Review: All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven
The writing and characters are wonderful, but if you’re looking for a book about depression, I’d pass on this one.
The writing and characters are wonderful, but if you’re looking for a book about depression, I’d pass on this one.
Although the book was fun and interesting in places, the disability aspect was very much a freak-show presentation of disability and the disabled experience.
Despite their proclamations to the contrary—“don’t tell me you’re one of those people who becomes their disease”—the characters are shown to have nothing in their lives that isn’t about their cancer.
This is a story about what it’s like to go crazy, and it is brilliantly, masterfully crafted.
Many characters who may be mentally ill reject treatment out of hand, considering therapy a waste of time and suspecting medication will turn them into a zombie. Why are these narratives so popular? What are the alternatives?
The description for this book uses the phrase “brilliant but autistic” to describe its main character, and that’s where our conflicted feelings about Viral Nation start.
Insecure autistic boy meets thoughtful, magical adventure: The Real Boy is now my go-to recommendation when people ask for books with autistic protagonists.
Some people call OCD a doubting disease. Corey Ann Haydu infuses her story with the back-and-forth, pulsing presence of this doubt, resulting in a first-person, insider’s account of what the condition feels like for many.
It’s a rare occurrence when an author can update an already published book, and even more rare when that update includes a huge overhaul of the portrayal of an autistic character. Alyssa Hillary takes a look at both the original and updated version in this review.
The book deals in a thought-provoking way with many issues of human interaction; readers’ enjoyment will depend on their tolerance for abuse themes and for protagonists driven to terrible behavior without fully understanding how terrible it is.