There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.Įveryone believes that Salil Singh killed his girlfriend, Andrea Bell, five years ago-except Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters.

The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. Given their ghostly state, the characters (all assumed white) are fully fleshed out, each seeking a way to cope in their Neverland existence.Īn eloquent and haunting tale, especially for philosophically-minded readers. She offers philosophical meditations on the meaning of life and death, although they frequently seem imparted by the author rather than arrived at by Beatrice, the narrator, who, having just finished her freshman year at Emerson College, seems too short on life experiences for the depth of these reflections. In her young adult debut, Pessl ( Night Film, 2013, etc.) manages to keep her first-person narrative moving forward while her characters are stuck in time. They will remain in this limbo until the point when they decide which one of them may return to the world of the living. A mysterious man who calls himself the Keeper tells Beatrice, Kipling, Whitley, Cannon, and Martha that they are trapped in a Groundhog Day–like existence called Neverworld Wake. Heading back to the mansion where they’re staying following a punk-rock concert in Newport, Rhode Island, they nearly collide with a tow truck and barrel off the road into a ditch, setting up a strange journey into the unknown. Five close friends-who used to be six until one of them died-are together again a year after their graduation from boarding school.

Neverworld wake by marisha pessl