While We're Young

Siblings Grace and James Barbour are teenagers from the USA. They could not be more different. Grace is student body president and extremely well liked by both pupils and teachers. James has poor attendance and is more used to being out of school than in school, so much so, that he has a daily meeting with the Principal.

One day, Grace decides that she and her two best friends, Isabel Cruz and Everett Adler, will very unusually skip school.  The group have been drifting apart and she wants them to reconnect and make good memories before they all go to different colleges next year. Pointedly, James is not asked on the trip which makes him feel very left out. However, it’s clear why the author chooses to do this, as James gives us a perspective on school without Grace and Isabel.

What secrets will the reader learn over the course of this day-long, road trip novel? Both Isabel and Everett share things which change the group’s dynamic radically.

This is a deeply felt, structurally complex work with four different narrators but this gives the reader an intimate perspective of each of them, as well as their role in the group. This novel contains parental infidelity, grief from the death of a parent, academic pressure and teen relationship issues. There is also a large and welcome dose of humour, mostly provided by James’s character.

Young readers who have experienced the death of a parent will find Walther’s depiction of the grieving process deeply moving. The point is made that grief comes in waves and is not linear.