if i stay by Gayle Forman

     I read about if i stay by Gayle Forman in my friend Penny Kittle's book, Book Love, and the next day I was at the bookstore and there it was, so I picked it up.  I started this book on Monday and I am through 152 pages.  I can barely put the novel down at night because I want to know what Mia is going to decide. You see, she has been in a serious accident with her family, and it appears she is the only survivor.  As she lingers in that invisible in between, observing her body and those gathered at the hospital but feeling nothing, a nurse tells her Gram and Gramps that "She's running the show.  Maybe she's just biding her time.  So you talk to her.  You tell her to take all the time she needs, but to come on back" (82).  Mia realizes that she has a decision to make, that living or dying is up to her.
     The narrative, broken into increments of time in that first twenty-four hours (as far as I can tell now), bumps between that present and flashbacks that flesh out the fabric of her life up to that point.  The scenes with her unconventional and loving immediate family heightens the tension -- the reality that the world she might return to will be void of that same comfort and love. She will have to deal with loss and grief for the rest of her life (I know this: my grandfather was killed in a car accident in 1964 when my dad was 15, and my dad, now 64 years-old, is still processing his grief -- that hole left by his father's absence).  Yet, Forman paints the vibrant life that is open to Mia.  Her extended family: Gram and Gramps I mentioned above, aunts, uncles, cousins; her close friend, Kim, boyfriend, Adam, and close family friends, Willow and Henry.  Mia also has her cello and the possibilities of a serious career in music.  Forman places her readers on the seesaw with Mia. The tug and pull between life and death.
    The one thing that is bothering me -- the one thing that I can't get out of my head is that I believe we did not know the first-person narrator's name until page twenty-four when in a flashback to her first cello recital her dad calls her "Mia Oh-My-Uh." That detail is foreboding to me. She has no "identity" at that point except for membership in her family. Her cello teacher, Professor Christie, is mentioned by name, Adam, her brother, Teddy, but she is not named until well into the narrative. I know that is not accidental... Why?  I am trying to push out the idea that it is because she will have  "no identity" at the end.  OR, perhaps, I fear I doubt it, it is because Forman wants to highlight all the life and love she has known up to that point, making the world a place she will want to return.
    My one critique, and this comes from the place of a forty-two year-old cynic and mother of two young daughters, is that the relationship with Adam seems too perfect. Maybe not the relationship because I do like how Mia doesn't feel comfortable or worthy of the relationship -- she reflects how those doubts I think we all have when we enter a place of intimacy creep into our brain and make us insecure.  So, I think it is really the character of Adam himself that bothers me. He is, so far, too good to be true.  He loves her unconditionally -- tells her her quirks and insecurities are the things he loves the most.  He leaves her flowers on her windowsill every day that she is laid up with the chicken pox.  He is mature and even-keeled and a punk-rocker like her father once was.  I understand that it is about providing a luring possibility on earth -- something she can return to, but to tell you the truth, I am tired of all the Prince Charmings, who maybe have their surface imperfections but love these girls with their lives ( Peeta and Gale in The Hunger Games, Edward in Twilight, to name a couple recent ones that come to mind and I have been having my fill of Disney princesses and Teen Beach Movie with my two girls as of late).  But, then I think of my teenage self and I would have lapped up every single word written about Adam that would have had me daydreaming for hours, and this book is meant for that audience, so I should just shut my trap.  AND I don't even know what Forman is going to do with this character and relationship.  I should just wait and see. Until next time!