I'm not a fast reader, and lately I've been having trouble reading more than a few pages at a time. With Fans, I would sit down to read a few pages of this book and suddenly be 30, 40, 50 pages from where I started - a true testament to the success of the book's pacing. I even stayed after work to finish reading the last 40 pages, despite knowing I'd end up sitting in extra traffic and being late for an appointment.
To catch up anyone who isn't familiar with the plot, here's the summary from Amazon:
Mira is starting over at Saint Francis Prep. She promised her parents she would at least try to pretend that she could act like a functioning human this time, not a girl who can’t get out of bed for days on end, who only feels awake when she’s with Sebby.
Jeremy is the painfully shy art nerd at Saint Francis who’s been in self-imposed isolation after an incident that ruined his last year of school. When he sees Sebby for the first time across the school lawn, it’s as if he’s been expecting this blond, lanky boy with mischief glinting in his eye.
Sebby, Mira’s gay best friend, is a boy who seems to carry sunlight around with him. Even as life in his foster home starts to take its toll, Sebby and Mira together craft a world of magic rituals and impromptu road trips, designed to fix the broken parts of their lives.
As Jeremy finds himself drawn into Sebby and Mira’s world, he begins to understand the secrets that they hide in order to protect themselves, to keep each other safe from those who don’t understand their quest to live for the impossible.
This is a truly character driven novel in the best possible way. When I first heard that the three different characters would be narrated in first (Jeremy), second (Sebby), and third (Mira) person POV, I was skeptical. It seemed like a lot, but it totally worked.
Sebby's 2nd person POV was perfect, because it allowed the reader to really approach Seby's darkness in a way that wasn't too overwhelming, and also showcases Sebby's own trauma and distancing from himself and his experiences. Jeremy's 1st person POV feels the most intimate and vulnerable, and I think ultimately he is - while he had a terrible experience with bullying, it doesn't seem like he's as acquainted with inner darkness the way Sebby and Mira are, and it can be difficult to plunge into that world when you're not used to it. And Mira's 3rd person POV creates a similar distance to Sebby's, but one that's much more subdued, in a way that reflects her depression.
Through these characters, Scelsa constructs a world that showcases the dark, the breathless, and the mundane that's so prevalent in teenage life. And let me tell you - this novel does not back down at all, with anything (THAT PARTY SCENE). While at first some of the characters' behavior felt shocking, it didn't feel like it was for shock value at all, but rather a natural extension of the circumstances the characters were dealing with.
In that same vein, I thought Fans of the Impossible Life beautifully balanced how people who are not in a healthy place can be viewed very romantically and act out with romantic gestures - Sebby and Mira's "spells" to banish or conjure as a way of coping - while never romanticizing the mental illness or destructive behaviors themselves.
This book was a stunning exploration of the dark, twisty, incredible turns that friendships can take, especially when they're so much more than friendship but not quite anything else, either, in a way that felt very true to my own high school experiences.
When I was in a class over Labor Day weekend, the instructor asked us what our "stuff" is, the thing that we gravitate towards in the things we create and the art we engage with. My answer was "the bonds people create when they've reached rock bottom," and I feel like that is what this book is at it's core, at least for me.
It's a rare, special thing when you find a piece of your soul out there in the world, created by someone else, and this book is very, very special.
***
Other books I've written about:
Glory O'Brien's History of the Future
Glory O'Brien's History of the Future
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