Suicide Notes

Michael Thomas Ford, October 2008. Jeff wakes up to find he's in a psych ward with bandages on his wrists, but refuses to believe he belongs there. He's committed for forty-five days, but for most of it, he refuses to reveal why he hurt himself in the first place. And about halfway through, he gives in to the sexual advances of a patient named Rankin - and likes it. Jeff's psychiatrist is convinced he tried to kill himself because his best friend Allie began dating a boy named Brent. This is true, but not in quite the way the doctor had in mind. Jeff was in love with Brent, and Allie can't forgive him for not being honest with her about his sexuality.

This gripping, suspenseful book is probably not for your youngest teens, depending on their life experience; the sex scenes are appropriately graphic, as we experience them from inside Jeff's head, and suicide is, of course, a major theme. Highly recommended for readers who can handle it, and for all public libraries.

Gravity

Leanne Lieberman, October 2008. This is not the average teen novel in which the author strives to make the characters as accessible as possible; nor does Lieberman create a fantasy-novel sense of otherworldly place. The author's debut novel is heavy with the language and rites of Orthodox Judaism, even including a five-page glossary of Yiddish terms in the back of the book. Narrator Ellie Gold, a devoutly religious high school sophomore, keeps kosher, blesses every meal, and won't turn on a light switch on the Sabbath. She wears skirts below the knee and beige full-coverage bras because she wants to, as opposed to her sister Neshama, who resents that their father requires this type of clothing.

The book begins with the family splitting up for the summer. While Ellie's parents go to Israel and Neshama is off to summer camp, Ellie spends the summer with her ex-Jewish grandmother Bubbie, still keeping kosher but getting more comfortable in a two-piece bathing suit. It's at Bubbie's cabin that Ellie meets Lindsay, the kind of girl she has never gotten to know at her religious school: flirty, saucy, wearing a string bikini and willing to whip it off for skinny-dipping in the lake. The two girls start flirting, and this is where we see the complexity of Ellie's character: she's sweetly dorky when she gets nervous and ends up babbling about biology. Lindsay is less complicated, bragging about the boys she's kissed. The girls rekindle their friendship back in the city, and begin a sexual relationship that feels wrong to Ellie for more reasons than her Judaism; she suspects that Lindsay is just using her, whereas for Ellie, this is everything. The sex scenes are short but hot; the subplot about Mrs. Gold's breakdown is curiously feminist without being obvious; and the contrast between the sisters is appealing. Recommended.