Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands by Chris Bohjalian – 288 pages ARC from Doubleday
Book Blurb:
Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands is the story of Emily Shepard, a homeless girl living in an igloo made of garbage bags in Burlington. Nearly a year ago, a power plant in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont had a meltdown, and both of Emily’s parents were killed. Devastatingly, her father was in charge of the plant, and the meltdown may have been his fault—was he drunk when it happened? Thousands of people are forced to leave their homes in the Kingdom; rivers and forests are destroyed; and Emily feels certain that as the daughter of the most hated man in America, she is in danger. So instead of following the social workers and her classmates after the meltdown, Emily takes off on her own for Burlington, where she survives by stealing, sleeping on the floor of a drug dealer’s house, inventing a new identity for herself, and befriending a young homeless kid named Cameron. But Emily can’t outrun her past, can’t escape her grief, can’t hide forever-and so she comes up with the only plan that she can.
My Review: 3.5 stars
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Chris Bohjalian has done it again and this time surprised us with a YA literary voice. This young heroine is troubled from the start. The nuclear meltdown in her town adds to her problems as she feels it necessary to hide her true identity. She flees as a means of survival and of course, is bound for many exploits and adventures. This book wasn’t full on dystopian, yet it explored what happens to a town after a tragedy, which renders the city uninhabitable. The protagonist has a connection with Emily Dickinson’s poems, which help her to stay strong. I enjoyed that part very much. This was not my favorite Chris Bohjalian book, but still an interesting addition to his collection of work. If you’re a fan of this author, as I am, I recommend you read it as this author brings us new voices, new subjects and interesting plot lines in each of his novels. There is nothing formulaic in his writing which I highly appreciate.
Quotes I liked:
As they say, the River Denial is wide.”
– “Teen boys are often more chill than teen girls, but inside they can be just as fucked up.”
– “So, homesickness becomes merely wistfulness if home has become uninhabitable. It’s more like a phantom pain than the kind you can gift yourself with an X-acto.”
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