Dash and Lily's Book of Dares

In the run up to Christmas I love to get into the Christmas spirit and read a few Christmassy books and so back in September, during a particularly wild Amazon book spree, I purchased ‘Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares’ by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan in preparation for the festive Winter months. When the book arrived with a lovely thump on my doorstep I was very sensible and placed it safely in a hidden corner of my bedroom to sit and wait until the reindeers roamed the streets, tinsel was strung over every available surface and it was okay to be excited for Christmas. I definitely was not going to read this book until Christmas. I wasn’t. I wasn’t! ... I did.

            I am currently writing this blog in October… Okay! Okay! So, kill me! I saw a wreath of holly in a passing shop window and I got a teensy bit excited. Well… when I say a ‘teensy bit’ I mean I freaked out in the middle of the street, pre-ordered a new reindeer pattern Christmas jumper, pulled my ‘Snowman’ snow globe down from the spiders in the attic and shook it manically as I began to read ‘Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares’.

            But, all that is beside the point. The point is that ‘Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares’ is one of the most wonderful Christmas books that I have ever read! The book follows the story of New York teenagers, Dash and Lily (the co-writers writing the two perspectives chapter for chapter) as they get to know each other over Christmas using only the fantastic dares and challenges they leave each other in a little red Moleskine notebook.

 Now, bear in mind, just in case you like to take my word as law (As I know you all definitely do!) that this is not for all you lactose intolerant readers out there. This book definitely has rich, creamy, full-fat gorgonzola cheese as its main ingredient – and I loved it! Cheese is exactly what a Christmas book should have, heck, the entire season is cheesy, not just its literature. There were so many sweet little scenes and Christmassy settings that I could almost smell the cinnamon in the air. I have never in my life left Europe but I’ll be damned if I don’t what Christmas in New York is like after reading that book.

Dash, I thought, was a very unlikely character to appear in a Christmas book and at first I found him quite irritating. The complete opposite to Lily, he hated Christmas and chose to spend Christmas alone, hiding from parties and festivities and delicious gingerbread men.  Dash seemed to think himself incredibly deep and troubled because of this particular preference and kept spouting pretentious moody rubbish all the way throughout the book.  However, as I became more familiar with the characters and their individual thoughts and feelings I began to realise that this was no accident. Dash was meant to be annoying! Though infuriating, it was crucial to the plotline and I actually began to become quite fond of this particular personality quirk.

I liked Lily straight off the bat! I think her best contribution to the novel as a whole is her close connection with her family. Lily’s relatives feature a lot throughout the novel and though they may only be minor parts I think collectively they make the book more Christmassy than any number of snowflake baubles, giant nutcrackers or North-Pole themed mittens. This may only be a personal opinion, but, to me, family is the most important aspect of Christmas and I know that if Cohn and Levithan had forgotten to sprinkle a few aunts, uncles and lazy older brothers into their writing, then the book would not make my heart swell as much as it did.

Because I am a lazy blogger, now, as I finish this blog, the calendar reads December 15^th. I have read ‘Dash and Lily’ again since my little (massive) Christmas freak out back in October and I can confirm to you that nothing I have said as thus is a lie - induced by an early dose of mistletoe and fake shop-display snow. The book manages to maintain its lovely warmth and sweetness for the re-read and if, still, this late into December, you haven’t yet felt that familiar glow that comes from warm mince pies and santa-shaped mittens, then I guarantee you, this is the book to kick-start your holiday spirit! 

Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Yellow - It's Kind of a Funny Story

This is the Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Where I review a different one of my favourite books each week! Third on our list we have a yellow book with a yellow cover:

It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

           ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is a book I picked up in the teen fiction section last year as an interesting summer read. If I’m quite honest with myself one of the main reasons I lifted it off the shelf was because I absolutely loved the quirky cover-art and there was nothing on the blurb that I found entirely unappealing. When I finally got round to opening the book up a week later as I lounged lazily on my deck chair in my garden, I was met with a pleasantly unpleasant surprise.

  

          ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is not the kind of book you would usually find amongst the brightly coloured stories of the teen fiction section, to say the least. The book did not give me that bright and happy feeling I would usually get when reading something of such a high standard, but instead would leave me feeling low and foggy when I emerged from between its pages. This is because ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is about depression.

           Depression books don’t usually find their way to my shelf. In the general I find them overly-dramatic and clichéd with transparent plotlines. However, when reading this book I found I connected with the main character, Craig Gilner, in a big way. When Craig sits in his friend Aaron’s house, smoking pot, his brain hazing with misery I could feel my own mind cloud over. When he stands on the Brooklyn Bridge, crazed by an erratic sort of desperation, I felt painfully desperate as well.

  

          I won’t lie to you. ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is dark. Really dark. You follow Craig as the pressure from his prestigious school becomes unbearable and he spirals into a deep state of extreme self-loathing. The book is a brutally honest depiction of what depression is really like. Not glorified in the way of a dark romantic interest or cool like the troubled rock star, but a pure, raw, awful emotion. ‘It’s Kind of Funny Story’ is a book that finally shows depression as what it is – depressing.

           And how can we trust that Vizzini’s illustration of depression is not some exaggerated, over-the-top, version created for the sake of good fiction? How do we know that when Craig eventually finds himself in the adult ward of a psychiatric hospital that this isn’t just the psych ward of Vizzini’s imagination? We know because the author has experienced all this himself. ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is a memoir of Vizzini’s life. He has felt like this; gone through this; been to these places. Through Craig, Vizzini shows us his own experiences with depression. He has shown us how frightening and all-consuming depression really is.

           But he has also shown us that it can get better – and that I believe is the most important thing about ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’. Yes, in the first half of the book we are shown how trapped and lonely depression can make you feel, but in the second half we are shown that you are never truly alone. Only when Craig finally seeks help can he begin to climb back out of the dark pit that is his life. Only upon dealing with his feelings does he realise that every single reason he wanted to kill himself could be quite easily fixed. I believe that ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ exists not only to acknowledge that there are people with these feelings in the world, but also to help these people break away from their lonely situation.

           Ned Vizzini dealt with a lot in his life. On December 19^th 2013, after an on-going struggle with depression, he committed suicide, leaving behind his wife and two-year-old child. When I read about Vizzini’s death it really hit home. Not only because his book was able to move me to tears, but because it made everything written inside ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ all the more true. Because of Vizzini I will never undermine the feelings of anyone battling with depression. I will never see depression as anything other than unbearable, isolating and completely serious. Vizzini has more than earned his spot on this list, I only regret that I couldn’t honour him in a bigger way than this blog post.

            I opened ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ with a light heart and an empty head, and I close it knowing profoundly more about the world around me than I had before.   


You can find out more about Ned Vizzini here!
You can read the other reviews in the Rainbow List of Must-Reads here: Red, Orange