STAY WITH ME
Garret Freymann-Weyr
Houghton Mifflin
Fiction
ISBN: 0618605711
320 pages

Leila Abranel is the youngest daughter from her father's two marriages. Her grown-up older sisters tease her about being his "back-up plan." She is also dyslexic, which in her own words means "... I see letters backwards as easily as forward. That I stand on street corners incapable of telling left from right. That I worry beyond reason over the proper order of things. Over beginnings and ends."

STAY WITH ME is Leila's version of how she comes to terms with the suicide of her 34-year-old sister Rebecca. Prior to the suicide, Rebecca was always the person Leila went to with her problems. Leila can't understand why Rebecca would kill herself, or why she didn't say goodbye. Using the same tools she has used to help cope with her dyslexia, she tries to unravel the mystery of her sister's death.

Garret Freymann-Weyr is best known for MY HEARTBEAT, a book about family politics and sexual identity, in which a 14-year-old girl gets involved with her brother's boyfriend. STAY WITH ME is not nearly so graphic or taboo breaking, but deals with the equally off-limits subject of age difference in relationships. Though the author carefully establishes that 17 is the age of consent in the state of New York before involving Leila with someone 14 years her senior, the age difference between these two characters may make some readers uncomfortable.

Leila's relationship with 31-year-old Eamon highlights Leila's isolation. She is raised in a world that consists almost completely of adults and their problems. To cope with Rebecca's suicide, her parents throw themselves into their work halfway around the world, leaving Leila to live with her other grown sister Clare. There is only one character who is Leila's age in the book, an ex-boyfriend named Ben who Leila abandons because he doesn't understand her perspective or her world.

Leila's dyslexia adds an interesting angle, even if the non-linear structure of the book would be very difficult for a dyslexic person to read. Leila uses it as an explanation for why she is unable to understand her sister's suicide, her family dynamics, or interpersonal relationships. But Leila is far more perceptive than she realizes, and ultimately she learns to trust her intuitive responses to situations and accept that some things are unknowable.

   --- Reviewed by Sarah A. Wood

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