Amazon Best Books of the Month, September 2012: Every Day is
technically for young adults, but the premise of this unusual
book goes much deeper. It asks a question that will resonate with
the young and old alike: Can you truly love someone regardless of
what they look like on the outside? The main character, A, wakes
up every morning in a different body. Day to day, A can be male
or female, any ethnicity, any size, and in any type of household.
The only constant is that he (we'll go with that pronoun for
convenience) is 16. A has been body jumping for as long as he can
remember, and he has learned to not leave behind any trace of his
presence--until he meets Rhiannon. For the first time in his
life, A feels a true connection with another person. But can she
love him back? Levithan handles their romance with great omb,
building to a poignant and beautiful ending that took my breath
away. --Caley Anderson
Amazon Exclusive: Day 5909, a Story by Author David Levithan
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Every morning, [the book's main character] A wakes up in a
different body and a different life. The novel Every Day starts
on Day 5994 of A's life. For this story, I wanted to go back to a
day in A's life before Every Day. Think of this as A recounting a
few passing moments from his past.
--David Levithan
Download the short story [PDF]
An Essay from the Author: A Similar Kind of Love Song
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Recently I was reading an interview in OUT magazine with Romy
Madley Croft, the lead singer of the band the xx. Croft, talking
about coming out, told the reporter, “If I was singing about a
guy, I would probably be singing a similar kind of love song,
really.” And I was struck that the same thing applied to my
writing—especially with my new book, Every Day.
Every Day is about A, who wakes up each morning in a different
body and a different life. It’s not giving anything away to say
that in the first chapter, A falls in love with a girl name
Rhiannon . . . and that their relationship is rather complicated.
So there I was—a gay man, writing from the point of view of a
character who is neither gay or straight, male or female. A has
no inherent race, no inherent religion. A has grown up without
friends, without family. A is purely a self. Whereas I, in my
culturally and societally constructed life, am not.
It should have been hard to write as A, but it wasn’t. Because
I found that, no matter which body A was in, I was singing a
similar kind of love song.
Ever since Boy Meets Boy, my first novel, was published, I’ve
received thousands of letters and emails from readers. Some of
the most interesting ones have been from people who were
surprised that they, non-gay or non-male, identified so deeply
with the love story. Love is love, more than one reader wrote to
me. And I thought, yes, that’s it exactly. (I almost want to put
it as a tip on my website, for all those students who write to me
telling me their teacher has assigned them to identify the
central theme in my work. Well, there it is. Love is love.)
In Every Day, I wanted to look at that theme from a variety of
angles. I wanted to test that theme, and find its limitations.
Where A starts in Every Day is where many of my other
characters—my will grayson in Will Grayson, Will Grayson, for
example—reach at the end of my other novels. That is, they
recognize that in order to love and be loved, they must be true
to themselves. A is always true in this way. Writing A made me
realize that this is one of the more helpful questions you can
ask about love—if I were truly myself, only myself, and not a
gender, and not a sexual orientation, and not a race, and not any
other external designation . . . what would I want? What would I
do?
A gets to live this ideal. But Rhiannon, who doesn’t change
bodies, is challenged to match it. This is the great conflict in
the book, and informs one of the questions I posed to myself as I
wrote it: Does love indeed conquer all? Or, in other words, does
our world always allow love to be love?
Again, I come back to that phrase “a similar kind of love
song.” I like that she doesn’t make them the same. I like that
they’re similar. There are certainly different challenges, at
some times, in some places, with a gay love story. I often try to
illuminate that experience in my writing. But there are also the
same universal emotions. Joy is joy. Fear is fear. Vulnerability
is vulnerability. Just like music is music, writing is writing,
and love is love.
- Alfred A Knopf Books for Young Readers.
