I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson Published by Penguin on September 16th 2014
Genres: Young Adult, Family, Siblings, Social Issues, Death & Dying, LGBT, Love & Romance
Pages: 371
Format: Hardcover
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At first, Jude and her twin brother are NoahandJude; inseparable. Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude wears red-red lipstick, cliff-dives, and does all the talking for both of them.
Years later, they are barely speaking. Something has happened to change the twins in different yet equally devastating ways . . . but then Jude meets an intriguing, irresistible boy and a mysterious new mentor.
The early years are Noah’s to tell; the later years are Jude’s. But they each have only half the story, and if they can only find their way back to one another, they’ll have a chance to remake their world.
(self-portrait: a girl sitting in bed with her insides bursting an explosion of colors and a closed book by her side.)
I’LL GIVE YOU THE SUN is art. i’m going to start by saying that not everyone is going to love it. sometimes you simply don’t get it, or you get it but don’t feel it, or feel it but don’t care for it, or whatever. that’s fine, but for ME it was definitely MY KINDA BOOK. the characters are artists so reading from their perspective is not only reading about art, it’s like reading art. how do you even describe or explain that? the writing is different from what i’m used to and took a bit for me to understand and get into. everything is a metaphor and i wasn’t sure if this was literally happening or if it was all in his head. (it was all in his head.)
this book is so complex, so poetic, so emotional, and so powerful. it’s the kind of book i want to reread a million times over, overanalyze, and cover the margins with notes. i felt every sentence’s second meaning and it hit me really really hard. it made me feel SO MANY FEELINGS and i can’t even pinpoint exactly why. the depth of this book is unfathomable. this book is one of those books that made me cry, even though it’s not really all that sad.
“In one split second I saw everything I could be, everything I want to be. And all that I’m not.”
the story is told from two POVs: one twin (noah) at age 13, and the other (jude) at age 16, three years later. there are a lot of layers as to why this or that happened and we truly get to watch the story unfold. it’s much more complicated than the average “love triangle” in most contemporary romance novels; it’s much more tangled, focusing on family issues, romance, sexuality, and more. i had such a strong connection with the two of them even though their voices are COMPLETELY different. and even though they were different, there were still undeniable parallels that connected them as siblings.
what surprised me most about I’LL GIVE YOU THE SUN is the family aspect. a lot of the problems arise between the twins and parents themselves and i find everything else is the “subplot.” although i really liked the romance, i felt just a biiiiit insta-love-y and too good to be true but eh that’s alright.
“Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people,” I say. “Maybe we’re accumulating these new selves all the time.” Hauling them in as we make choices, good and bad, as we screw up, step up, lose our minds, find our minds, fall apart, fall in love, as we grieve, grow, retreat from the world, dive into the world, as we make things, as we break things.”
all in all, this book blew me away. it definitely holds a spot on my favorites of 2016 shelf and it’s only been ten days into the new year. although there were parts of the book that felt a little artificial or a little dragged, i think that’s all irrelevant compared to the impact it had on my perspective. truly and completely eye-opening.
View Spoiler »i’d recommend if you like…
- books that make you THINK
- LGBTQ concepts
- art
- poetic writing
[rating-report]
I WAS ONE CLICK AWAY FROM BUYING THIS BOOK. BUT I DIDN”T!!! My soul is hurting. How could I have been so stupid. I must read this book, now that I know it is amazing. But I can’t. Because I didn’t buy it. ughhh I am a disgrace. This fabulous and perfect review comes along, talking about the perfection of this book, and I can’t even read it because I was dumb *sobs*
This book had literally THE most beautiful prose of any YA book I’ve read. Glad to hear you enjoyed it!
I LOVED this book! Whenever I look at it on my shelf I get the warm fuzzies. It made me cry, laugh, scream, feel every damn emotion in the entire world that I could possibly ever feel. The book is art.
This book is absolutely amazing! One of my all-time favorites. Brilliant review! 🙂
Oh, I loved I’ll Give You the Sun when I read it! It’s so beautiful. It was so moving. And while it did have things that I didn’t love completely, overall, I thought it was just wonderful 🙂
I’ll admit that I’ve never really cared about this book that much but hearing you talk about it like this makes me want to try it. Great review Xan! 😀
Jandy Nelson WRITES ART VISUALLY, and for that she’ll always have a special place in my heart. I know I’m not alone in that, but seeing you describe the exact same thing just now warmed my soooooul! I love being reminded of all the other quirky, weird, THINKING readers out there who felt about this book as I did.
And I don’t know if YOU have this experience, but I’ve noticed that most of the people I follow have started their reading year marvelously – in that we’ve all found at least one book which we swear will make our favorites cut at the end of the year. And it’s only January! Hooray for the bookish 2016!
Also, uhm, YOUR PICTURE of I’ll Give You The Sun is really on par with I’ll Give You The Sun. Both visually AND in the level of artistic awesomeness.
– Lexie
EEK, I’m so glad you loved this one, Alexandra! I read it last year, and it was definitely one of my favourites of 2015.
I totally get what you mean about it reading like art. I felt the same way! And the UK copy I read actually has art inside the pages – which was AMAZING. Like, there would be paintbrush strokes and drops of ink, and it totally added to the artistic feel of it.
I found it really hard to pick a favourite twin (which no one asked me to do, but still XD), but I think I liked Noah more. I just adored his character TO NO END. So precious <3
I have to agree with you on the fact that everything tied up really nicely and quickly. But still, it was gorgeous to no end.
Lovely review, dear! <3
I read this book late last year, and MAN what a book it was! At first it was kind of difficult to know where the plot was heading, but once I got there, it’s like FEELING a burst of colors everywhere.
It’s just so exquisite and beautiful and everything good in the world.