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A review by justabean_reads
What Comes Echoing Back by Leo McKay Jr.
5.0
Two Nova Scotia teenagers tentatively return to high school after separate shattering events the year before. Both were captured on social media, both teens have to navigate who they are now, and how to cope with how others treat them. Alternating chapters show what happened the year before, and how they're dealing with the first school year After.
I'm not familiar with the author, and wouldn't have looked at this if it wasn't on the Canada Reads longlist: I normally am not into books about teenagers, and I'm not usually hot on male writers taking on sexual violence against women. I sat down and read it in an afternoon. Then handed it to my wife, who stayed up all night to finish it in one sitting.
McKay's writing is an charge against all those male authors who treat female characters as some sort of large-breasted alien. ("I think of a man, and then I take away reason and accountability.") Both main characters are flawed and vivid and are treated with incredible tenderness. They're both struggling every minute, but find space for kindness, and still see other people. I wanted to hug them and cheer them on, and couldn't stop reading to see what happened next.
(I appreciated that McKay included trans and Miękmaw characters who are important to the story, and have a sense of having their own thing going on, rather than being props for the main plot. I feel like I shouldn't have to praise this, but enough books fail to clear that very low bar, and I think it's worth noting.)
I really wish this one had been on the Canada Reads shortlist.
I'm not familiar with the author, and wouldn't have looked at this if it wasn't on the Canada Reads longlist: I normally am not into books about teenagers, and I'm not usually hot on male writers taking on sexual violence against women. I sat down and read it in an afternoon. Then handed it to my wife, who stayed up all night to finish it in one sitting.
McKay's writing is an charge against all those male authors who treat female characters as some sort of large-breasted alien. ("I think of a man, and then I take away reason and accountability.") Both main characters are flawed and vivid and are treated with incredible tenderness. They're both struggling every minute, but find space for kindness, and still see other people. I wanted to hug them and cheer them on, and couldn't stop reading to see what happened next.
(I appreciated that McKay included trans and Miękmaw characters who are important to the story, and have a sense of having their own thing going on, rather than being props for the main plot. I feel like I shouldn't have to praise this, but enough books fail to clear that very low bar, and I think it's worth noting.)
I really wish this one had been on the Canada Reads shortlist.