Written by Alice Kuipers
HarperTrophy Canada
978-1-44342-410-3
216 pp.
Ages 13+
2014
Be prepared for heartbreak.
Before you’ve finished two full pages, a girl will be
showing Kurt and his friends a social media image of Ivy’s car being pulled out
from the river below the broken rail of the bridge. And he knows that Callie would have been in that car.
Rewind two weeks, and Ivy Foulds and her alcoholic mom are
returning after 3 years away to live next door to Callie Carraway and her family again, now that Mom
has reunited with former boyfriend, Kevin.
But there’s something suspicious about the way that they left and about
some secret between Callie and Ivy that cools their reunion. However, with Callie’s best friends away for the summer and her preachy and
inattentive mom distracted with new baby Cosmo, Callie is drawn to reconnect with Ivy
who is determined to give "shiny-penny Callie in the bank account of my life" (pg. 5) a great summer. But when Ivy is introduced to Kurt Hartnett, the school zine editor, on whom Callie is secretly crushing, she decides that, "He's so going to help me get over everything." (pg. 35)
So that great summer is off to an odd start and there are so many obstacles to it:
Ivy’s flirtatious ways, secrets being held back and lies being told. Sadly the book’s opening foreshadows a
friendship that will be the death of them somehow.
Alternating between the voices of Ivy and Callie in the
weeks prior to the accident and Kurt at the time of the accident, The Death of
Us examines the friendship between the
two girls, both from the past and in the current summer, as they navigate their
family issues and own explorations with love. Their story told from the pen of Alice
Kuipers is never predictable. Not. Ever.
The girls are complex, juggling what they know, what they
need and whom they trust, within each’s precarious family dynamics. Most of all, Callie and Ivy are trying to figure out who they are and put forward those personas. But try as they might, they still don't have a handle on the people they are growing into. Ivy likes to rely on self-help podcasts ("the best way to grow as a person is to step outside your comfort zone"; pg. 122) to navigate this learning while Callie tends to look externally to others, including books, to direct her ideas about self. But Callie and Ivy are the products of their
families–as is Kurt, in a different way–and they are so affected by their mothers, that I
weep for mother-daughter relationships that can be so disheartening, even
destructive. But I cheer for those like
Kurt and his friend Xander and Callie’s Granny who provide real and
unconditional support and affection, even if only discreetly.
Even without the twists and turns of highly-plotted stories,
there’s no way the reader will see the ending coming, just as author Alice Kuipers did in her book 40 Things I Want to Tell You from HarperTrophy Canada, 2012. You see, there is no need for Alice Kuipers to embellish truths and reality when the drama of real life is so captivating and she can write it so well. The Death of Us will take you into that reality and walk you along that cliff edge, back and forth, wondering when the jump or the fall is coming, because you know it will. That's life. And it will be The Death of Us, one way or another, predictably or not.
