Every Day | Levithan, David

Kurze Beschreibung
A has no friends. No parents. No family. No possessions. Because every day, A wakes up in the body of a different person. A is able to access each person's memory, enough to be able to get through the day without parents and friends realizing this is not their child, not their friend. Because it isn't. It's A. It's a lonely existence--until, one day, it isn't. A meets a girl named Rhiannon.

Lange Beschreibung
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by Booklist Kirkus Reviews

Celebrate all the ways love makes us who we are with the romance that Entertainment Weekly calls 'wise, wildly unique'--from the bestselling co-author of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist--about a teen who wakes up every morning in a different body, living a different life. Now a major motion picture!

Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.

There s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.
It s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with day in, day out, day after day.

With his new novel, David Levithan, bestselling co-author of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, has pushed himself to new creative heights. He has written a captivating story that will fascinate readers as they begin to comprehend the complexities of life and love in A s world, as A and Rhiannon seek to discover if you can truly love someone who is destined to change every day.

A story that is always alluring, oftentimes humorous and much like love itself splendorous. Los Angeles Times

Rezensierung
School Library Journal Best of Children's Books 2012

Kirkus Reviews Best of Teen's Books 2012

Booklist Best of Children's Books 2012

'Fresh, unique, funny, and achingly honest, Levithan brilliantly explores the adolescent conundrum of not feeling like oneself, and not knowing where one belongs. I didn't just read this book I inhaled it.'  Jodi Picoult, NYT bestselling author of Lone Wolf and Between the Lines

Entertainment Weekly, August 22, 2012:
'Rich in wisdom and wit...Levithan keeps the pages turning not only with ingenious twists on his central conceit but with A's hard-earned pieces of wisdom about identity, isolation, and love. Every Day has the power to teach a bully empathy by answering an essential question: What's it like to be you and not me even if it's just for one day?'

New York Times Book Review, August 26, 2012:
'It demonstrates Levithan's talent for empathy, which is paired in the best parts of the book with a persuasive optimism about the odds for happiness and for true love.'

Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2012:
'It's the rare book that challenges gender presumptions in a way that's as entertaining as it is unexpected and, perhaps most important, that's relatable to teens who may not think they need sensitivity training when it comes to sexual orientation and the nature of true love. Every Day' is precisely such a book...A story that is always alluring, oftentimes humorous and much like love itself splendorous.'

MTV Hollywood Crush, September 28, 2012:
'Thoughtful and fascinating...A study in the most real and human of concerns: the importance of empathy, the value of friends and family, and the beauty of permanence that we have the luxury of taking for granted.'

Boston Globe, September 15, 2012:
'Ambitious and provocative...we re not ready to let A go.'

OUT Magazine, December 2012:
'One of the most inventive young adult novels of the year.'

Romantic Times, October 2012:
'Levithan is a literary genius. His style of writing is brilliant practically flawless... Reading A s journey to make love last, in a world that is always changing, is an experience I hope everyone gets to share.'

Starred Review, School Library Journal, September 2012:
'Every step of the narrative feels real and will elicit a strong emotional response from readers and offer them plenty of fodder for speculation, especially regarding the nature of love.

Starred Review, Booklist, July 1, 2012:
Levithan has created an irresistible premise that is sure to captivate readers .
[Every Day] is a study in style, an exercise in imagination, and an opportunity for readers themselves to occupy another life: that of A, himself.

Starred Review, Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2012:
An awe-inspiring, thought-provoking reminder that love reaches beyond physical appearances or gender.

Starred Review, Shelf Awareness, September 7, 2012:
'Levithan's unusual love story will make teens think about how the core of the soul never changes. A speaks of faith, love, dreams and death with a wisdom derived from thousands of lives visited over 16 years and firsthand proof of how much humans share rather than what sets them apart.'

The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, September 2012:
'This unconventional romance considers some fascinating and unexpected questions about the nature of identity, consciousness, love, and gender...Readers will identify with A s profound longing for connection, but they ll also be intrigued by the butterfly effect A s presence may have on numerous other teens who make brief but memorable appearances.'

The Horn Book, November 2012:
'Brilliantly conceived...[Levithan] shapes the narrative into a profound exploration of what it means to love someone.'

Letter Blocks, the BN Parents & Educators blog, August 23, 2012:
'A definite crowd-pleaser.'

The L Magazine, August 29, 2012:
'The premise allows for stimulating parallels: A s experience is both like the writer s, who inhabits the consciousnesses of random characters, and the adolescent s, who tries on myriad identities.'

Buchausschnitt
Day 5994

I wake up.

Immediately I have to figure out who I am. It s not just the body--opening my eyes and discovering whether the skin on my arm is light or dark, whether my hair is long or short, whether I m fat or thin, boy or girl, scarred or smooth. The body is the easiest thing to adjust to, if you re used to waking up in a new one each morning. It s the life, the context of the body, that can be hard to grasp.

Every day I am someone else. I am myself--I know I am myself--but I am also someone else.

It has always been like this.

The information is there. I wake up, open my eyes, understand that it is a new morning, a new place. The biography kicks in, a welcome gift from the not me part of the mind. Today I am Justin. Somehow I know this--my name is Justin--and at the same time I know that I m not really Justin, I m only borrowing his life for a day. I look around and know that this is his room. This is his home. The alarm will go off in seven minutes.

I m never the same person twice, but I ve certainly been this type before. Clothes everywhere. Far more video games than books. Sleeps in his boxers. From the taste of his mouth, a smoker. But not so addicted that he needs one as soon as he wakes up.

Good morning, Justin, I say. Checking out his voice. Low. The voice in my head is always different.

Justin doesn t take care of himself. His scalp itches. His eyes don t want to open. He hasn t gotten much sleep.

Already I know I m not going to like today.

It s hard being in the body of someone you don t like, because you still have to respect it. I ve harmed people s lives in the past, and I ve found that every time I slip up, it haunts me. So I try to be careful.

From what I can tell, every person I inhabit is the same age as me. I don t hop from being sixteen to being sixty. Right now, it s only sixteen. I don t know how this works. Or why. I stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago. I m never going to figure it out, any more than a normal person will figure out his or her own existence. After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simply are. There is no way to know why. You can have theories, but there will never be proof.

I can access facts, not feelings. I know this is Justin s room, but I have no idea if he likes it or not. Does he want to kill his parents in the next room? Or would he be lost without his mother coming in to make sure he s awake? It s impossible to tell. It s as if that part of me replaces the same part of whatever person I m in. And while I m glad to be thinking like myself, a hint every now and then of how the other person thinks would be helpful. We all contain mysteries, especially when seen from the inside.

The alarm goes off. I reach for a shirt and some jeans, but something lets me see that it s the same shirt he wore yesterday. I pick a different shirt. I take the clothes with me to the bathroom, dress after showering. His parents are in the kitchen now. They have no idea that anything is different.

Sixteen years is a lot of time to practice. I don t usually make mistakes. Not anymore.

I read his parents easily: Justin doesn t talk to them much in the morning, so I don t have to talk to them. I have grown accustomed to sensing expectation in others, or the lack of it. I shovel down some cereal, leave the bowl in the sink without washing it, grab Justin s keys and go.

Yesterday I was a girl in a town I d guess to be two hours away. The day before, I was a boy in a town three hours farther than that. I am already forgetting their details. I have to, or else I will never remember who I really am.

Justin listens to loud and obn