- Reading level: Young Adult
- Hardcover: 176 pages
- Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (August 25, 2009)
- ISBN-13: 978-0375834684
Back-of-the-book blurb: First there is a Before, and then there is an After. . . .
The lives of three teens—Claire, Jasper, and Peter—are altered forever on September 11, 2001. Claire, a high school student, has to get to her younger brother in his classroom. Jasper, a college sophomore from Brooklyn, wakes to his parents’ frantic calls from Korea, wondering if he’s okay. Peter, a classmate of Claire’s, has to make his way back to school as everything happens around him.
Here are three teens whose intertwining lives are reshaped by this catastrophic event. As each gets to know the other, their moments become wound around each other’s in a way that leads to new understandings, new friendships, and new levels of awareness for the world around them and the people close by.
David Levithan has written a novel of loss and grief, but also one of hope and redemption as his characters slowly learn to move forward in their lives, despite being changed forever.
She is Too Fond of Books’ review: Where were you on September 11, 2001? Chances are, no matter where in the world you were, you remember in great detail what you were doing when the first tower was hit … and the second … and when they fell. You remember the feeling of disbelief; as the day went on you might have been moved to give blood, for survivors that were never found. You saw the newscast images of the “missing” posters that papered signposts and construction fences in the city. You were encouraged to “Never Forget,” reminded that “United We Stand,” and learned that the field of stars in the American flag should hang in the upper left, whether displaying it vertically or horizontally.
In the weeks and months that followed, as the past seven years have gone by, you’ve learned to adjust to a new reality in America; the reality of David Levithan’s “After” is the post-9/11 world. You, like the three teens in this novel, have learned to find your place in it.
Levithan’s characters live in New York; Claire and Peter are students in Manhattan; Jasper is a few years out of school and is at home in Brooklyn until the new college semester begins. They know each other only peripherally – a nod in the halls at school, guests at the same party, flirting before an official date.
Each chapter is headed by the name of the character telling that section of the story, making a seamless transition from one perspective to the next.
We meet them each as they learn about the attack - Claire is in school a dozen or so blocks north of of the World Trade Center and does what she can to comfort and protect her younger brother; Peter is loitering outside Tower Records, waiting for it to open, he learns the news from a store employee who opens the doors and shoos Peter away; Jasper wakes to the sound of the phone, his parents are visiting his ailing grandmother in Korea and have heard the news before him.
Levithan captures the emotion, the grasping for hope in those first few days. Jasper observes:
… Maybe that’s why I kept watching, and why Peter Jennings kept talking, and why I’m sure the streets of Brooklyn that night were lit by the blue flickerglow of all our TV screens – because what we needed was that one moment of good news, that one person pulled from the rubble. I remembered how, when I was little, there was a baby girl who fell in a well, and it was like the whole country held its breath until they got her out. It’s not that survivors would have erased what had happened to everyone else, but it would have at least told us that our hope was justified, that it was still the kind of story we were used to.
As the three cross paths in the weeks that follow, their relationships move from tenuous connections to something deeper. Peter and Jasper explore their attraction to each other; Claire is the glue, the Point B to their A and C.
Love is the Higher Law is a line from U2′s One, referred to in the novel; Peter says of the band:
[t]hey know what we’re going through. They lived through Ireland in the ’70s and the ’80s. They know what it’s like to be bombed and threatened and afraid. they know what it’s like to walk on. They’re not just singing it.
Claire, Peter, and Jasper - like we - learn that music still plays; and we all learn to walk on.
Levithan’s take on a young adult’s 9/11 experience (both the Before and the After) is authentic. It’s hard to generalize since we each have a personal Before and After; no 9/11 experience can be labeled “right” or “wrong.” He pushes a bit of an agenda – Jasper’s is excluded from donating blood because of the “homosexual intercourse” line item on the Red Cross intake survey; Claire protests the war in Iraq. These, too, seem authentic for our time.
About the author: David Levithan is a children’s fiction editor at Scholastic, and an award-winner author. He has published several Young Adult novels, including Boy Meets Boy and Nick and Norah’s Infinite Play List. Love is the Higher Law has been selected for the Autumn 2009 Kids’ Indie Next list.
To hear more from the author himself, please read guest posts and interviews with him at:
I think, like most, I have strong feelings about Sept 11th. In thinking about it in my driving to work, listening to the radio and “where were you when it happened” … all I could think about was what about children that under 8 years old and under or even pre-teens, do they learn about this great tragedy in school, at home, where? What is the origin of Labor Day, voted a federal holiday in 1894, many (including me) think about it as the end of summer. Our calendars are now marked “Patriot Day” — how many will know what that means in 10+ years.
Wow..what a powerful book!
I can’t help but remember what I was doing on 9/11 each hear as we remember his sombering event. My husband and I were driving to work together. Back then, we carpooled and enjoyed spending that one-on-one time together.
Intitial reports indicated that it was a small prop jet that hit the tower. We weren’t too concerned, afterall, the Twin Towers were indestructable. By the time I arrived at work, however, we knew exactly how severe the attack was.
I live in the DC area. For the next several hours, things were chaos. Phone lines were tied up so we couldn’t get in touch with family members. Reports of The Mall being on fire horrified us. Fighter planes flew past our office windows for most of the day.
Finally, after a state of emergency was declared, we were allowed to leave. We picked our son up from daycare; at that time he was only two. As we drove home, he searched the skies for airplanes, a favorite game he played. He said “Mommy, I see a plane!” and I instantly froze. Were we under attack? I realized that, in fact, there was no plane in the sky and had to explain to my poor son that it might be some time before we see that glint of silver in the sky.
My son is now 10, and understands what happened on that horrible day. I know it’s a hard wish to grant, but it is my hope that he, and his younger brother, never have to experience an event like that again.
I am adding this one to my list.
I got goosebumps just reading your review — and how fitting that I should read it today! Definitely sounds like a moving, powerful novel, and that cover art is haunting. (Love the title, too.) I just wonder if, like books about the Columbine massacre, I could actually get through it. I have no doubt of its importance and I’m sure it’s worth the read, but my heart hurts just thinking about it.
Still, I read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer a few years back — another outstanding book, told from the perspective of a sensationally smart little boy who loses his father when the towers fell. I can still remember lines from the story and some of the photographs Foer incorporated — haunting can’t even begin to describe it.
Yikes — my heart hurts! You’re right — we all have a “Before” and an “After,” and we’ve all been forced to live in this new world. Together. Let’s hope we never forget!
What an excellent idea, to write a 9/11 book for young adults. There are so many wonderful, healing books out there for adults, and I for one was driven to them in search of answers and solace. Kudos to the author for writing this.
To this day, I have trouble getting through the 11th of September. I will never be the same person I was before that tragedy. That day redefined me as a person, in ways I never thought it would. To me, this is the perfect title of a book…a line from one of the best songs ever written (in my humble opinion!)
Nicole – our older kids were only 3 and 5 in 2001, the younger two weren’t even born. We talk with them about the events of 9/11, but they obviously are learning it as history, while we experienced it as a current event.
Jenn – I haven’t talked directly to many people who were in the DC area that day. We were living in CT, commuting distance to NYC. I know you enjoy YA novels; this is, as you say, powerful. Levithan deals with a difficult subject with great sensitivity (not sensationalized)
charley – I hope you do get to read LOVE IS THE HIGHER LAW soon.
Meg – Levithan isn’t in the events as they happen. The three teens share their first-hand experience of the day, then the days and weeks that followed. We learn how it impacted them, even indirectly. We’re not at Ground Zero; what I’m saying is, the novel is more about Claire, Peter, and Jasper and their reactions to 9/11 than the details of the attack itself … it’s not raw carnage.
Sandy – yes, Levithan writes of the effects on these three with incredible sensitivity. There is definitely a message of hope in the After.
My sister was a lowly patrolwoman on the D.C. police force then (now she’s a lieutenant). So she got one of the less lovely jobs of guarding the sewer treatment plant! Apparently those who got that duty lost a lot of weight because they kind of lost their appetites with the odors emanating from the plant!
There are many wonderful books for adults from that day, but one I particularly enjoyed was After, by Stephen Brill, in which he followed 5 people involved in some way for one year afterwards.
It is a day that certainly none of us who lived through it, even from far away, will forget. This sounds like a great book.
rhapsody – I haven’t read AFTER, I’ll look for it. I second Meg’s recommendation (above) of EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE. Yes, Levithan fills a void in writing this book for and about older teens during 9/11.
Kathy – The details of that day are so clear in my mind. Each time I did something “ordinary” (like make lunch for the kids) I thought “how can I be doing this normal/typical thing today?!”
Second review I’ve read today for this one. Certainly the perfect day to write about it. I may have to see about picking it up for next year. I was a freshman in high school in my second period and every TV in the entire school was turned on to the coverage. Most people thought it was a hoax for a little while
Sounds like an interesting book. I hadn’t heard of it, but the subject matter makes it seem like a book I could really get into. Glad that you enjoyed it, I am going to add it to my wish list. Thanks!
I like that an author is trying to tackle this topic for a younger audience … it can’t be easy to do.
Sounds like a really interesting book. I agree with you – everyone has their own feelings and experiences when it comes to 9/11. Still, there are certain things that we all did, that we all felt. I think that looking at people and how they react in the face of disaster, of catastrophe – that really speaks volumes about the human condition – about what makes us the same.
[...] reviewed by: Mrs. Magoo Reads, Book Addiction, Reading Rants!, The Book Obsession, Read this Book!, She is too fond of books, Bending Bookshelf, The Reading Zone, Read What You Know. Possibly related posts: (automatically [...]
[...] by: Mrs. Magoo Reads, Book Addiction, Reading Rants!, The Book Obsession, Read this Book!, She is too fond of books, Bending Bookshelf, The Reading Zone, Read What You Know. Possibly related posts: (automatically [...]