed a relationship with Jackson, another white boy, while he was away at college. Their first sexual encounter was a “good weird” experience-“the best kind of weird”-for them both. The two white teens and their black friend Wade were a “three-dude squad” for years, until Griff and Theo became romantically involved. Silvera packs a powerful emotional punch in this multilayered story told partly in flashbacks by Griffin, who’s mourning the sudden death of his best friend and first love, Theo. (Jan.The talented author of More Happy than Not (2015) returns with a moving novel that explores friendship, grief, and trust among four young men. Griffin has much to puzzle out as he tries to move forward, but he does so with the reassurance that real love exists. The tragedy of Theo’s death is also leavened by the healthy families Griffin has to lean on: the boys come out to their parents, together, at a birthday party for Theo’s younger sister, and their declaration of love is met with celebration. Though Griffin’s vision is clouded by grief, passion, and guilt, readers will have no trouble understanding how unmoored Griffin has become: Silvera ( More Happy Than Not) excels at capturing the confusion and pain he feels. Griffin processes Theo’s death by recounting their relationship and the aftermath of the drowning in alternating chapters titled “History” and “Today,” telling most of the story in direct address to his lost love. From Griffin Jennings’s perspective, he loses his first love Theo three times: first when Theo heads to college in California while Griffin finishes senior year at their Manhattan high school then when Theo finds new love with a fellow college student and, finally, when Theo drowns in the Pacific.

History is all you left me by adam silvera