panguitch's Full Review: Neal Shusterman - Everlost
This is the story of how two teenagers died, and then grew up.
Everlost
Neal Shusterman, 2006
Allie and Nick are thrown together when the cars they're riding in collide. Not wearing seatbelts, each dies as they fly toward the other through their respective windshields. Their flight continues in death as they move toward the legendary light at the end of a dark tunnel. But they're too close. They jostle and careen sideways, definitely dead, but not having gotten to where they were supposed to go.
The two find themselves in a limbo called Everlost. As ghosts, or afterlights, they pass through the living world, unseen and unfelt. In fact, if they stand still too long they begin sinking through the Earth. Nick and Allie soon learn they're not alone. There are others, always children, who never got where they were going. In Lord of the Flies fashion some of these children form vicious gangs. Others seek refuge with know-it-all Mary Hightower, who builds an Everlost utopia.
While it unfolds slowly to start with, Everlost becomes a wonderful setting. A shadowed reflection of the real world, it holds many surprises without being too fantastical. The story has the natural darkness of its subject matter, death, but is brightly optimistic nonetheless, although there are grim moments when things worse than death are faced, such as the prospect of spending eternity stuck in the center of the Earth. Or hanging from your ankle like a wind chime. Or stuffed in a barrel of pickle juice. Or playing video games. Shusterman balances this with a pervasive but never overbearing humor.
The characters are excellent. Nick and Allie have very different personalities. Where Nick is attracted to Mary Hightower and the home she has created Allie never stops fighting to escape Everlost and begins dabbling in the dark arts of haunting. Their accidental friendship is a bond of loyalty that preserves them through several adventures, including a face-off with the one true monster of Everlost, the McGill.
Beyond Nick and Allie's soul-searching are the childish yet complex motivations of characters like Mary the Moses figure, Lief the lost boy, and even the McGill himself. Shusterman has sympathy for everyone inhabiting Everlost, which helps temper what might otherwise be gloomy and brooding. Populating this limbo with children also keeps things bright, and they prove effective vehicles for exploring issues of identity, self-perception, good and evil, and the purpose of life, or death as the case may be.
Shusterman's writing is well-honed, his tone and characters pitch perfect. I enjoyed Everlost as an adult, but strong readers as young as eight should appreciate its believable characters, imaginative setting, and sense of adventure. There are a few bits that don't quite click with the rest of the book, but they're peripheral at most.
I'm still a novice when it comes to young adult novels. Sometimes it takes a word from someone I trust to get me past my hesitations. Happily, that's what happened with Neal Shusterman's Everlost.
IT BEGINS WITH AN ACCIDENT. Nick and Allie don't survive the crash, and now their souls are stuck halfway between life and death in a sort of limbo ca...More at HotBookSale
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