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A review by stormydawnc
The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma
5.0
Some girls make enemies out of other girls, and you don’t even know why.
We’ve had Mean Girls. Gone Girl. Courtney Summer’s books. By now, the idea that girls are full of “sugar and spice and everything nice” has been thoroughly shot and buried, but perhaps nothing quite gets to the complexity of teenage girls like The Walls Around Us does. Girls can be vicious. Girls can be cruel. Girls can also be kind. This is, at heart, a book about girls. So-called “good girls” and “bad girls” and the lines that blur them.
The Walls Around Us is about:
-Two mysteries
-Girls
-Ballet
-The blurred lines of justice
-Relationships–and I don’t mean romantic ones. I mean the friendships, the substitute relationships, and what people hold on to.
-Guilt
-What drives people to do terrible things
-The things that haunt us
It would be impossible to fully unpack this novel, so here’s what you need to know: The Walls Around Us is told in split POV between Amber and Violet. Amber is a girl in the juvenile correctional facility. She has been in the facility for years and everything the reader sees in the facility is through her eyes. Violet is a ballerina set to take center stage, but something from her past is haunting her–her once best friend, Ori, who was sent to the correctional facility.
We were alive. I remember it that way. We were still alive, and we couldn’t make heads or tails of the darkness, so we couldn’t see how close we were to the end.
This is the type of book you read with a highlighter in hand, if you’re the type to mark your books. The writing is as magical as the supernatural events taking place within the book. It always feels light and flowing, even when the subject matter is dark and dreadful. The writing is as gorgeous when describing the day-to-day life at the correctional facility as it is when making a ballet come to life, and the contrast between the two is stunning. Who would have thought these two places, these two characters, would contrast so well?
The Walls Around Us is the kind of book that immediately sets its tone and then unravels the story to the raw core. From the very beginning, the narrator makes it clear that something terrible happened to the 42 girls in the detention facility. It’s also clear from Violet’s narration that something terrible happened in her past, and that’s why Ori was in the facility in the first place. These two mysteries run side by side–what happened to girls? and what happened to Violet and Ori? are the more plot-driven questions of the novel. The real question that drives the story forward, however, is the question of guilt and innocent and who you can trust.
Much like the characters in this novel are haunted, I know The Walls Around Us will haunt my memory for a long time in all it’s nuance and complexity. This is a book that you wolf down in one sitting, but then dwell on for days, going back to the story in your head over and over again. The Walls Around Us is not a book easily forgotten.
2017 re-read: I re-read via audiobook and I enjoyed it just as much as the first time.
We’ve had Mean Girls. Gone Girl. Courtney Summer’s books. By now, the idea that girls are full of “sugar and spice and everything nice” has been thoroughly shot and buried, but perhaps nothing quite gets to the complexity of teenage girls like The Walls Around Us does. Girls can be vicious. Girls can be cruel. Girls can also be kind. This is, at heart, a book about girls. So-called “good girls” and “bad girls” and the lines that blur them.
The Walls Around Us is about:
-Two mysteries
-Girls
-Ballet
-The blurred lines of justice
-Relationships–and I don’t mean romantic ones. I mean the friendships, the substitute relationships, and what people hold on to.
-Guilt
-What drives people to do terrible things
-The things that haunt us
It would be impossible to fully unpack this novel, so here’s what you need to know: The Walls Around Us is told in split POV between Amber and Violet. Amber is a girl in the juvenile correctional facility. She has been in the facility for years and everything the reader sees in the facility is through her eyes. Violet is a ballerina set to take center stage, but something from her past is haunting her–her once best friend, Ori, who was sent to the correctional facility.
We were alive. I remember it that way. We were still alive, and we couldn’t make heads or tails of the darkness, so we couldn’t see how close we were to the end.
This is the type of book you read with a highlighter in hand, if you’re the type to mark your books. The writing is as magical as the supernatural events taking place within the book. It always feels light and flowing, even when the subject matter is dark and dreadful. The writing is as gorgeous when describing the day-to-day life at the correctional facility as it is when making a ballet come to life, and the contrast between the two is stunning. Who would have thought these two places, these two characters, would contrast so well?
The Walls Around Us is the kind of book that immediately sets its tone and then unravels the story to the raw core. From the very beginning, the narrator makes it clear that something terrible happened to the 42 girls in the detention facility. It’s also clear from Violet’s narration that something terrible happened in her past, and that’s why Ori was in the facility in the first place. These two mysteries run side by side–what happened to girls? and what happened to Violet and Ori? are the more plot-driven questions of the novel. The real question that drives the story forward, however, is the question of guilt and innocent and who you can trust.
Much like the characters in this novel are haunted, I know The Walls Around Us will haunt my memory for a long time in all it’s nuance and complexity. This is a book that you wolf down in one sitting, but then dwell on for days, going back to the story in your head over and over again. The Walls Around Us is not a book easily forgotten.
2017 re-read: I re-read via audiobook and I enjoyed it just as much as the first time.