Just to refresh your memory, I read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green this year. It dealt with kids who had cancer and limited life spans. It wrung my heart out to dry and I alternated between swooning at the delectable prose and wailing at the emotions being evoked by the same delectable (but so tragic) prose. I thought I was done with this theme for the rest of the year. However, for some odd reason, I found myself requesting All These Lives from Net Galley. My brain was screaming frantically but my hands seemed to be autonomous and clicked the request button. And when I did get approved, my brain and heart conferred and then decided that yes, they were in accord and I would read All These Lives. Now that I have thoroughly bored you with that paragraph, let me tell you this. All These Lives is an experience that you will want yourself to keep having. I’m not joking. It is painful yes but it is also brilliant. Comparisons to TFIOS are inevitable but All These Lives hold its own against what was a pretty epic novel. And you know what? Come closer and I will whisper: I liked All These Lives just a little better than TFIOS. Yes, scandalous I know. Where TFIOS dealt with themes of death and ending up, close and personal – dying without having a say in it, All These Lives takes a step back and examines this same situation from another perspective. Dani has become one of my favourite heroines. She’s right there with Katniss and Briony: a flawed heroine, filled with pain, irreverent, sarcastic and yet so very vulnerable. Dani is multifaceted and composed so realistically that she could be a girl you know. The girl with the attitude and the mouth. The girl you secretly want to be. Dani’s pain and method of dealing with her twin’s illness is perhaps the greatest selling point of the novel. I love how Wylie avoided pathos and melodrama, how she didn’t pound in the tragedy with a hammer. We know it’s not fair, we know it’s tragic. What Wylie gives us is a glimpse of how one person’s illness can shatter an entire family. I think the word here would be brittle. Jena’s illness seeps into the spaces in their family and makes their unit brittle. Dani’s way of dealing may seem extreme but Wylie manages to make it believable. She shows how Dani comes to the conclusion that she has so many lives that she can just give one away. There is an exquisite fragility in the subtle way Dani’s actions mask her bewilderment and her pain at not just what Jena is going through but also what their entire family is undergoing. And the writing. Goodness, the writing. It is beautiful. The romance is also one of the selling points in the novel. I have noticed that in all YA novels, no matter what the initial premise, the focus almost always shifts to the romance either halfway or partway through the novel. Sometimes so much so that the overall plot is subsumed by issues of oh he loves me, oh he doesn’t. This is not the case in All These Lives. Oh there’s romance but there is a tinge of it. Just a blush of it and you know what? That is all that is needed. Any more would have ruined the pace, the balance and the composition.This novel is easily one of my favourites this year. And for a debut novel to be this strong is certainly remarkable. I recommend this novel to you, to your friends, to everyone who wants to read a beautiful book.
