If you like: staring out the window while listening to sad folksy songs, YA, Patrick Ness, Tyler Knott Gregson.
Marin is a lesbian who went to a catholic high school. She moves from a beachy spot in San Francisco to attend college in New York. Her Before happens the summer after graduation, and her After happens in the dormitories, mid-blizzard in winter. The romance of Marin’s first love is sweet, and its awkward reconnection is initially bitter.
In We Are Okay, I love how LaCour uses polarizing ideas to show there are always bridges that can be formed over any distance, figurative or literal.
Navigating those bridges with Marin is breathtaking. Most of the scenes are small and quiet, but so visceral that you become submerged in them. I feel like I’ve held her clay yellow bowls, watched the shape of her best friend’s mouth move as she talked, and carried her guilt and grief in my own stomach. We Are Okay is relatively short, but it carries significant weight.
Through the arc of the story, LaCour makes an important point in showing that what happens to Marin—the reason she leaves for college with only her wallet, phone, and a picture of her mother—shouldn’t be called a tragedy, because that would mean most of her life had been one. The in-between of her mother dying when she was 3, and her grandfather-turned-guardian passing when she was 18, was filled with love and ups and downs. The secrets her grandfather kept didn’t take away any of the good things they’d had, even if it did have a way of amplifying the bad.
And the bad is bad. I understand Marin’s self-exile, her disappearance, the guttural need to cut the most important ties in her life. It doesn’t excuse the pain and worry she caused her loved ones, but We Are Okay is all about what we do in the midst of the storm, on the middle of that bridge.
One of the storms comes with Marin’s friend, Mabel. Their relationship is complex: best friends turned lovers turned strangers. Marin may have made a terrible mistake in cutting Mabel out of her life, but Mabel makes a point of showing Marin that she is still worth fighting for, and loving, even if it’s not in a romantic way anymore. I love that.
We Are Okay is about nothing, and everything. The story takes its time unfolding, so prepare for slow pacing, but Marin’s voice is entrancing and keeps you turning the pages. This book is for everyone, at any point in their lives, because we all need the reminder that, “I was okay just a moment ago. I will learn how to be okay again.”
"We Are Okay" by Nina LaCour; Dutton Books for Young Readers; Feb. 2017.
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