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A review by sedeara
Black Box by Julie Schumacher
4.0
At first, I thought I wasn't going to like this book. The weird font / layout was sort of depressing, and I wondered if that was intentional, since this is a book about depression. It also felt a little too disembodied in the beginning; a lot of short scenes, but very little expository text to really "ground" those scenes. I thought it might turn out to be another book that romanticized sister-relationships and mental illness, the way "Skinny" by Ibi Kaslik does.
I was a little frustrated by the way the narrator took too much personal responsibility for "saving" her sister from depression, giving her a bit of a "poor me," tone. At the same time, it felt like an accurate portrayal of the helplessness one can feel when faced with depression. Although the sister relationship probably should have been the crux of this piece, what made the book worthwhile was the narrator's burgeoning relationship with the "strange" kid down the street; their conversations and his matter-of-fact expertise about depression (his mom is a psychiatrist) buoy this book so that it doesn't have to be depressing. And yes, the handling of this relationship pretty much single-handedly pulled the book up from a three-star to a four-star for me.
This book is not one for those who don't like ambiguity, as there are a lot of loose ends that don't really get tied. But the ending is strangely satisfying anyway.
I was a little frustrated by the way the narrator took too much personal responsibility for "saving" her sister from depression, giving her a bit of a "poor me," tone. At the same time, it felt like an accurate portrayal of the helplessness one can feel when faced with depression. Although the sister relationship probably should have been the crux of this piece, what made the book worthwhile was the narrator's burgeoning relationship with the "strange" kid down the street; their conversations and his matter-of-fact expertise about depression (his mom is a psychiatrist) buoy this book so that it doesn't have to be depressing. And yes, the handling of this relationship pretty much single-handedly pulled the book up from a three-star to a four-star for me.
This book is not one for those who don't like ambiguity, as there are a lot of loose ends that don't really get tied. But the ending is strangely satisfying anyway.