Hold Still

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jlgjacobs, September 5, 2009 (view all comments by jlgjacobs)
In Los Cerros, CA it's the first day of Caitlin's junior year at Vista High. In familiar first-day fashion "all the girls are squealing and hugging as if it's been years since they've laid eyes on each other. The guys are slamming their hands down on one another's backs which I guess is supposed to mean something nice." But, for Caitlin, the world is no longer familiar. Ingrid, her best friend, the one with whom Caitlin was so close they were often mistaken for sisters, committed suicide at the end of their sophomore year, leaving Caitlin to drift among her classmates as the other half to a whole that no longer exists.

With Caitlin's vividly rendered voice as our guide, Nina LaCour's Hold Still takes the reader on the journey of a young woman struggling to deal with an unimaginable loss. Yet LaCour does not leave Caitlin to wander alone. Caitlin finds Ingrid's journal tucked beneath her bed.

"Here's how I feel: People take one another for granted . . . You never look up, in a moment that feels like every moment of your life, and think, Soon this will be over. But I understand more now. About the way life works. I know that when I finish reading Ingrid's journal, there won't be anything new between us ever again.
"So when I get home, I lock my room door even though I'm the only one home, take Ingrid's journal out, and just hold it for a little while. I look at the drawing on the first page again. And then I put the journal back. I'm going to try and make her last."

Through the intense rush of her handwritten entries and wistful beauty of her drawings (lettering and art by the talented Mia Nolting), Ingrid is resurrected. As they are doled out, Caitlin and the reader explore the depths of her passions and despair, her flashes of quick dark humor, the enormity of the absence Ingrid left behind. The entries are the srong running stitch keeping the novel bound at its seams. They are also Caitlin's means of redemption, her eventual path back to herself.

The strength of LaCour's writing is evident throughout Hold Still. The protagonist's voices are so perfectly sixteen. For young readers, I imagine they will be instantly familiar--the endless, eyerolling exasperation with adults who just don't get it; the desperate search for confirmation and approval; the wonder of life expanding before their eyes with each new person, thought, and experience.

And for readers for whom high school is merely a stack of dusty yearbooks on some forgotten shelf, it is an opportunity to re-enter this world of firsts.

First friends:
"I walked out, feeling how straight my hair was, how great my pants fit, how nice my bracelets sounded. I bent down and I drank the cold drinking-fountain water and I felt like, This is it. My life is starting. And when I got back to my seat there was a new note that said, I'm Ingrid.
"I'm Caitlin, I wrote back.
"And then we were friends. I was that easy."

Crushes, loves, the wonder of first hearing a song that truly speaks to you:
"It was the moment I realized what music can do to people, how it can make you hurt and feel so good all at once. I just stood there with my eyes closed, feeling the movement of all the people around me, the vibration of the bass rise through the floor to my throat, while something inside me broke and came back together."

With this debut YA novel, LaCour has written a book that is beautiful and true, peopled by characters who live and breathe both on the page and off. On the day I received my copy of Hold Still in the mail, I was up until the small hours finishing it and, even now, days later, I've often caught myself thinking about what Caitlin or Ingrid would make of something; how swiftly they would roll their eyes at one of my lame grown-up remarks; what wonder they would find in even the smallest, most common moments of the day.

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Product Details

ISBN:

9780525421559

Author:

Lacour, Nina

Publisher:

Dutton Books

Illustrator:

Nolting, Mia

Subject:

Social Issues - Friendship

Subject:

Social Issues - Suicide

Subject:

Social Issues - Depression & Mental Illness

Subject:

Psychological fiction

Subject:

Friendship

Subject:

Situations / Friendship

Subject:

Children s Young Adult-Social Issue Fiction-Suicide

Subject:

Children s Young Adult-Social Issue Fiction

Edition Description:

B-Hardcover

Publication Date:

20091031

Binding:

HARDCOVER

Grade Level:

from 7 up to AND UP

Language:

English

Illustrations:

Y

Pages:

304

Dimensions:

9.46x6.32x.85 in. 1.03 lbs.

Age Level:

12-17