Book Review: Not Nothing by Gayle Forman

Publisher’s description

“The book we all need at the time we all need it.” —Katherine Applegate, Newbery Award–winning author of The One and Only Ivan

In this multigenerational middle grade novel of hope, compassion, and forgiveness from #1 New York Times bestselling author Gayle Forman that is as timely as it is timeless, a boy who has been assigned to spend his summer volunteering at a senior living facility learns unexpected lessons that change the trajectory of his life.

Alex is twelve, and he did something very, very bad. A judge sentences him to spend his summer volunteering at a retirement home where he’s bossed around by an annoying and self-important do-gooder named Maya-Jade. He hasn’t seen his mom in a year, his aunt and uncle don’t want him, and Shady Glen’s geriatric residents seem like zombies to him.

Josey is 107 and ready for his life to be over. He has evaded death many times, having survived ghettos, dragnets, and a concentration camp—all thanks to the heroism of a woman named Olka and his own ability to sew. But now he spends his days in room 206 at Shady Glen, refusing to speak and waiting (and waiting and waiting) to die. Until Alex knocks on Josey’s door…and Josey begins to tell Alex his story.

As Alex comes back again and again to hear more, an unlikely bond grows between them. Soon a new possibility opens up for Alex: Can he rise to the occasion of his life, even if it means confronting the worst thing that he’s ever done?

Amanda’s thoughts

Looking for a book to make you cry and cry and cry? Look no further!

I read this in one sitting, having come nearly to the end of summer and both having worked myself out of house projects and needing to completely occupy my brain in these days before my kid moves for college. I finished it standing in the kitchen making dinner and when my husband walked in I yelled, “ONE PAGE LEFT! DON’T TALK!”

Alex is a kid with a lot of defensive walls up. And why not? We don’t know all of the details about his upbringing, but we do know it’s only ever been Alex and his mom, that she moved them around constantly (at least 14 times with 12 different schools), and that her mental health has never been great. He’s often been hungry, neglected, and never really helped in any meaningful way. By the time we meet Alex, his mom had been to in-patient treatment but left before the time she needed to stay in order to get Alex back. He’s been kicked out of a foster home and is living with his aunt and uncle, who don’t seem super pleased to have him, and carries a lot of anger in him. So much anger that one day it erupted from him and made him do something awful. We readers don’t know what that is until nearly the end of the book. But we do know whatever he did got him kicked out of school and sent to do community service hours at a nursing home. He does not want to be there. He thinks all the old people are zombies, that the only other kid there his age, Maya-Jade, is insufferable.

A chance moment in a patient’s room, where Alex accidentally knocks down one of 107-year-old Josey’s pictures (of his one true love, Olka), sets Alex’s life on a whole new path. Josey, who has been silent for years, begins to tell Alex his life story, a tale of resilience and bravery and love and unbearable loss during the Holocaust. And as Josey begins to open up to Alex, Alex begins to open himself too. He starts to let people in, to give people a chance, to make connections he’s never been able to before, always being on the move. Suddenly, his punishment of spending time with all these strangers becomes transformative. He can start to see the good in himself, he can start to feel like more than just nothing. As one resident says, while marveling over his ability to help her do her nails, “Aren’t you something?” This all cracks Alex open, makes those walls crumble.

But.

But. Alex has not told anyone there why he is there. He hasn’t told them what he did. And while we are all more than our worst moment, more than our biggest mistake, it can be hard to see beyond that. Maya-Jade is becoming his best friend, but he knows she’d be disgusted to know what he did. He’s ashamed of himself, but that can’t erase the awful thing he did. He’s terrified he will lose his relationship with Josey once he finds out what Alex did. It’s hard to really feel you deserve more, that you can rise to the occasion of your life, when all you’ve ever felt is worthless.

This book is a heartbreaker. As we move back and forth between Josey’s story and Alex’s, we see the many ways life is terrible and unfair, but we also see the beautiful connections and powerful change that can happen when life gives you the opportunity (sorry, Alex, I know you hate that word). One of my top reads of 2024.

Review copy (ARC) courtesy of the publisher

ISBN-13: 9781665943277
Publisher: Aladdin
Publication date: 08/27/2024
Age Range: 10 – 14 Years

Filed under: Book Reviews