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A review by hayleybeale
Cold by Mariko Tamaki
4.0
Mariko Tamaki is best known for her wonderful graphic novel collaborations (This One Summer, Skim, and Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me), and this second (I think) YA novel is equally evocative and atmospheric.
The naked body of high school senior, Todd, is found in the snow in the park of a small community. His ghost watches as Detectives Greevy and Daniels investigate his death, filling in the details that they fail to elicit.
In alternating chapters, Georgia, who goes to the same school, watches the investigation from afar while uncomfortably noting the similarities between herself and Todd. They were both ostracized and isolated loners and, possibly connected, they are/were both queer. The connection Georgia feels with Todd deepens when she realizes that she has another connection with him, one that the police don’t seem to know about.
Todd is mostly a passive observer, one who doesn’t bring feelings to what he’s observing - after all, he’s dead. Georgia is the one who feels the need to find out what happened, to explain why Todd was targeted, because she could be him. As with Tamaki’s other novel, Saving Montgomery Sole, small town homophobia and hypocrisy are exposed, in this novel with the gay teacher Mr McVeeter as well as with Todd himself.
The chill of the snow is echoed in the cold that both Todd and Georgia feel at school. Though Mr McVeeter tries to reassure Todd that high school isn’t life, that things will get better, Todd, as many others before and after him, finds that hard to believe, though he does observe the happy home life of Detective Daniels with his chubby red-haired boyfriend.
This is a slight novel which leaves a lot for readers to fill in for themselves, but in a thoughtful rather than sloppy way. The mystery is resolved but Georgia and Todd, and the reader, find no satisfaction from that.
Thanks to Roaring Brook and Netgalley for the digital review copy.
The naked body of high school senior, Todd, is found in the snow in the park of a small community. His ghost watches as Detectives Greevy and Daniels investigate his death, filling in the details that they fail to elicit.
In alternating chapters, Georgia, who goes to the same school, watches the investigation from afar while uncomfortably noting the similarities between herself and Todd. They were both ostracized and isolated loners and, possibly connected, they are/were both queer. The connection Georgia feels with Todd deepens when she realizes that she has another connection with him, one that the police don’t seem to know about.
Todd is mostly a passive observer, one who doesn’t bring feelings to what he’s observing - after all, he’s dead. Georgia is the one who feels the need to find out what happened, to explain why Todd was targeted, because she could be him. As with Tamaki’s other novel, Saving Montgomery Sole, small town homophobia and hypocrisy are exposed, in this novel with the gay teacher Mr McVeeter as well as with Todd himself.
The chill of the snow is echoed in the cold that both Todd and Georgia feel at school. Though Mr McVeeter tries to reassure Todd that high school isn’t life, that things will get better, Todd, as many others before and after him, finds that hard to believe, though he does observe the happy home life of Detective Daniels with his chubby red-haired boyfriend.
This is a slight novel which leaves a lot for readers to fill in for themselves, but in a thoughtful rather than sloppy way. The mystery is resolved but Georgia and Todd, and the reader, find no satisfaction from that.
Thanks to Roaring Brook and Netgalley for the digital review copy.