A review by shelfimprovement
Infinite in Between, by Carolyn Mackler
5.0
This comes pretty darn close to a perfect YA novel, in my opinion. It's a hefty 462 pages long and I very nearly read it in one sitting—I might have if I'd started it before 10 PM, I might have. As it was I read until I fell asleep, then woke up and immediately picked it back up again to finish.
The book attempts to present the four years of high school as a saga unto itself. It looks at five students and their lives from orientation to graduation. The students are assigned to the same orientation group and, as a project, write letters to their future selves to be opened at graduation. Though their paths often overlap, their lives are for the most part pretty separate and distinct once the letters are sealed and hidden away.
The story bounces back and forth in brief chapters, alternating between the five different perspectives as the months tick away: September of freshman year, April of sophomore year, and so on. It’s sort of Breakfast Club crossed with 500 Days of Summer (though I was a little bummed that the counting days motif didn’t carry beyond the prologue).
The stories aren’t given the kind of depth that a book focusing on one character should have, but there’s just no way Mackler can cover five lives in that much detail without writing a thousand pages. This might annoy some readers, but I was okay with it given the context. I still think Mackler did a pretty good job representing the variety of personalities and personal histories that you’d find in your average high school. There isn’t a sensational or sentimental Big Event at the epicenter here; it’s meant to mirror real life and I think she does that very well. What I saw here very much captured my memories of high school in an incredibly realistic and less idealistic way that many contemporary YA books do.
High school is a bizarre little developmental period, somehow both insular and full of growth. It’s meant to prepare you for college, which is itself typically a baby step towards independence and responsibility. You enter high school as a kid and leave as a little mini proto-adult. There’s massive amounts of change and growth and self-reflection, but most of it still happens inside the bubble of your hometown where things are probably relatively homogenous. It really is a journey, a saga unto itself and Mackler’s approach made me incredibly sentimental for my own high school years.
The book does leave some threads hanging – not everything is given an acknowledged resolution. And the ultimate ending doesn’t really come full-circle. I kind of appreciated that it didn't culminate in this big Event that so often defines the genre. Their lives aren’t over, their stories aren’t over. It’s just that high school is over. But I loved reading this book and I found myself desperately wishing I’d had it to read when I was getting ready to enter high school a zillion years ago.
The book attempts to present the four years of high school as a saga unto itself. It looks at five students and their lives from orientation to graduation. The students are assigned to the same orientation group and, as a project, write letters to their future selves to be opened at graduation. Though their paths often overlap, their lives are for the most part pretty separate and distinct once the letters are sealed and hidden away.
The story bounces back and forth in brief chapters, alternating between the five different perspectives as the months tick away: September of freshman year, April of sophomore year, and so on. It’s sort of Breakfast Club crossed with 500 Days of Summer (though I was a little bummed that the counting days motif didn’t carry beyond the prologue).
The stories aren’t given the kind of depth that a book focusing on one character should have, but there’s just no way Mackler can cover five lives in that much detail without writing a thousand pages. This might annoy some readers, but I was okay with it given the context. I still think Mackler did a pretty good job representing the variety of personalities and personal histories that you’d find in your average high school. There isn’t a sensational or sentimental Big Event at the epicenter here; it’s meant to mirror real life and I think she does that very well. What I saw here very much captured my memories of high school in an incredibly realistic and less idealistic way that many contemporary YA books do.
High school is a bizarre little developmental period, somehow both insular and full of growth. It’s meant to prepare you for college, which is itself typically a baby step towards independence and responsibility. You enter high school as a kid and leave as a little mini proto-adult. There’s massive amounts of change and growth and self-reflection, but most of it still happens inside the bubble of your hometown where things are probably relatively homogenous. It really is a journey, a saga unto itself and Mackler’s approach made me incredibly sentimental for my own high school years.
The book does leave some threads hanging – not everything is given an acknowledged resolution. And the ultimate ending doesn’t really come full-circle