Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a novel published in 2012 by Jesse Andrews. The story is narrated by Greg S. Gaines, a senior at Benson High School in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Greg’s main goal in school is to get along with everyone while never being a part of any clique or group.

Greg’s best friend is Earl Jackson. Strangely, instead of calling Earl his best friend, Greg refers to him as his co-worker. The pair make films together, but refuse to share their work with others.

Greg’s plans to get through his senior year unnoticed soon fall apart. His mother tells him that his classmate Rachel Kushner was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia and insists that he spend time with her. Greg begins calling and visiting Rachel who finds him amusing. Earl also befriends Rachel and shares his and Greg’s films with her because she enjoys them.

Rachel goes through chemotherapy, but eventually decides to end her treatment. After learning that Rachel likes Greg and Earl’s films, a fellow classmate named Madison suggests that they make a film for Rachel. The pair work hard on a film for Rachel, but they aren’t happy with the result. Despite their misgivings, Rachel encourages both Greg and Earl to apply to film school. Greg and Earl’s film for Rachel is presented to the entire high school without their permission. It’s a painful experience, and they independently destroy all their films.

Shortly after finishing the film, Rachel dies. Earl decides to give up on filmmaking. Greg has failed his classes and explains that he has written the book as an attempt to get back into the University of Pittsburgh.

The ending of the novel falls flat. Greg realizes that he barely knew Rachel, and that his film was more about him than her. In some ways, this is realistic. We sometimes appreciate people when it’s too late or fail to ask questions in a timely way. Still, I thought it was a shame that Greg showed so little growth throughout the story.

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We'll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han

We’ll Always Have Summer (2011) by Jenny Han is the third novel in The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy about Belly Conklin. Belly is now in college and has been dating Jeremiah Fisher for two years. Belly and Jeremiah get engaged, and their families are opposed to them marrying so young.

Jeremiah’s brother Conrad also has feeling for Belly, and he feels conflicted about supporting Belly and Jeremiah’s relationship. He wants to confess his true feelings for Belly.

It was hard to like Belly at times. She gets engaged to Jeremiah while she still has feelings for his brother. Meanwhile, Jeremiah and Conrad often seemed to be competing with one another for Belly, and I wasn't sure either one was truly in love with her. None of the characters are fully likable, but the series was still hard to put down.

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The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
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It's Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han

It's Not Summer Without You (2010) by Jenny Han is the second novel in The Summer I Turned Pretty series about Belly Conklin. At the beginning of the novel, the reader learns that Conrad and Belly have broken up and that Conrad and Jeremiah’s mother Susannah has died of cancer. Both the Fisher and Conklin families are grieving. Belly must face her first summer at home instead of at Cousins Beach.

Throughout the novel, Belly flashes back to moments from her relationship with Conrad and to Susannah’s illness and funeral. These events occurred during the year after The Summer I Turned Pretty. Several chapters are written from Jeremiah’s point of view.

Jeremiah calls Belly for help after his brother Conrad disappears from school. The pair find him at the summer house on Cousins Beach, and they try to convince Conrad to return to school. When Jeremiah confesses his feelings for Belly, she’s caught in a triangle between the two Fisher brothers.

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The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
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The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han

The Summer I Turned Pretty (2009) by Jenny Han is a coming-of-age story about Isabel “Belly” Conklin. Belly is 15 years old. Every summer, Belly, her brother Steven, and their mother Laurel go to Cousins Beach where they stay with Laurel’s best friend Susannah and her two sons, Conrad and Jeremiah.

Belly has had a crush on Conrad for years, but he treats her like his kid sister. The three boys often do things together, and over the years, they have left Belly out. This year, Belly has grown up, and she thinks things will be different.

It is a different summer for Belly. The boys look at her in a new way. And Belly begins dating her first boyfriend Cameron.

The book chapters flit back and forth in time as Belly remembers events from past summers. The back and forth can be a bit confusing to read at times, and it was a bit sloppy. I think the author may have been confused by the timeline too. For instance, in Chapter 34, Belly talks about getting her period at age 13 at Putt Putt, but on the next page she wants to reclaim Putt Putt for her “twelve-year-old self.”

Nitpicking aside, the story is a fun, breezy read about adolescence and young love.

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It's Not Summer Without You by Jenny Han
We'll Always Have Summer by Jenny Han

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The End of Me by Alfred Hayes

The End of Me (1968) is a novel by Alfred Hayes about a fifty-one-year-old man named Asher whose life has fallen apart. At the beginning of the novel, Asher witnesses his wife having an affair with a fellow tennis player. Asher is shattered and feels like howling. He returns to his house and decides to leave every light on and blazing instead of burning the house down. Then he leaves L.A. without telling his wife. Asher escapes to New York City where he was born and spent many years. He thinks,

"Thirty-five years. Yes. I'd given the city so much of my possible life. Surely, what was broken in me, the crippled sense of myself, would be restored. I'd heal among these brutal angles. I'd bathe in her like a spa. I'd convalesce in her indifferent arms."

He takes a room in a hotel with a view of Central Park, and watches the world from his window. Asher reflects on his life. He was once a successful screenwriter, but then as he grew older, Hollywood lost interest in him and doors closed on him. Asher describes it saying, "...the way the jobs disappeared, the people hanging up on the phone, the being turned into a ghost. They do that to you, you know: they ghostify you." He had two failed marriages and has no children. He thinks, "Well: apparently, what one ran out of was not mistakes, but the years to make them in."

When he walks around New York, he sees the changes in the city, reflecting:

"I'd walk slowly, I thought, and I would let the city come at me slowly. But New York does not come at you slowly. It isn't a landscape. It comes at you simultaneously. It is constantly existing at the periphery of your sight. You are almost always seeing at the very edge of what you see something else that you are still not seeing. I had always known this even when it was a different city and I had lived in it and was now trying to live in it again."

Asher visits his Aunt Dora, who mentions that her grandson Michael Bey wants to be a writer too. Asher meets Michael, who is a jaded, suspicious young man. Asher is rude to him, but later regrets his behavior. In his remorse, Asher hires Michael to walk around New York City with him to visit places that were significant in his past. Asher later wonders if he is trying to gain Michael’s approval, as though by sharing his history he will have a protégé.

Michael is dating a law student named Aurora d’Amore. Her name is ridiculously fake sounding, and Aurora is good at playing a wide-eyed innocent routine and "complicated games." Asher is attracted to her, and he jealously wonders what Aurora sees in Michael. When he’s with Aurora, Asher wishes he was still young.

Asher fails to see that Michael and Aurora are conniving and cruel. They gain Asher’s confidence to learn his deepest secrets, and they lie to him and humiliate him in profound ways. Asher is foolish, not realizing that that the pair is working to trick him and amuse themselves. At the novel’s conclusion, he reflects, "Everything went by. Nothing went by. I went by." Instead of finding a place to heal, Asher found more cruelty in New York. The End of Me is a tragic and cold story of loss, aging, generational conflict, ignorance, despair, and humiliation.

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The Bees

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