No & Me

No & Me / Delphine de Vigan; translated from the French by George Miller.
Toronto : Doubleday Canada, c2010
246 p.

Lou, the narrator of this novel, is a precocious 13 year old who has jumped two grades in school and while brilliant, is also a bit socially awkward. She reminds me quite a bit of Paloma from The Elegance of the Hedgehog in her slightly stilted genius-talk.

Lou also has a family that is falling apart after her baby sister died suddenly; her mother can't seem to recover from this tragedy, and her father works hard to keep the family together.

A class assignment comes up one day that she hasn't given much thought to, a presentation that she has to prepare on a social topic; in the heat of the moment she declares she is going to explore the lives of teenage homeless girls, via interviews and research. No-one seems to worry about her doing this at all, and the project is green-lighted.

Lou then begins a conversation with No, a girl at the train station who is clearly living on the streets. She slowly gains her confidence and interviews her for the school project.

However, she's now feeling like she should help No out in more ways than just buying her coffee and food while interviewing her. She comes up with the wild idea that No should move in with her family - and to her surprise, her parents agree.

Lou's friend from school helps her manage her relationship with No. Lucas is another misfit but this time a super cool one - a young man who's been held back two grades. They connect because they are both in the wrong setting, but the resultant age gap makes me uncomfortable, particularly in the last pages of the novel. Why does there need to be a romantic link between these two? It's not sweet, it's kind of creepy, actually. Maybe in France it doesn't read as creepily.

Anyway, the story explores what it's like to live on the streets, especially as a young woman, and the life history that led No to take her chances out on her own. It delves into the psychological effects that living this way has on No, and the addictions and choices she makes to survive in the moment, which don't always lead to successful life choices in the long run. 

It's a rather sad and hopeless story, though, with no happy ending. There are glimpses of improvements for some of the characters, and an unlikely happy ending for others. I think that this is a cultural difference; I feel that if this book was American everything would work out perfectly and they'd all be happy, successful and wealthy by the end. But this story is more realistic, sadder, and points out the fact that many social ills don't have an easy, individual solution. The problem is wider and more pervasive, and needs more than one teenager trying to help, although that small step made some changes in one person's life. 

This book could easily be suggested to a teen reader, though it also appeals to an adult market. There is darkness in it, but not total despair. And there is so much to discuss when you're done. It's a complicated story with no pat answers to the questions that Lou raises, though the style is more in the vein of YA literature in the way it skims over some of the darker aspects of the issues raised. Still, a good story worth exploring.