The Nature of Jade by Deb Caletti.

Make room for another title on my best books of the year list! 

Jade, a senior in high school,  struggles with panic in her everyday life.  She is in therapy for it and has tools she uses to try to control it, including watching the zoo webcam that shows the elephants.  That is where she first sees the boy in the red jacket carrying the baby.  And that glimpse will be enough to send Jade out of her controlled world, allowing her to realize that even those things that seem simple in her life are more complicated and less absolute.  Jade learns to take risks, be true to herself, and find her own way with a little help from some very large friends and some human ones too.

The writing here is exquisite.  In the beginning and again at the very end, Jade is in a fragile state.  The writing is almost brittle, crumbling away with rushes of images rather like panic.  When Jade is content, the writing slows, meanders, but never wanders away.  The writing allows readers to share Jade’s contentment and bask in it with her.  Somehow Caletti has managed to create prose that in its very pacing and tone allows us to feel Jade’s mood.  It is a monumental accomplishment.

The characterizations are also masterfully done.  Jade herself is very complex and vivid.   And so are the many secondary characters, especially Jade’s parents who start out as Jade sees them and slowly are revealed to the reader and Jade to be so much more.  Jade is a young woman on the cusp of leaving home, so seeing the humanity of her parents is very powerful and rings completely true. 

This is a must-read, a book to put in the hands of teen girls.  Any teen girl.  They will all respond to Jade and her life.  The book is a triumph, but retains ties to teen-girl books everywhere with its romance and issues.  It is an easy step for girls reading series novels to enter this world and discover great writing.