All Alone In The Universe (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
My Christmas list this year could have been broken into three categories: my family, the friends I see most often, and the friends I just about never see but think about every day. That last group is made up mostly of former colleagues, teachers who started at about the same time I started, people around the same age, friends with whom I share most of the greatest memories of my adult life.There were five of us in that main group. Among us, I am the only one who is neither married nor engaged. It happens. Someone was going to be the last one standing. And while I won't pretend that it's not a weird feeling to be the only one continuing our Christmas-night tradition of seeing a late movie and then getting dinner at Likelike Drive-In, I will say that the weird feeling is accompanied by the wisdom of forty-plus years. These friends remain on my Christmas list because even while I'm no longer the important part of their lives I might once have been, they remain that important to me. Friends come and friends go, finding their way into our existences in big and little ways, often wandering away similarly.Lynne Rae Perkins's All Alone in the Universe is an exploration of the dynamics of friendship at the eighth- and ninth-grade levels. One day, Debbie has a best friend. The next day, there is a third friend. It's not long before Debbie walks to school by herself and sits on the other side of the classroom. She's confused, she's lonely, and she is angry. There are grownups around her who recognize her situation, who graciously offer sympathy and comfort without condescending, understanding that she will discover for herself what she will discover.It's a simple story, told linearly in only 150 short pages, but it is told with admirable sensitivity and a silly flair for the non-sequitur that's maybe not so non-sequitur as it appears. Perkins gives Debbie a voice that's impossible not to sympathize with, her language sliding gracefully between tiny and sad to wide-open and thoughtful. She allows Debbie's narration to wander where it will, drawing seemingly impossible but completely believable connections between stream-of-consciousness digressions and her own sad life. Perkins writes the silliest metaphors and then draws actual illustrations of them:On the morning of the first day Marie Prbyczka came to our school, the dawn's early light slipped softly into the bedroom where my sister, Chrisanne, and I lay sleeping. We floated through our sleep peacefully, like two pearls sinking through Prell, until the alarm clock ripped the quiet into two pieces, and the first piece fluttered out of sight forever. I pried one eye open so I could watch Chrisanne as she flung herself headfirst out over the foot of her bed and, tethered there by two fingertips, reached out with the fingertips of her other hand to plug in her electric curlers. Then she flopped back in a 180-degree arc onto her pillow and fell into solid, heavy sleep for ten more minutes. It was amazing and impressive. Especially since Chrisanne isn't very flexible. On most days she can hardly do a forward roll. It reminded me of dolphins leaping completely out of the water and flipping over in the air. You watch them and wonder, How is that even possible?The paragraph is accompanied by a pen-and-ink sketch of two pearls sinking to the bottom of a bottle of shampoo.This wonderful, silly, fun narrative characterizes all of Perkins's young-adult novels so far. It's very skillful writing and it drives me insane that she's writing it and I'm not. It may not be as good as her other work, but if you loved Criss Cross or As Easy as Falling Off the Face of the Earth, you're going to enjoy the heck out of this quick read.
www.thedismantledlibrary.blogspot.comI have no idea where this book came from. I never read it as a young adult. The pages have yellowed and given it the look of a much older book. I picked it off the shelves this morning and read/finished it while in the bath tub. I thought it was a pretty good book for a child or maybe a young teenager. It does not offer the magic adults can get wrapped up in like many children books, but the value of it is clear.It is about a girl whose closest friend develops a relationship with another girl and the slow fade of their own friendship, which is extremely painful for her. This seems like something we all go through when we are young, and I am sure some of us go through as adults. It is particularly pertinent when you are young though. Like your first love, it is hard to believe that you could care about someone as much as your best friend ever again and yet you do, repeatedly, throughout your life. There are friends you keep forever, but as an adult you recognize the dynamic must change as you grow. I suppose that is how you can maintain relationships in a way you might not have been able to as a younger person. I remember my best friend Amanda across the street. I also remember when I met Noelle , years later, down the road. The drama that ensued around the triad is only something youth can create. I am still close friends with Noelle all these decades later, and Amanda and I still write each other letters and sometimes send packages. Oddly enough, Amanda grew up to be remarkably similar and Noelle and I are incredibly different. It was not until much much later I realized that they were never very close to each other, though I loved them both. They both had to tell me.The author in this book has found a way to tap into youthful feelings and fears, while also offering valuable ways of coping without being over the top and recognizing that just telling someone not be jealous is not a productive way of dealing with jealousy. I could recognize young me in almost every young character, and I could recognize my young friends too. Good job, Lynne Rae Perkins.
What do You think about All Alone In The Universe (2007)?
tIn the novel All Alone in the Universe by Lynn Rae Perkins the theme is 'Things Can Get Better'. The reader comes to understand that life can be difficult, but will get better. This story takes place in a very small town where it seems that everybody knows each other type of town. The novel is realistic fiction so, it is in the 21st century. Debbie is the protagonist of the story which is written in her perspective. The story covers Debbie and her life, how her friend betrayed Asher and she feels "all alone in the universe." tThis story was well written and made sense. The plot made you understand what you were reading and so did the pictures which added to the description. "before last summer Maureen and I were best friends at least I think we were. I don't know what happened exactly as some people say that get hit by trucks "I didn't see it coming." This book was a good book and did make sense, but It was not Avery happy book that I normally read it was more of a sad book. I would assume most girls would enjoy this book, but it depends on the genre they like. Overall I would recommend this book because of the text and plot.
—Sofia
From my blog at http://dickenslibrary.blogspot.ca/ This is a beautiful book. School Library Journal called it poignant. I think that might be the perfect word for it. I laughed out loud. I got a little weepy. I experienced shivers of pleasure as I read exquisitely written phrases, paragraphs and whole pages, again and again. Here are few snippets."I didn't know how to wash away a crumminess that was swimming around in my heart.""My dance on the pedestal was my friendship with Maureen. I wasn't sure how I had lost my balance and fallen off. Or whether I was pushed. Everyone around me was trying to get me to dance again. The thing was, I hadn't quite given up on getting back up there. I still believed it was the only place where I could be happy.""I thought Marie could handle whatever came along. I thought of her as someone who did whatever she wanted to. That's what she would have said. She skipped school a lot, and when she did come, no one seemed to care what she did. The principals and teachers at school had already given up on Marie. They hardly even saw her, except as some kind of blemish. She could have stood on her head wearing a burlap bag, and nobody would have noticed all that much. They thought she was stupid. She wasn't stupid." Growing up is about making sense of the world and people around you. It's about seeing it and them in new ways. It's about loss. It's about gain. It's about what remains. This is the story of Debbie, a young girl, as she enters the process of figuring it out. It begins with the loss of a best friend and ends with a celebration of friendship. In between she grows up a bit, starts to see beyond the surface of things, and moves towards becoming an amazing young woman. These characters have become friends of mine. I grew up in the times this book was set in. Debbie could have been my neighbour. I wish I could have known her for real when I was that age. I know we'd still be friends these 45 years later. Perkins' writing is so delicate and deft. I am in awe of her ability to reveal, ever so subtly, that how we figure the world out, and what we come to comprehend as true, is predicated on where we start from, and who we are lucky enough to have as our role models. It's been a few years since I listened to Criss Cross, the companion to this book. After reading this one and realizing that the books are filled with whimsical illustrations, I think I am going to have to go and reread it with my eyes.
—Cheriee
This book was, as my rating says, okay. True, it had a good story line, and some things that you could relate to, but besides that, there was no enthusiasm in the writing. And true, it didn't have the "Happily Ever After" factor contributing to it, which makes it realistic, but that gives no excuse for writing a book I imagine as being read aloud in a monotone. Without character, and only stating what happened, not stating why she thought it happened or how she could have felt in that moment. A good story, but with no real substance to it.
—Evygirl01
