Abstract
Reviewed by: The Catastrophic History of You and Me Kate Quealy-Gainer Rothenberg, Jess . The Catastrophic History of You and Me. Dial, 2012. 375p. ISBN 978-0-8037-3720-4 $17.99 Ad Gr. 7-10. More than a few teenagers (and adults) have felt that their lives were over when they got dumped, but for fifteen-year-old Brie it's actually true: when her boyfriend Jacob tells her that he no longer loves her, Brie's heart spontaneously tears in two and she dies. The afterlife looks oddly like her California hometown of Half Moon Bay, and she finds herself in the heavenly version of her favorite pizza joint, where she meets Patrick, resident Lost Soul and guide to all things post-mortem. He informs her that she will have to work her way through the five stages of grief with a series of visits to her old life; unfortunately, her need to meddle in the lives of those she left [End Page 420] behind (sometimes via snarky text message) threatens her chance at eternal peace. This is a lighter take on a dead-girl narrator than other recent treatments (Warman's Between, BCCB 7/11, Hudson's Hereafter, BCCB 9/11), and Rothenberg keeps the tone light and the pace snappy as Brie negotiates the afterlife with a bubbly wit and a keen sense of irony. Peppered with slang and pop culture references, Brie's voice is utterly adolescent, and her lively, flirtatious banter with Patrick, though bordering on precious, rivals that of any blockbuster rom-com. Readers are asked to suspend disbelief the minute Brie's heart stops, but their credulity will be sorely tested by the many inconsistencies in the author's version of life after death and the inexplicable climax that seems to refute several of the rules established in the book's beginning. Readers are likely to forgive these discrepancies, however, as they lay the groundwork for an ending that grants happiness to all involved, both in this life and the next. Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
Published Version
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