If I Stay by Gayle Forman is a young adult fiction novel about a teenage musical prodigy and her family. She’s got a boyfriend with a band that is just taking off, and she’s under pressure to gain admission to Julliard playing the cello. Tragedy strikes and changes everything, shaking up her world.
Forman’s prose is engaging from the first page, but the tragedy that befalls Mia is a predictable plot device that forces this blossoming 17-year-old to reassess her life. Her music transports her to a safe place and even though she is not as confident as she thinks she must be to perform it, it is as much a part of her as her family and her boyfriend. The strength of this novel is Mia’s character, her introspection, her trepidation at experiencing new things, and her ability to overcome embarrassment and fear.
“And I didn’t know how to rock-talk at all. It was a language I should’ve understood, being both a musician and Dad’s daughter, but I didn’t. It was like how Mandarin speakers can sort of understand Cantonese but not really, even though non-Chinese people assume all Chinese can communicate with one another, even though Mandarin and Cantonese are actually different.” (page 47)
Mia often feels on the outside of her family, which has deep rock-and-roll ties in the community, and from her boyfriend, who is a lead guitarist in a up-and-coming rock band, and sometimes even from her own classical music because she has not done many of the things that other classical music prodigies have done with local quartets, etc. However, Mia continues to plug along, beating back her insecurities and striving for the life she wants. Forman has a firm grasp of a teenager’s life — the peer pressures they face, the insecurities that haunt each decision they make, and the passions in which they lose themselves.
Forman builds tension by shifting from Mia’s present into her past, careful not to rush through each moment and unfurling revelations as Mia sees them in each fragment of time. Readers will be moved by Mia’s story and her struggle to find her true self amid high school pressures and more. But If I Stay by Gayle Forman is more than a coming of age story, it’s about the ties that bind us to one another and how we keep those ties alive and relevant.
This is my 15th book for the 2011 Wish I’d Read That Challenge. I’ve wanted to read this book since reading Jill’s dual review in June.
This is my 32nd book for the 2011 New Authors Reading Challenge.