Genre Jumping: Young Adult: Love is the Higher Law

Last week I read LOVE IS THE HIGHER LAW by David Levithan.  It is alternating stories from 3 teenagers as they experience 9/11 in New York and the year following.

Full disclosure: I was in Manhattan on 9/11.  I had no direct connections to people in the towers, but I knew friends of friends; I knew someone scheduled for a breakfast meeting at Windows on the World, but he slept through his alarm; I stood in the milling chaos of Times Square, listening to panicking parents as we heard rumors of bombs at Stuyvesant; couldn’t work for a week because I was working below the 14th St line (yep, that was during my time at The Strand).  We all have a hundred stories from that day, but all my stories led to me crying from page 2 of reading LitHL this past Friday, repeatedly thinking, “yes. That was it exactly.  That was exactly how it felt.”

Yes, the book stars young adults, the publisher has marketed it to young adults, but here’s the thing:

I want adults to read this book.  I want them to understand that it is great, not despite being a young adult book; it is great because it is a young adult book.

We’ve seen 9/11 popping up in quite a few books now.  We’ve seen it as a catalyst for events, we’ve seen it as shorthand for placement in time/location.  I feel like the further we get from the reality, the more it is used as a writer’s tool, the more we see authors giving us people with very complex, intellectual responses to 9/11.

In LitHL, we’re watching teenagers and because they are teens, they are crazy, pendulum-swinging, emotional roller coasters. They are in turn angry, idealistic, scared, tragic, uncomfortable, joyous, you name it… Every emotion is confused, raw and to the nth degree.  They place drastic importance on their first date after 9/11, their first concert after 9/11.  In most adult novels, they would get toned down, but because they are teens, it is allowed here.  And this is the secret… we were all like that in those weeks, no matter our ages.  This is exactly how a 9/11 story should be.

I admit, I worried whether I was enthralled because I had been present at the events.  I wondered how it would be received if I gave it to someone with an entirely different experience.  So I gave it to a fellow bookseller who had been in 6th grade in MA on 9/11.

She loved it.  She said it had the pieces that speak to her inner teen fangirl… a very sweet love story and friendship story, strong enough to stand on its own.  But more, she had always felt removed from 9/11.  She was too young, too far away.  She heard the people with their “never forget” and always felt apart from them.  But she read this and felt connected in a way she never had.  And she felt this book had come at the perfect time: for those, like her, who had seen something, had heard, had witnessed from a sheltered place; now she gets it.  Now, she too will never forget.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.  I think it is special, it is important, but mostly: it’s a great read.  And no one should let its young adult category stand in the way.