YA Review: If I Stay

Forman, G. (2009). If I stay: A novel. New York: Dutton Books.

A half an inch of snow cancels school one winter day in Oregon, and Mia and her family head out for a drive to visit friends and family. In the midst of the happy and comfortable family outing, a terrible accident occurs and Mia finds herself watching the paramedics as they try to keep her alive. As Mia follows her own body in the ambulance, and later to a hospital in Portland, she is faced with having to make the choice about whether to let go and die or to fight on and live.

Mia narrates this strange story, with its many flashbacks, in an honest teenage voice, sharing every awkward and embarrassing moment she has lived through. She brings us with her back in time as she remembers significant moments with her quirky and loving family. I became so fond of her former punk rocker Dad, who traded in his leather jack for vintage suits, bow ties and a job as a middle school English teacher. As he makes ten-year-old Mia laugh through her tears when she is paralyzed with stage fright, I was laughing and crying too. I wanted to hang out with her hipster mom with her cool, eclectic outfits and her fierce loyalty that often got her into trouble. And then there was Mia’s sweet, much younger brother Teddy who loves Alice Cooper and who needs special magic kisses that only his older sister can give. Even though Mia’s family is already gone by page 15, her vivid, emotional memories of them make them so real that I felt some of the ache of loss she must have felt.

Music is woven into every aspect of this story and each song or classical piece that is referenced adds its history into Mia’s story. Mia’s dedication to the cello is what her boyfriend Adam first notices about her. Their first date is to see Yo-Yo Ma in concert. Music – the right music – is important to Mia’s family. Mia recalls her mother’s rage when she was in labor with Teddy and the midwife offered, “We have some lovely Enya. Very Soothing”(p. 154). For Mia’s mom, it had to be the heavy, heavy sound of Melvins or Earth – no substitutions. Even the car accident is described in musical terms, “A symphony of grinding, a chorus of popping, an aria of exploding, and finally, the sad clapping of hard metal cutting into soft trees” (p. 15). Mia and her mom talk about her relationship with Adam in terms of music, “Just like with music, sometimes you have harmony and other times you have cacophony.” (p. 210). There is only one time in the story that the use of music – well, falls flat, for me. The first time Mia and Adam do more than kiss they go up to her room and Adam tells her, “I want you to play me like a cello.” Sorry, but that just seemed silly to me.

I kept asking myself how a book about so much loss and pain could be so funny, but sometimes there is humor in truth even in truly awful situations. The humor keeps the story from getting too sappy, like when best friend Kim tries to reason with the unconscious Mia: “Please don’t die. I can understand why you’d want to, but think about this: If you die, there’s going to be one of those cheesy Princess Diana memorials at school, where everyone puts flowers and candles and notes next to your locker… I know you’d hate that” (p.67-68). The wisecracking comments of Mia’s parents also helped me to appreciate and love them as Mia remembered them in flashbacks. As Adam and Mia head out on their first date, Mia’s mom calls out the door, “Don’t you kids get too crazy. Bad injuries at the last Yo-Yo Ma mosh pit” (p. 37). By the end of the book, I felt like I’d been up all night in the hospital waiting room, listening to Mia tell this story and laughing and weeping with her along the way.

As a side note, disregard the prominent marketing message on the cover of the paperback: “Will appeal to fans of Stephanie Meyer’s TWILIGHT. – USA Today.” Aside from taking place in the Pacific Northwest and being a story about a teenage girl this book has no vampires and very little in common with the Twilight series.