Friend is a big word. Neverworld Wake – book review

The information printed on the cover tells us that the main characters of the novel will be five friends. Out of this group, only one of them will be able to survive. We don’t know anything more, but the fictional sneak peak draws us in. We open the novel without hesitation and… we begin our adventure together.

This is not a debut

Marisha Pessl is the author of two books that have had an impact in the world of literature – Nocny film and Selected issues in the physics of disasters . Her writing is light and her ideas are fresh and story-driven. New Pessl Book – Neverworld Wake –so she had a path that was apparently open to success. The account of six friends (Kipling St. John, Whitley Lansing, Cannon Beecham, Martha Ziegler, Jim Mason and Beatrice Hartley) is the starting point for the events presented in the book. When one of the heroes – Jim Mason – dies, his girlfriend, Beatrice, cuts himself off from the others and tries to forget, while simultaneously suppressing the day when her beloved died. By coincidence, the fate of the group members connects again, this time forever. When they learn that they have to choose one survivor, they don’t realize how difficult the decision will be. After all, they’d been friends for good or bad once, or so they thought.

Idea and implementation

It must be admitted that the topic of time loop appears frequently in pop culture ( e.g. the movie Inception , the game Life is Strange , the series Riverdale) and apparently everything has already been written or shown. Pessl was not discouraged by this fact and tried to weave a completely new story into the known pattern. For most of the book, the aforementioned people try to fight the time loop that holds them together. At the same time, they do not want to vote for each other because of the respect and friendship that once held them firmly together. At present, little remains of this feeling. Each of the heroes went their own way and – as it turns out as the story unfolds – each of them also had their own secrets. The secrets that dominated the lives of Beatrice, Martha, Whitley, Kipling, Cannon and Jim put them at a point of no return. Unfortunately, the countless awakening and falling asleep of the characters can make the reader feel weary of the story.

Who would you choose?

Pessl runs a first-person narrative. Beatrice talks about her memories in detail and it is thanks to her that we get to know the course of fate, we follow her path of deduction. Isolating the thoughts of one character and presenting his psychological portrait was important in building the plot. The novel is aimed at young readers who, perhaps – by identifying with Beatrice, Martha, Whitley, Kipling, Cannon and Jim, will understand it better. For those a bit older, unfortunately, the story solutions will not be a big puzzle. After the first few chapters, the reader will easily select potential victims of the game of fate. The choice of a surviving hero will also be clear. Moreover, it is unclear to me how the book is divided into three parts. The presented events take place one after another and nothing spectacular happens between them. Oh, continuous travel in time.

W sam raz na raz

Neverworld Wake może zachwycić niektórych czytelników, ale co najwyżej raz. Czytając książkę wielokrotnie, należy szukać czegoś dotąd niezgłębionego, na przykład spróbować przeanalizować psychikę poszczególnych postaci. Jeśli natomiast chcemy odczuć satysfakcję z przeczytanej nowości z roku 2019, omówiona lektura będzie dobrym pomysłem na leniwy wieczór w domowym zaciszu. Splątani razem z bohaterami spróbujemy dojść do tego, gdzie leży prawda i co tak naprawdę wydarzyło się w kamieniołomie. I nawet jeśli rozwiązanie wyda nam się banalne, przeżyjemy ciekawą przygodę.