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A review by quirkycynic
Gone, Gone, Gone by Hannah Moskowitz
4.0
About a month ago I read (and hated) another queer YA novel that shall remain nameless for anyone who doesn't check my reads list, but which happened to be about pretty much the same kind of thing as this one. I won't compare the two -- the former is a genre novel so putting its execution against a non-genre novel is unfair -- but in my review I did note that what I wanted from that book was one that, quote, "actually means something as a whole, and is unified in its themes and its storytelling".
So for whatever it's worth, this book is that.
Like all my favourite YA fiction, Gone Gone Gone is about no easy subject: it takes place after the September 11th attacks, against the backdrop of the Beltway Sniper shootings, and with a protagonist struggling to accept why he has recovered from cancer while his twin brother did not. Its plot isn't complex, but means a huge amount since it's about two boys struggling to accept love while living in a world of random, chaotic, and utterly irrational violence.
Because I'm an emotional masochist I guess I gravitate toward these stories more than others, but also because I think it accomplishes a very simple but profound meaning about the state of life itself and how to accept it -- there is death, the absence of life, and love, the embrace of it. A story about two people trying to understand which of these two states is more essential to the very purpose of living feels as if it should not be as compelling as it is, and yet the stakes could not be higher. It's absurd, heartrending, hilarious, dispiriting, and beautiful all at once. A lot like life.
So for whatever it's worth, this book is that.
Like all my favourite YA fiction, Gone Gone Gone is about no easy subject: it takes place after the September 11th attacks, against the backdrop of the Beltway Sniper shootings, and with a protagonist struggling to accept why he has recovered from cancer while his twin brother did not. Its plot isn't complex, but means a huge amount since it's about two boys struggling to accept love while living in a world of random, chaotic, and utterly irrational violence.
Because I'm an emotional masochist I guess I gravitate toward these stories more than others, but also because I think it accomplishes a very simple but profound meaning about the state of life itself and how to accept it -- there is death, the absence of life, and love, the embrace of it. A story about two people trying to understand which of these two states is more essential to the very purpose of living feels as if it should not be as compelling as it is, and yet the stakes could not be higher. It's absurd, heartrending, hilarious, dispiriting, and beautiful all at once. A lot like life.