Book Log: Me, the Missing and the Dead
Me, the Missing, and the Dead by Jenny Valentine
Lucas Swain is almost sixteen years old, and his dad has been missing for five years when he meets Violet Park on a shelf at a cab office. Thing is, Violet Park is more than a little bit dead and living in an urn at the time.
But Lucas knows that she has something to tell him. Even though she's no longer among the living.
As Lucas tries to unearth the truth about Violet Park and what she wants from him, he realizes that there may have been a connection between Violet Park and his missing father. The more he digs, the more he begins to learn truths about the dad he's always idolized--truths he's not sure he ever wanted to know.
I love this book. It doesn't sound like much from the description, and when you hold it in your hand, a slim little volume, you won't believe that it can worm its way into your heart and make you care, but it can, and it will. In a few short pages you'll get to know Lucas. You'll hear his voice in your head, honest and contempletive and real and true, and you'll want to keep talking to him.
Because like Violet, the fact that Lucas isn't real won't stop you from getting to know him--or from caring about him.
There are lines in this book that ring so honest and true that they break your heart even as you know they're true.
"It occurs to me that all most people do when they grow up is fix on something impossible and then hunger after it...And the thing about everyone else in my family is that we are so busy being miserable all the time about impossible stuff that being miserable has started to become normal and strangely comforting.
I mean, how much would we actually like it if Dad showed up tomorrow and became part of the family again?
Wouldn't it make everyone a bit awkward?
It would be like having a stranger in the house, like a new lodger.
It would be really weird.
At some point, without anybody noticing, the impossible object of desire must turn into the last thing on Earth you want to happen."
And let me just add in one last thing--just when you think this book couldn't possibly get any better, that the ache of goodness and honest writing and characters you've grown to love in such a few short pages couldn't swell any larger in your heart--just wait for the last chapter. Just wait for it. Because it's perfect.