*This review will contain spoilers. Trigger warning for suicide.*
The story centers around two teenagers living in a small town in Indiana, Theodore Finch and Violet Markey. The narrator shifts between them throughout the story. Both are dealing with some serious issues. Finch is grappling with some type of undiagnosed mental illness which causes him to shift between erratic behavior and long periods of depression, which he refers to as "sleeping." His peers bully him at school and his mother, still reeling from a divorce she didn't want, is battling her own depression too much to pay much attention to his issues. Finch thinks a lot about committing suicide, as he can't find a way to deal with his racing mind and uncontrollable impulses, but something always happens to make him call it off.
Violet is dealing with the anxiety and stress of the death of her older sister, which happened about nine months prior to where the story picks up. Her sister was killed after she lost control of her car on a patch of ice driving home from a party. Violet was in the car too. She survived with only minor injuries and is plagued with survivor's guilt. She carries a lot of fear in her heart; she refuses to drive, or even just ride, in a car, she hates the snow, and has stopped writing, an activity that was her passion prior to the accident. She is also thinking about suicide, to escape the constant pain inside of her, but she has kept her feelings buried, out of a desire to shield her parents from the pain of losing another child. She is popular and well-liked at school, and she works hard to maintain a positive demeanor in front of her friends.
Finch and Violet meet at the start of the novel when both of them separately climb the bell tower at their high school and contemplate jumping off. Finch is instantly attracted to Violet and ends up talking her down. He allows Violet to escape scrutiny by telling everyone she was the one saving him and both return to their classes. Later in the day, when their geography teacher assigns a project to explore different points of interest around Indiana, Finch manages to get himself partnered up with Violet. As they spend more and more time together, they begin to fall in love.
Finch slowly helps Violet come out of her shell and begin to heal. He gets her back into cars and encourages her to talk about what she is feeling. In return, Violet gives Finch something positive to focus on. She is someone who will love him without judging him, and her influence helps him to stay "awake" for his longest stretch yet. This tether to reality is only temporary, however. Finch's illness is getting worse. Every adult in his life is failing him and Violet isn't sure how to help. The love between the pair, while sweet and pure, is not enough to change the trajectory he is on, and the end of their story speeds towards a tragedy.
I was all kinds of messed up after reading this book. It was incredibly sad--probably the saddest book I have ever read. I was on the edge of tears throughout the last chapters of the story, and I'm not a big crier when reading. The writing was stunningly beautiful. Jennifer Niven clearly knows what she's doing when it comes to creating lyrical prose. She also does a nice job weaving in the words of other authors. Violet and Finch are both readers, and quotes from many different literary works are woven into their thoughts and speech. Niven has quite the knack for picking out meaningful passages that fit into Finch and Violet's story. The emotional impact of this work is great, and emotional impact is one of my biggest personal criteria for liking books. I tend to love sad books. Why, then, did I feel so split about this novel?
Because there were problems. The pacing was uneven, with very little happening in the first part of the book, and all of the big story events crammed into the final third. There were plot events that were too convenient or impossible. The characterization on the adults in the story frequently verged on cartoonish, and the protagonists borrowed too much from John Green's manic pixie style. However, all of these things are often present in young adult, character-driven contemporary novels these days. I can usually overlook it enough to still enjoy a work, and indeed, those issues were not the biggest problems I had with All the Bright Places.
The biggest problems for me was the the content. I was very uncomfortable with the way suicide and mental illness were characterized. Finch commits suicide towards the end of the novel, but not before placing a series of touching notes and objects all across Indiana and emailing Violet a cryptic set of clues to find them. It was a suicide scavenger hunt, and it was devastating emotionally to read. It felt like good, gripping storytelling at the time, but when I thought about it afterwards, it felt kind of slimy. His actions were glorified and elevated him to tragic hero status, and putting this kind of spin on his experience with mental illness didn't feel right. I don't have firsthand experience with the aftermath of a suicide, but I imagine that it's a messy, angry, and traumatic experience for those left behind. It probably does not trigger a touching journey to personal growth. The idea of that happening is probably ludicrous to anyone that has gone through it and dangerous to anyone who is currently struggling with depression and considering taking their own life.
I looked at some reviews online for All the Bright Places after I finished reading, and most people love it. It has a very high rating on Goodreads (4.11 out of 5) and the majority of people there rave about it. Some of the positive reviews I saw call it a "life-changing" read. Many count it among their favorite young adult novels and it was nominated for a slew of awards. It's not difficult, however, to find people that feel the same way I did. There are plenty who are critical of Niven's treatment of mental illness, her portrayal of medication (it's not great), and the actions of the adults responsible for helping Finch (they are actively harmful). One review I saw pointed out that the adults in the story are constructed to be uniquely, unrealistically terrible towards a teenager who is obviously in crisis, and it's true. Niven made them this way in order to make a death that should have been entirely preventable plausible. She was going for intense sadness, and she definitely got it, but the ways she achieved it just feel more and more wrong to me the more I consider them. Some people don't read the novel this way at all, and others do. How you view it will be entirely personal.
I'm not going to assign a rating to this story, because I still can't decide how I feel about it. All the Bright Places is a beautiful piece of writing and it had a unique emotional impact on me. I can't completely discount that, even though I disagree with how Niven depicted a very serious topic. I wouldn't necessarily recommend anyone read this, but I will probably never forget how it made me feel. I kind of wish I hadn't read it in the first place. At the same time, there were many parts of it that I enjoyed. This is set to become a movie on Netflix sometime this year. I can only imagine that it's destined to receive similar criticism to the 13 Reasons Why series, if they remain faithful to the source material.
As a closing note, I want to say that if you are struggling with depression or having suicidal thoughts in your real life, this is not the book for you. Steer clear of it and please seek help.
Challenge Tally
Book Junkie Trials (The Great Library - Read a book that has been on your TBR forever) 3/17
Finally in 2019: 23/6 Books Read - Complete!
Total Books Read in 2019: 41
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