Sixteen-year-old Leila Abranel was born some twenty years after her sisters. Her elegant sisters from her father’s first marriage have lives full of work, love affairs, and travel. Leila doesn’t know either of them very well, but she loves hearing about them—details of Rebecca’s ruined marriage, Clare’s first job, and the strings of unsuitable boyfriends.

When Rebecca kills herself, Leila wants to know why. She starts by spending time with Clare and finally comes to know her as a person instead of a story. With Clare’s reluctant help, Leila tracks down Rebecca’s favorite places and tries to find her sister’s friends. Along the way, Leila meets Eamon.Eamon is thirty-one and writes for television. He thinks Leila is beautiful and smart, but he does not, he tells her, date teenagers. And yet, the months go by and Leila turns seventeen and learns that you can love someone you are not dating.

Maybe letting Eamon love her back is a mistake. Maybe she’ll never know why Rebecca did what she did. Maybe, Leila, decides, most people have a hard time figuring out which way is left or knowing when to let go and when to stay.

Freymann-Weyr writes about privileged New York teenagers; she makes all those popular books (Gossip Girl series, etc.) about the same young people seem like light fluff. Her characters are brilliant, with fascinating families. In Stay with Me, the narrator is Leila, the youngest of three sisters. She struggles in school because she is dyslexic, but she is especially gifted at understanding relationships. As the story begins, Leila's family is in disarray: Leila's 30-something sister Rebecca has committed suicide, and no one understands why. Each person is grieving. The girls' father and his wife, Leila's mother, decide to spend a year in Poland where they will be immersed in work at a hospital; Leila will stay in NYC to finish school, living with her sister Clare in the apartment Clare and Rebecca shared. Many characters are fully realized, including the adults, and Leila is observing everything, awash in her own feelings. Leila takes a part-time job at a cafe where she had caught a glimpse of Rebecca sitting with an unknown man just before the suicide?—?Leila thinks perhaps she will discover who that man was and what he might know about Rebecca's despair. In fact, she does eventually solve that dilemma, but in the meanwhile, at the cafe she meets a man in his early 30s (Leila is just turning 17) who is exciting?—?much more exciting than Ben, Leila's sometime boyfriend. To summarize the plot any further doesn't work well. What I need to convey here is Freymann-Weyr's ability to bring this world to her readers?—?a world in which adolescents and their families and friends have meaningful conversations. Leila is reflective, loving and caring. She stumbles through life,as do the people around her, but always tries to understand what is happening. KLIATT Codes: SA*—Exceptional book, recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2006, Houghton Mifflin, 308p., Ages 15 to adult.

Categories:

• Teen & Young Adult
  
  
  • Literature & Fiction
    
    
    • Social & Family Issues
      • Suicide