Review: I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

I’ll Give You the Sun is the story of twins, Jude and Noah, coming of age socially, artistically, and sexually. The chapters alternate between Jude and Noah's perspectives, Noah’s taking place when they are around fourteen and Jude's when they are sixteen. During the two-year gap between time frames, their mother dies, Jude goes from being that girl to hiding in heavy clothing, and Noah denies himself from both his art and his sexual preference.

First off, the chapters are so long that it takes some getting used to. It's not really that big of a deal, as there are natural stopping points along the way, but the book is so harshly divided between Noah and Jude, in a sort of then and now kind of way, that there is bit of whiplash when transitioning between characters. You forget the specifics of what happened to Jude in her last chapter, because there is such a long Noah chapter in between, and vice versa.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the characters. I certainly did not like the book for at least the first third of it and was not entirely sure why other than it had to do with the people in the story. In the beginning I did not care for either twin, especially Noah. This is not because of the angst (although he is one of the most angst-ridden characters I have ever read about); it was a little more complicated than that. I just found Noah to be a rather self-obsessed person, even after taking into account the fact that he’s a newly adolescent boy with a big secret.

I definitely don't think the twins are ever shown having a good relationship, even in Noah's chapters before the great divide occurs. There's always sort of a past tense feel to the good times. They think a lot about how close they used to be. The time when they were close seems like so very long ago, but how far away can it really be if they are fourteen? There are less than a handful of interactions between the twins in the whole book. The love between them is all tell and no show.  

There are also way too many coincidences here, even for a book that is meant to thrive on coincidences. Everything from both twins' secrets and their relationship affairs to their mother's death to the art school is so intertwined that it just somehow feels... fake. Not saying that this has to be a realistic book or anything, as I quite enjoy books that aren't, but this stretches the imagination a little too far, annoyingly so.

And there's something just a little too... crass about the writing itself. I don't mean profanity or even anything explicit (and heaven knows I'm not a prude). There's just something that feels a bit perverted, like everything leads back to mounting sexual tension and its awakening. And toilet-licking? What’s up with that?

While I did not care tremendously for the characters, the plot, or even the writing style, there are things I appreciated while reading this, especially the fact that both characters are artists, and very different artists at that. Jude’s sand sculptures, dressmaking, and ideas for stone carvings, Noah’s various paintings both real and imagined. The way that art saturates every aspect of this book is fantastic. But even that’s sort of overdone.

I’m glad so many people enjoyed this book, but I hope I’m not going to get any hate for not falling in love with it along with them. I’m not going to lie and say that I loved it, because, really, aside from the art aspect, I didn’t even like it. Everything is just so unnecessarily full of angst and, for the most part, clichés.  It’s also incredibly frustrating to realize that, while each twin only had one half of the story, they could have had the whole picture with just one candid conversation.