Invisibility by David Levithan and Andrea Cremer

"I am like a ghost who's never died." 
 
Invisibility is only a superpower if you can turn it on and off at will.  Otherwise, it's not such a blessing.  Stephen has been invisible from birth, although he doesn't know why.  His parents know, but they won't tell him.  He lives alone since his mother has recently died and his father has left to live a more normal life and start a new family (luckily for Stephen, his father still pays for his apartment and living expenses).  He's used to living on the fringes of life, not going to school, not having friends, having to dodge people on the street if he goes for a walk.  Then one day, while he is in his apartment hallway, the grocery bag of his new neighbor breaks, and groceries spill out all over the floor.  As she's scrambling to pick things up, she looks up and snaps "Are you really going to just stand there?  Is this fun for you?".  And so an utterly stunned Stephen meets Elizabeth, the only person on earth who can see him.

Invisibility is a story of magic and romance set in New York by one of my favorite teen authors (Levithan) and Andrea Cremer,  bestselling author of the Nightshade series.  Levithan must be great to work with, since this is the fourth novel he's co-written (two novels with Rachel Cohn and one with John Green).  There's a very cute picture of David and Andrea cozying up to each other on the back flap.  

This was such a fun read, but it tugged at my heart a little as well.  Levithan can do that.  I was sucked in by Stephen's description of the ephemeral nature of his one childhood friendship:

"And then there was Ben, who moved away.  Ben, the only friend I've almost had.  When he was five and I was ten, he decided to have an imaginary friend.  Stuart, he named him, and that was close enough to my name, Stephen, for me to play along.  He'd invite me to dinner, and I'd come along.  He'd move to hold my hand in the park, and I'd take it.  He'd bring me to kindergarten for show-and-tell, and I would stand there as the teacher indulged his whim, nodding along to whatever Ben said about me.  The one thing I couldn't do was speak to him, because I knew that hearing my voice would spoil the illusion.  Once, when I knew he wasn't listening, I whispered his name.  Just to hear it.  But he didn't notice.  And by the time he turned six, he'd outgrown me.  I couldn't blame him.  Still, I was sad when he moved away."

It turns out that Stephen is invisible because his grandfather is a curse-caster, and he cursed his daughter when she left him to go to college.   Nice, right?  Elizabeth can see him because she was born with the rare ability to see curses.  You'd think the fact that Elizabeth and her brother Laurie are the only people in Stephen's life --except for the escaped father--would make the Stephen and Elizabeth romance a bit claustrophobic, but somehow it doesn't.  Perhaps it's because Elizabeth isn't yet entangled with school and other friends (she's new in town, and it's summer).   It's sweet how Stephen and Elizabeth fall for each other and what that means to them both.  We feel that Stephen isn't the only one who's being seen for the first time.     I  also like Elizabeth's close relationship with her ally and kid brother, Laurie. It's refreshing to see such a positive, I've-got-your-back sibling relationship.  

One thing I did notice is that Stephen's voice is pretty much exactly the same as the voice of A, the protagonist of Levithan's previous book Every Day.  That's not really a complaint, just an observation.

Here's a trailer from Penguin Books:

Every Day by David Levithan

It's hard to think of a teen writer today more romantic than David Levithan. From his breakthrough novel Boy Meets Boy to the recent Lover's Dictionary, he writes about love beautifully and optimistically. Every Day is about love, of course, but being David Levithan it's a little more philosophical than many teen love stories, and it uses elements of fantasy and magic realism to explore some questions that most of us aren't forced to ask.  What is it that really makes us love someone, and how important is the physical aspect of love?  I personally trust  David Levithan and I'll read whatever he cares to write, but while I found Every Day quite thought-provoking, I thought it had a few flaws in its premise that kept me from totally buying into it.

Every Day is about a person named A.  Because A is without a body, he doesn't have the normal attributes we cluster around identity--gender, race, culture, religion, family, even language change for A every day. (I'm going to refer to A as a he, just so I don't go crazy writing he/she).   A wakes up in a new body each day, lives the life of that person with the aid of memories that he can access, and then moves on to another body in a totally unconscious process that takes place each night while he sleeps.  It's been that way for A since infancy, and while A doesn't really understand why he's different, he's never told anyone.  There are a few parameters:  A ages normally (A is now 16, and so only wakes up in bodies that are also 16) and doesn't range too much geographically.  A can't choose whose body he will occupy, and  is never in the same body twice. 

As you can imagine, A is the ultimate loner.  With no relationships to anchor him emotionally, A goes through  life mostly as an observer--the main goal being not to disrupt or interfere in the lives of his hosts, whatever they are like.  But one day A wakes up in the body of a not-very-emotionally-sophisticated 16 year old  named Justin and meets Justin's girlfriend Rhiannon. Just like that, A falls in love.

From there, the story launches into a unique courtship.  After an idyllic day at the beach, A begins to anonymously seek Rhiannon out, to meet her anew and befriend her each day. He can't bear to be without her.   A finally tells her what his life is like, and despite some initial skepticism (of course) she finally believes him.  They slowly grow more attached. They sometimes communicate by e-mail, and sometimes in person, but A's changing bodies become an issue.  You can see Rhiannon respond differently to him when A occupies the body of a handsome jock, or a really fat kid, or a severely depressed goth girl, or a transsexual.  Whether Rhiannon will hold his hand or not depends a lot on what body that hand is attached to.  It also bothers Rhiannon that there is a sense that she can't rely on A.  He doesn't know what his circumstances will be from day to day.  As she points out to him at one point, he's always going to leave her, even if he always comes back. 

There are so many interesting and unexpected things about this story and how the relationship plays out, and I thought the premise was really clever.  But something bothered me all the way through.  The way A experienced infancy and childhood, with a different family each day, should have left him not as emotionally functional and mature as Levithan makes him.  Young children do not thrive emotionally with no attachments.  Yes, there is an undertone of melancholy and poignancy around A when he thinks of  his childhood, but A is not presented as a sociopath (unlike the one other transient soul he meets toward the end).  A is a kind, moral, caring person who would probably have no trouble finding love in normal circumstances.  I can understand why Levithan set things up the way he did in terms of the storyline, but psychologically it didn't feel right to me.  Still, if you can overlook this, Every Day is an absorbing, original read. 

Here's a video of Levithan talking about Every Day:  

The Lover's Dictionary: A Novel by David Levithan

brash, adj.
"I want you to spend the night," you said.  And it was definitely your phrasing that ensured it.  If you had said "Let's have sex," or "Let's go to my place," or even "I really want you," I'm not sure we would have gone quite as far as we did.  But I loved the notion that the night was mine to spend, and I immediately decided to spend it on you.

David Levithan is so versatile--he's the founding editor of Scholastic's PUSH imprint, has mentored many new writers, has written his own highly acclaimed fiction for teens (including the groundbreaking LGBTQ Boy Meets Boy),  and has now come out with this first book for the adult market, which I'm highlighting here because I think it will certainly cross over to his teen audience, particularly the older teens.  The Lover's Dictionary is a love story, and despite its brevity it's a very intriguing read.  Levithan constructs this relationship story out of words and their definitions,  beginning with aberrant and ending with zenith.   It's funny and romantic, yes, (no one does romantic quite like David Levithan) but also shadowed by anger,  insecurity, betrayal.  There's a lot of tenderness, but no sense of permanence.  The relationship pictured is organic and fragile.  I never lost the feeling that it was teetering on the edge of heartbreak, but the wordplay enherent in the form of the book lightens it  considerably.

exacerbate, v.
"I believe your exact words were, 'You're getting too emotional.'"

The Lover's Dictionary feels very finely crafted to me, almost poetic. Each word is carefully considered yet often has an unexpected quality.  Although Levithan is very out as a queer writer, the gender of the lovers in this story  is subtly handled.  The narrator addresses his lover as "you", and while the narrator is male, the "you" is left ambiguous.  I think this gives the story a nice sense of openness and fluidity.  In the end, it's the love that's the miracle, regardless of the lover's identities. 

sancrosanct, adj.
The nape of your neck.  Even the sound of the word nape sounds holy to me.  That and the hollow of your neck, the peek of your chest that your shirt sometimes reveals.  These are the stations of my quietest, most insistent desire.