Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways… until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else – an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they'd have a chance to remake their world.
Ever since I read Jandy Nelson's debut novel, The Sky is Everywhere, I've been on the edge of my seat waiting for her next offering. Four years after The Sky is Everywhere was published, my wishes were granted and I'll Give You the Sun popped into my letterbox soon. And, wow, those four years were worth it. It's even better than her first book, and that was enough to keep me reading after the lights were supposed to be out (it's not a gift I grant just any book, believe me).
I'll Give You the Sun is told in two perspectives, one for each twin. We start with Noah, age 13: shy, artistic and falling in love with the boy next door whilst his sister wears makeup and jumps off cliffs. Then the narrative turns to Jude (a girl, not a boy), age 16, broken and attending the art academy her brother should be at. Something has happened in between that time to tear them and their family apart. This book is written in first-person present-tense, but banish from your mind any thoughts of The Hunger Games and Divergent. This book has none of that. The writing is stunning (Jandy Nelson is a poet as well as an author). It may be flowery, and it may incorporate all the sort of things you learn about in English lessons, but in my opinion it pays off extremely well.
Both Noah and Jude have their own signature voices; Noah's perspective includes the drawings he paints in his mind, reflecting his inner emotions, and Jude's has snippets of superstition from her Grandma's 'bible'. Did I mention that Jude also sees ghosts? Yes, she also has various conversations with Grandma Sweetwine and her mother which get her into some sticky situations. It's these very quirks that make me love her, and make all of Jandy Nelson's characters so real. They each have their little things and their little sayings and their little pieces of the past. They each have their flaws. The one place where I feel she slips is in Oscar, the stereotypical motorcyle-riding bad-boy, whose English accent adds nothing to the story and only makes me wince at the cliché. It does not make him cooler. (Then again, I am saying that as someone who lives in England.) His character is in fact rounded out later, but the small detail lets down an otherwise perfect cast. I'm prepared to overlook it in light of everything else.
The special thing about I'll Give You the Sun is that the pieces come together one at a time. First, you have just one vivid view of the world and you hate one character, and then you have another piece and you'll start to see the other side of the story, and then you'll get another piece and it will change again. You'll get piece after piece which link up with each other until you end up with the full jigsaw. It may be a tangled, hot mess of love and hate and everything in between, but it is a complete and wholly satisfying jigsaw nonetheless.
This book is about many things: grief, sexuality, creativity, bravery, identity, guilt. But mostly it's about love. Be prepared with more tissues than you needed for The Fault in Our Stars, a chunky notebook to scribble down all the quotes and a handful of witty responses when people ask why you're chuckling to yourself in the corner. Because this book will make you realise how beautiful words can be.
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