I read this book under a drug induced haze thanks to a bout of tonsillitis. However, now that the haze has lifted, I don’t remember much of what I read. I wonder if I can’t access the memory since my state of mind was altered during the encoding or whether it wasn’t even encoded to begin with. Whatever it is, take my subsequent thoughts with a massive pinch of salt!

A Void the Size of the World by Rachele Alpine follows Rhylee as she makes some phenomenal mistakes typical of the teenage years. What follows is a tragedy that Rhylee cannot help but feel responsible for. Still, life goes on and she and her family and community find a way to work through their grief.

This is distinctly a young adult read, what with the formulaic short chapters, hyper focus on the self, and impulsive and emotional characters. The structure makes for an easy read because the repeated point-emotion-impact sentence format of the chapters really guided the mind through the book. I didn’t find it too repetitive but that might have been because of above mentioned haze. Who knows how I’ll feel about it if I had read it now.

I wasn’t a fan of all the characters because of their impulsivity and poor decision making. Yet, it felt very realistic, to have such behavior from the teenagers and the grief stricken adults. We can’t think clearly either way. 

I did, however, appreciate how Alpine navigated the difficult topic of grief and how each person may have a different way of approaching it. There are those who self-flagellate and others who seek comfort from blind pursuit. There really is no right way and there are repercussions from each way. The most anyone can do, is to put one foot in front of the other, and keep living and loving the way they can.

Diversity meter:

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