What if you woke up every morning
in a new body? One morning you are a white teenage boy; the next, a sixteen
year-old Asian-American girl. You wake up in the body of a clinically depressed
girl who wants to commit suicide, or a boy whose beloved grandfather who has
just died. You may be gay, straight, desperately underfed, or morbidly obese. Each
morning, you check in with your host, accessing the facts of your new
situation. It’s been like this your entire life, and you’ve learned to live in
the body of strangers, always your age, one day at a time. Never get attached,
don’t interfere, and try not to screw up your host’s life.
That
is the premise of “Every Day,” by David Levithan (Knopf Books for Young
Readers, 2012). As the book opens, A
(the name the character has given him/herself) wakes up in the body of Justin,
a handsome but selfish jerk. A meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon, and A’s
rules for living fly out the window. Because A has fallen in love—and wants to
be with Rhiannon every day.
In
the days that follow, A finds ways to see Rhiannon when possible. (One of the
quirks of A’s condition is that his/her soul can’t travel across long
distances. The only way A can move from one part of the country to another is when
that day’s body goes on a trip—which poses a big problem the day one host is
supposed to fly to Hawaii for a wedding.) It takes some doing, of course, to
convince Rhiannon that A jumps from one body to the next on a daily basis. But
she does, and then she’s faced with the dilemma: can you be in love with a
single person who inhabits a different body every day?
“Every
Day” is a love story, but it also raises provocative moral and philosophical
questions. How do attributes like race, gender, sexuality, or class define us?
A particularly likes and identifies with host body Vic, who is “biologically
female, gendered male. Living within the definition of his own truth, just like
me. He knows who he wants to be. Most people our age don’t have to do that.
They stay within the realm of the easy.”
Need
I add that Levithan writes like an angel? He pulls off his implausible premise
with aplomb, and the ending is both bittersweet and satisfying.
This review was originally published in Sunday, September 9, 2012 edition of The News-Gazette.
