Sweet, Hereafter

This rather tersely-worded novel centers mainly on a young woman, who frankly seems to have no real direction in her life. Seems, that is the operative word. Obviously, she searching for something, so she leaves home, regardless of the pain she is causing her family. What drives her? I doubt that she even knows, as she manages to eke out a living and staying with different people - instead of going home. One constant is the young soldier that she meets, and ends up staying with. Though love isn't mentioned, you know that she does love him, and fears for him as he is VERY TRAUMATIZED by the Iraq conflict. A trauma that has...consequences. This book is recommended/written for teens, but I still enjoyed it. There are teens out there now, fighting in distant lands, what has the experience done to them? Honestly written and worded. Read, and take heed! Angela Johnson's book garners: 4 stars!

At only 118 pages this book is very brief. The author manages to get her message across, though. That life is short and you have to live as if today might be your last. The heroine, Shoogy, is obviously in her final year of high school in Heaven, Ohio. She's very independent, going to school only two days a week, doing work-study to make up her hours so she can graduate. She also feels like a stranger in her own family. In many ways Shoogy is very deep, however, perhaps because this is the last book in a trilogy and I didn't get the chance to read the first two books, I don't know why she's so mature and introspective. I like her. She sticks by her convictions. She's tough, and loving. An admirable character. The book is about her relationship with Curtis, a young man three years older than she is. He has been in the war in Iraq and it's affected him in ways he won't even talk about. He likes silences. Shoogy likes silences. They are together in their silences. She leaves home to live with Curtis in a cabin in the woods. Soon she finds out that Curtis is AWOL. He doesn't acknowledge it, but he does say he'll never go back to Iraq. She lets it lie. For a book that didn't have that many words in it, a lot of emotions were felt: fear, love, loathing. By the end you're hoping for a positive outcome for these characters. I can see why the author is so popular among young adults. Her writing is more poetry than prose.

This book is quieter and leaner than "The First Part Last," but its beauty matches that of the moody young woman on its cover. "Sweet" is a restless young woman, too smart for the small town she lives in and all its dead-end choices, but too young to see a path beyond it. She only knows that she doesn't belong at home, and her family doesn't understand her. They love her, but they want something more and she wants something less. Neither side really understands what that is. Sweet finds herself attracted to Curtis, a quiet young man with "the darkest eyes" who has the ability to reach and tame people and animals other people overlook or don't understand. He gives Sweet a place to stay and the silence to let her figure herself out. She's still getting there when he disappears, leaving her to search for him and the part of herself that fell in love with a man she knew little about except that he was gentle and kind, and being with him was the one thing that ever made sense. Johnson's stories unfold so organically that you don't realize there are unanswered questions until the answers arrive to reveal them. The plot pieces shift, softly falling into place, and in the end the picture is complete. This book, with its undertow of sadness, reads like sparse poetry that moves to its own purpose until it comes at last to rest inside the soul.