He said he left because he wanted those he loved to be okay without him, and that he ‘loved everyone too much, and everything was just to f***ing sad. She explains in her letter to Kurt that he was wrong. But, I feel it is important to share alongside this review. Normally I wouldn’t feel right sharing something like this in a post, words like the ones in this letter are so personal.
What really stuck out to me, was about midway through the book when Laurel has changed her sadness into anger and she destroys Kurt’s poster from May’s room. Using lines directly from Cobain’s suicide letter, Dellaira both breaks your heart and in the same breath, inspires hope-hope, that suicide is not the answer. She used universal idols to address letters to, to invoke emotion from the readers…it certainly worked. Laurel tries to resurrect her sister and feel exactly as she felt while she writes her series of letters to May’s idols-Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and mostly, Kurt Cobain.ĭellaira discusses suicide and depression with a form of raw grace and beauty that I have yet to see this topic discussed in. The ones who left this world to soon, and those left behind. In fact, I have known both May’s and Laurel’s. To keep my review universal, I will not name, names-but I have known several ‘May’s’ in my life. I found the storyline to be linear and consistent even outside of the typical structure of a novel. This was my first experience reading a book composed strictly of letters. It is achingly sad and profoundly beautiful. I cannot put into words how lovely this book is. And only when Laurel has begun to see her sister as the person she was lovely and amazing and deeply flawed can she begin to discover her own path.
Only then, once Laurel has written down the truth about what happened to herself, can she truly begin to accept what happened to May. And, finally, about the abuse she suffered while May was supposed to be looking out for her. She writes about starting high school, navigating new friendships, falling in love for the first time, learning to live with her splintering family. Soon, Laurel has a notebook full of letters to people like Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Amelia Earhart, Heath Ledger, and more though she never gives a single one of them to her teacher. Laurel chooses Kurt Cobain because her sister, May, loved him.
It begins as an assignment for English class: Write a letter to a dead person. Published: April 1st 2014 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
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