Synopsis
5:30 a.m., Brianna Pelletier gets ready for her daily pounding. As she lies on the couch, her dad beats her chest, then her back, coaxing the mucus out of her lungs. The pounding doesn’t take care of everything. Brianna’s held out for a long time, but a body with cystic fibrosis doesn’t last forever. It doesn’t matter that Brianna has a brilliant mathematical mind or that she’s a shoo-in for MIT. Or even that her two best friends are beautiful, popular, and loyal. In the grand scheme of things, none of that stuff matters at all. The standard life, lasting maybe seventy-five years, is no more than a speck in the sum total of the universe. At eighteen, and doubting she’ll make nineteen, Brianna is practically a nonentity. Of course she’s done the math. But in her senior year of high school, Brianna learns of another kind of math, in which an infinitely small, near-zero quantity can have profound effects on an entire system. If these tiny quantities didn’t exist, things wouldn’t make the same sense.
Funny, tear-jerking, and memorable, the author’s second novel for teens introduces readers to an extraordinary girl who learns that the meaning of forever can change, and that life – and death – is filled with infinite possibilities.
KLIATT
Young people often think they are immortal, immune to the dangers of drug overdoses, speeding, or hitchhiking. Some become obsessed with death and see time slipping away like sand slipping through the fingers. Some young people do have a fatal illness and contend every day with the knowledge that their time on earth is limited. How does a vibrant, I-want-to-live teen cope with that reality when all of high school is about preparing for the future? This novel's 18-year-old protagonist is a senior. Her father is pressuring her to apply to MIT because of her brilliant mathematical mind, but she knows that not many people with cystic fibrosis last beyond the age of 19. Brianna fears death and thinks about it every night and every morning, contemplating infinity and the meaning of her brief life, or anyone's life while here. During the day, she manages to push those feelings aside because she has excellent friends, a seeking articulate mind, a father who loves her, music to listen to, and a role to play as a CF mentor. She meets an engaging calculus teacher, also contemplating the infinite and his mortality because of a heart condition. He is a good teacher but has been an imperfect man; however, he and Brianna forge a bond in their shared mortality and find comfort in a mathematical concept holding that without infinite infinitesimals life would not be possible as we know it. In spite of her fears and imperfections, Brianna lives courageously and dies peacefully. This is a good book to help young people contemplate the meanings they are making of their own lives and eventual deaths. Reviewer: Myrna Marler