Side Effects May Vary - Julie Murphy

Alice is diagnosed with leukaemia. She is devastated. And so is her family. And Harvey. She asks Harvey, who she knows is in love with her, to help her fulfill some bucket-list items before her time runs out, but Harvey begins to question her motives. When Alice finds out that she is in remission, she is suddenly left wondering what to do with the life she had already said goodbye to, and she now has to face the consequences of a number of her previous action.

Julie Murphy's Side Effects May Vary is at once as rich, beautiful, and complex, as it is sad and disturbing. The story is told through the alternating voices of Alice and Harvey, from "then" and "now," allowing readers to piece together their fractured lives and experiences, one bit at a time.
We were so different. Harvey wanted good. He wanted to leave the ones he loved in a good place. I'd just wanted the last word.
Alice is a bitch. She says so herself! ("Karma was a bitch, but so was I.") She is selfish and cruel, and she retaliates against people in horrific ways. But she feels she has to get her revenge on these people because she's dying, so why not! She's closer to an antagonist than a protagonist, but this is an element that drives the story forward in such unique ways compared to other YA with cancer-riddled characters. I want to see her find redemption and realize how awful she's being, and not just realize it, but actually feel bad enough to change it now that she's in remission. My desire to see this change is what keeps me reading!

Harvey is a fantastic second protagonist, always wanting to help and take care of Alice in whatever way he can, but the more he realizes her questionable motives and selfish attitude, the more he understands how he is being manipulated. His realization, though perhaps it comes a bit late, creates a wealth of tension throughout the book. His love for her is his downfall, leaving him unable to fully extract himself from what he knows is a bad situation: "I loved her, and that hurt the worst of all because I was tired of being her debris."

No matter how you feel about Alice or Harvey, the way that they play off of each other throughout the book showcases Murphy's talent for characterization. The writing is strong, the voices and personalities each unique enough to carry their respective chapters. I found myself trying to find moments throughout the day to read just one more section. Perhaps not a book for those who want to love their protagonist(s), but definitely a book with compelling, real teens in a terrible and terrifying situation.

Highly Recommended

*I don't often mention this is reviews, but I love this cover, too. Each of the images corresponds with events and themes within the novel in very important ways, and the four different font colours are reminiscent of the four perspectives we see in the structure of the novel. My hat goes off to the cover designer!

(Note: The review is from an Advanced Reading Copy - Out March 18, 2014)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Living - Matt De La Peña

Image
The Living  recently received an Honor from the Pura Belpré committee. The award recognizes of a work which best portrays the Latino cultural experience in a work of literature for children or youth. As I was at the awards announcements, and having known people who served on the committee in the past, I was intrigued. I had read the winning title and the other honor titles, and was impressed with the choices. So here's my review of The Living : The novel begins with Shy, a young guy working for a snazzy cruise line, offering water to people on the Lido Deck of the ship to combat the heat. Everything is going pretty well until an older gentleman comes out and starts spouting of weird, disconcerting phrases: "You have seen the face of evil."Shy doesn't quite know what to think, so he moves on to a couple of ladies on the other side of the deck. Just as he's handing them their water bottles, he sees movement out of the corner of his eye and realizes the old guy h...
Read more

The Music of What Happens - Bill Konigsberg

Image
Max: Chill. Sports. Video games. Gay and not a big deal, not to him, not to his mom, not to his buddies. And a secret: An encounter with an older kid that makes it hard to breathe, one that he doesn't want to think about, ever. Jordan: The opposite of chill. Poetry. His "wives" and the Chandler Mall. Never been kissed and searching for Mr. Right, who probably won't like him anyway. And a secret: A spiraling out of control mother, and the knowledge that he's the only one who can keep the family from falling apart. Over the course of one summer, two boys will have to face their biggest fears and decide what they're willing to risk -- to get the thing they want the most. This is a phenomenal book, in my humble opinion. There aren't too many books dealing with male sexual abuse, particularly in YA. Sex and sexuality are messy parts of young adulthood, but what this book does really well is discuss consent and the ways in which physical cues can be misinte...
Read more

Girls Like Us - Gail Giles

Image
I have now gone out and made sure that I have all of the books longlisted for the National Book Award. I read and reviewed a number of these previously, so now I have five left to read and review. This is one of those five (but would I expect anything less from the fabulous team at Candlewick?) Girls Like Us  is a unique novel in a number of respects, most notably in the fact that both protagonists are identified (and self-identified) as mentally disabled in some way. Biddy has a learning disability that she was born with, while Quincy is a young girl who is disabled due to the fact that her mother's boyfriend hit her in the head with a brick, disfiguring her and damaging her brain. Once the two girls graduate from school, they move into a house together, becoming caregivers for both each other and an older woman, Elizabeth. The two must rely on each other for comfort, knowledge, and emotional strength, and Elizabeth manages to help them along the way. While I had moments of wo...
Read more