Author: Patrick Ness
LGBTQ+ Representation: Main character identifies as gay; supporting character as sexually fluid
What it’s about (in 75 words or fewer): Adam's life is not the greatest. He feels trapped by his religious family; he's still pining over his sort-of-ex, Enzo; he's being sexually harassed by his boss. Adam relies on his good friend Angela and boyfriend Linus, but this one summer day will allow Adam to find release from what is holding him down. Meanwhile, a ghost of a recent murder victim longs for her spirit to find release from this world.
What I think (in 250 words or fewer): Release was amazing, very different from anything I have ever read before. Major events in the story are not revolutionary: Adam is planning a going-away party for Enzo, whom he is not over; Adam's "perfect" older brother comes home with some news; Adam comes out to his evangelical preacher father. The way the story is told is what makes it unique.
Adam's story is woven together in short vignettes, in slice-of-life and stream-of-consciousness-style. The story takes place over one day in Adam's life, with flashbacks of significant events in his life. Adam's story is not the only one told, however; his story is told alongside a more mysterious tale of a spirit of a recent murder victim who has somehow become intertwined with a spirit queen of the lake. The queen is capable of great destruction, including interfering in human lives by killing and reanimating them.
The queen's world is not completely explained; there is no convenient explanation or exposition, which makes it more compelling than it would be if it had been a complete fantasy "world."
Ness explains in Notes and Acknowledgements that the "spirit of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Judy Blume's Forever suffuse Release." I am very familiar with Forever, less so with Dalloway, but I can see the influence of both stories in Release.
This book is on the 2019 Rainbow Book List.
My final takeaway (in 75 words or fewer): As soon as I read the last page, I went back and re-read the first few chapters. I found subtle references and nuances that I had missed in the first reading, which lead to me almost completely re-reading the entire book.
It has been a very long time since I've re-read a book immediately after finishing it, and if that's not a good recommendation, and I don't know what is!!
Memorable quotes/passages from the book:
- "Consider Adam Thorn, as he pulls out onto the farther main road . . . Blanched blond, tall, bulky in a way that might be handsome but is only just starting to agree with gravity. . . he is focused on a goal, focused on what will get him the hell out of Frome, Washington. Adam Thorn, keeper of secrets" (pgs. 5-6, and if that's not a deliberate homage to The Twilight Zone, I am going to pretend it is--Jen).
- "And who cared if it was the love of a fifteen- and then a sixteen-year-old. Why did that make it any less? They were older than those two idiots in Romeo and Juliet. Why did everyone no longer a teenager automatically dismiss any feeling you had then?" (pg. 29).
- "Did he even READ Judy Blume?" (pg. 57).
- "In some universes, we're all Beyoncé (pg. 113).
Other reviews: The Guardian and Kirkus
This book is available from the Greensboro Public Library.
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