Sunday, April 17, 2011

Borrowed Light by Anna Feinberg


Callisto May, sixteen, has a theory about people: most can be assigned an identity based on astronomy. Some are planets, some are stars. Some, like Callisto, are moons, existing in the borrowed light of others. When Callisto finds out she is pregnant, though, she realizes how little support a borrower actually has.

One of my favourite things about Borrowed Light is how it showed that Callisto's life didn't stop when she discovered she was pregnant. She quickly decides on getting an abortion, but things still have to be dealt with: going to school, taking care of her brother, the details over every day life. Cally's relationship with her five-year-old brother, Jeremy, is the heart of the novel, and their interactions (which are numerous because their mother seems to have abdicated any actual parenting to Cally) consistently ring true with honest emotion. I think this book is out of print now (I read it through an Interlibrary Loan), but if you can find it it's definitely worth reading, especially since abortion is still such a rarely-touched issue in YA books.

Find it at Amazon.

Read it with:
Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn
I Know It's Over by C.K. Kelly Martin
Happily Ever After Anyway? by Michelle Taylor
Every Little Thing in the World by Nina de Gramont

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