Author: Every Day
Title: David Levithan
Original Publicaiton Date: 2012
Pages: 322
It would seem that David Levithan has no love for the traditional linear narrative form of story writing. The Lover's Dictionary (1 Star) is in, as its namesake suggests, dictionary entries. Every Day too is not of the traditional linear form. It has no beginnings, and it knows no ends. It began where it ended, and it ends where it began. Searching for closure here would be an act in vain.
Every Day tells us the existence of an entity which inhabits a body for just one day. For one day it gets to live in that body. On the next day, it is randomly transferred to yet another body. The concept is terrifying and hauntingly beautiful. But David Levithan chose the dilemma of loving in that momentary living as the focal point of the story. In so doing he presents us various lives of what can be readily seen as stereotypical teenagers like metalheads, depressed individuals, jocks, cheerleaders, nerds, and teens struggling with their identities.
I like the two messages I picked up in this book. The form without end and beginning gives credence to the leitmotif that we should live in the present just as the entity does, living day by day in different bodies. The second that love is universal, that it is not solely anchored on our physical facet but on the person as a whole, that it is not just between man and woman. I think this book made a lot more sense because Levithan did not endeavor to elaborate on the mysterious aspects but instead played on the emotions involved, I like that he did not clear up the mysteries. You may feel cheated, ending up where he started, but Levithan played that real good.
