Tuesday, January 9, 2018

All the Truth That's in Me by Julie Berry

genre: young adult

When Judith returns to her extremely conservative town after having disappeared for four years, she is missing more than her childhood and her innocence.  In an act of violence, Judith has lost the ability to speak.  Unable to explain what happened and what she saw, Judith lives a shadow life - there, watching, but either unable and sometimes forbidden to participate in the community around her.  Her thoughts, instead, are poured out into a journal to the boy she has always loved, the boy she watches with a keen eye.  When circumstances dictate that Judith must either act or her whole town may be in danger, she has to decide if it is worth the struggle of making a place for her in the world after all.

Not historical fiction, exactly, but set in a Puritain-type society, this story delves deep into voice and belonging, into hatred and scapegoats, intolerance and sexism.  It makes you think about the people we disenfranchise and how important it is to give every person - male and especially female - the space to feel like what they have to say is valid and that justice belongs to everyone.

It was slow-going, I'll be honest - it never really gripped me until the last fourth, but I also couldn't let it go: the ideas and Judith herself and her love for Lucas kept me wanting to know what happened.  I loved the early-America-but-not-quite setting and the constructs it places on the story,  I liked the second-person narrative and even the not-quite-chronological flow worked for me.  I liked that I really didn't know how things were going to sort out, the mystery and the suspense.  I really liked the sensitivity some tough issues were tackled with and how it was all wrapped up in a sad but really good story.

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