The Sky Is Everywhere

by Jandy Nelson

Book Overview

Jandy Nelson's beloved, critically adored debut is now an Apple TV+ and A24 original film starring Jason Segel, Cherry Jones, Grace Kaufman, and Jacques Colimon.

"Both a profound meditation on loss and grieving and an exhilarating and very sexy romance." --NPR

Adrift after her sister Bailey's sudden death, Lennie finds herself torn between quiet, seductive Toby--Bailey's boyfriend who shares Lennie's grief--and Joe, the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0142417807
• ISBN13: 9780142417805
• Release Date: March 2011
• Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.67 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.2"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9 and higher

Customer Reviews

The sky is everywhere

this book was pretty good but I was hoping for a little more romance. Not bad was a quick read

Great!

Great story about love, loss and moving forward . Recommend if you’re a John Green fan.

Great YA book!

I found this book to be very endearing. Probably not for everyone, but if you love a sappy young adult romance that will make you laugh and cry, this is the one. The poetry is beautiful as well!

So beautiful!

Definitely worth reading. One of my very favorites.

This Book Should be EVERYWHERE!

As a school librarian I had heard the buzz about Jandy Nelson's debut young adult novel, The Sky is Everywhere, and knew it would be a perfect companion for my road trip from Florida to New York. It did not disappoint me. I was so engaged that I completed the book by the time I reached North Carolina, our first stop. I loved Lennie and her emotional journey from younger sister to adulthood. The themes of loss of a loved one, sexual experimentation, and young love are dealt with delicately and need to be addressed in young adult literature. The beautiful writing is echoed in the poetry written by Lennie throughout the novel. In its heartfelt way we are lead to an understanding of this character and intensely feel her pain and confusion. This book is a must for the teen literature shelves. Share it with someone you love!

In the tradition of Austen, Dodie Smith, -- and Dostoevsky.

Up in redwood country a high school junior, Lennon Walker, tries to deal with the unexpected death of her sister Bails. The beautiful country is described to a T, and we hear details of a intriguing country inn that keeps an outdoor bedroom for romantic vacationers in a forest glen, covering the bed and its hangings with tarp when it rains. Beautiful if impractical, this room intervenes in our ordinary understanding of what's inside and what's outside in the service of a higher realism. Lennie's grief is too strong for ordinary narration, so first time author Jandy Nelson breaks up the first person, diaristic account with replicas of Lennie's poems, scattered here and there throughout the text seemingly without reason or rhyme, though in a beautifully modulated final section we find out the reason behind the disrupted narrative. Lennie comes from one of those Salinger-like families that has drenched itself in myth, like a late Eudora Welty. (No wonder Wuthering Heights is Lennie's favorite novel, the battling Earnshaws and Lintons have nothing on the people of Clover.) The remaining survivors are trying to live their lives in a simulacrum of real life, hollow because their central locus has gone--Bailey, the beautiful and glamorous racehorse sister, Behind that loss, a deeper and more puzzling loss, the disappearance of the mother, a phantom who walked away from her two baby girls because she was cursed with the Walker gene--she's a runner and she'll run away. That was all years ago, but somehow the grandmother cobbled together a living for the two girls and has raised them herself, keeping the mystery of Paige's disappearance a forbidding secret the girls dare not inquire into. It's a Gothic story disguised as a YA novel for girls, and it builds on Nelson's remarkably keen sense of time and place, grounded in detail and filled with the smells and sights of a spring and summer in Northern California forest country. Lennie, a very literary young lady, names practically everything--like the Glass family did, remember? The bedroom she shared with Bailey is the Inner Pumpkin Sanctum. Her girlfriend Sarah's car is called "Ennui." The unfinished painting of Paige that haunts their country home, like the portrait of Rebecca in Manderley, is called, "the Half-Mom." Even Grandma's *laugh* has its own monicker, which only a sense of the twee prevents me from revealing here. It's the sort of thing that, like my dad used to say, if you like it, you'll get a lot of it here. I haven't even described the central romantic triangle, but Lennie is symbolically given a choice between Eros and Thanatos. Her dead sister's boyfriend, Toby, is obviously not the proper guy for Lennie, but the two try to comfort each other and to her surprise she winds up in his arms, his shirt off, his boner thudding against her thigh. Bad Lennie! Happy go lucky musician Joe Fontaine represents life and possibility, and under his spell Lennie learns that perhaps Baile

Laughing and Crying, You know it's the Same Release

Jandy Nelson keeps passion and romance alive. I could not put this book down. From the crazy Northern Californian family dealing with the loss of their precocious guy-magnet daughter, to the blossoming of her younger sister who was happy to live in her older sister's shadow, to the expressions of mad grief through the sharp awakening of the senses, this story helped me to understand the axis of grief and romance in the body of insane longing. I was laughing out loud and then crying in the turn of a sentence. Extraordinary. Literary. I did not want it to end.

A remarkable book!

The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson is an absolutely mesmerizing, remarkable story, beautifully written. Though a Young Adult novel, this book appeals to readers of all ages, because it dwells on the timeless themes of grief and love, and how the two interconnect. Through the voice of 17 year-old Lennie, Nelson dives deep into grief. She shows us how falling apart in grief mirrors falling apart in love: both the grief-stricken and the love-stricken have a madness about them, and can't resist surrendering to emotion. There is something so fresh and original and quirky about Lennie's character and the family that raised her, and it's impossible not to fall under their spell when reading The Sky is Elsewhere. Like the main character Lennie, book author Jandy Nelson is clearly a poet, in addition to being a young adult novelist. Nelson brings a poetic sensibility to every line on every page, leaving the reader with the feeling that there is a beauty in the world that even sorrow cannot dislodge.

Courtesy of Teens Read Too

Lennie and Bailey are sisters, best friends, everything to each other. Their mother took off when they were just babies, which Gram has always attributed to the "restless gene" that runs in the family. When Bailey, vivacious and fiery Bailey, dies of a heart arrhythmia while rehearsing for Romeo & Juliet, Lennie is utterly lost. Without Bailey's guidance, smothering affection, and her untameable spirit, Lennie doesn't know what to do. She has always stood at the sidelines, content to catch just a few rays of Bailey's endless radiance. Though Lennie can't help but wallow in her grief, the rest of the world carries on, and ultimately, so must she. On her first day back to school she meets the most enchanting boy on earth - fabulously multi-talented musician, Joey Fontaine. Complicating the situation is Bailey's boyfriend, Toby, who turns to Lennie for comfort. In sharing their despair, seeds of attraction manifest and Lennie must struggle to sort through a tumult of emotions roaring inside her. Forced to come out of her shell, Lennie starts to see how absolutely beautiful yet wondrously confusing life can be. In her contemplation of life and death, Lennie must completely reconsider what it means to truly live. For the first time in her life, Lennie is all alone - center stage. Whether she is ready or not, it is time for her solo. Jandy Nelson's debut novel is a heart-wrenching tale of love and forgiveness that will make you laugh and cry all in the same sentence. THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE ties themes of wanderlust, betrayal, and forgiveness in a love story more complex than most young adult authors dare to concoct. Reviewed by: Amber Gibson