We Are Okay By Nina Lacour Book Review
“There are many ways of being alone. That’s something I know to be true. I breathe in (stars and sky). I breathe out (snow and trees).”
About
Author: Nina LaCour
Genre: Contemporary
Winner of the 2018 Michael L. Printz Award
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Synopsis
You go through life thinking there’s so much you need. . . . Until you leave with only your phone, your wallet, and a picture of your mother.
Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.
An intimate whisper that packs an indelible punch, We Are Okay is Nina LaCour at her finest. This gorgeously crafted and achingly honest portrayal of grief will leave you urgent to reach across any distance to reconnect with the people you love.
Review
Spoilers Contained Below
To someone who has loved and lost,
Everyone experiences grief in their own ways and there is no right or wrong way to do it. For Marin, who lost her mother at a young age and her Gramps, she chose to grieve by running all the way across the country to New York—-as far away from the sunny beaches and from the salty ocean, which are things believed to have taken both people who were important to her.
My heart physically and emotionally hurt for Marin all throughout this book and understanding her loneliness and pain for the people she lost and what she thought she knew. She never really knew her mom because her Gramps never showed her pictures of her to help her remember. And the Gramps never wanted to talk about her. So to Marin it was always this taboo subject she never dared to bring up.
She had a Grandpa or a Gramps whom she lived with ever since she was little. He was the laid back kind of Gramps that would play poker games, who baked things like bundt cakes, and who would allow her to take a few sips of whisky without being bothered by it.
Marin and her Gramps had a simple relationship and routine of never crossing the line into each others lives or personal spaces. That meant the Gramps never went into her room or in the front part of the house where she occupied. And that meant that Marin never went to the back of the house to where her Gramps dwelled. And I found it kind of oddly sad how Marin has never been to the back of her own house. I mean, we all have a house that we live in and we probably all have been in every room of our hose, but here Marin didn’t even know if the back of her house had a closet or an office or whatever kind of room because she’s never ventured so far as to know.
Their relationship was also so separate and distant.
Gramps and her would live in the same house, but it felt so disconnected; like they both lived in one place but occupied different spaces—–mentally and physically. Marin and the Gramps would fold each others clothes and then leave the laundry out on the table or in the living room because they didn’t want to intrude in each other’s rooms. And Marin was always out with Mabel or in her room, and her Gramps was either out too or playing poker. And they never seemed to communicate where they were going or they never seemed to talk about important things like their feelings. To me, everything they did just seemed so . . . separate.
And that sounds so lonely.
Marin didn’t even know what her mom looked like and how she lived. I feel like when a loved one passes and you’re young, people at least tell you stories of them to keep the memory of them alive, but the fact that the Gramps didn’t, made it hard for Marin to grieve the pain and curiosity that would always be there—a pain that was insatiable. I think Marin had become so alone and so secluded in her pain because she never felt like she could talk about or that she had closure to it.
She didn’t know who she was or had much of a life because her life was a lie with her Gramps keeping the memory of her mom/his daughter to himself. I don’t think that the Gramps was selfish for doing so because everyone, again, grieves in their own ways, but I do think the Gramps should have at least talked to Marin and made that conversation about her mom—–something that was encouraged rather than shied away from.
The mysterious love notes that the Gramps would get and be so-over-the- moon happy for was actually notes that he wrote to himself. Birdie was his daughter that he wrote letters to and got a letter back that “she wrote” to him (he actually wrote it). And I feel like the Gramps did that to feel connected to his daughter because he missed her dearly and the idea that she was still “alive” and communicating with him, granted him some sort of inner peace, no matter how unhealthy it kind of was that he made it seem like Birdie was a woman his age and in love with him.
The Gramps kept all his daughter’s memorabilia to himself in that closet in the back of the house, from clothes, photos, and those letters that “she” wrote for him. And all this time Marin longed to know who her mom was and to at least have a baby picture for the yearbook, but yet the Gramps kept everything from her—-literally locked in a closet. My heart lurched for Marin and how she was the only girl whose photo in the yearbook took up two spaces to fill the baby picture the Gramps claimed not to have. Even the adopted person in her class had a baby picture. That must have made her feel like such a pariah to be the only one in her class to not even have a baby picture/connection to her past. And that can really make someone feel like they don’t have a past and can make them question who they truly are.
Besides keeping all the physical things of the mom’s locked up in a closet in his room, he also kept up all the emotional and verbal things too. The Gramps always seemed angry or wanted to put off talking about the mom. There was a scene where Marin was young and her teacher Sister Josephine, the nun, had a conference with Gramps and Marin over this Siren story Marin wrote that reflected Marin’s inner most feelings too much. Sister Josephine told Gramps to talk about the mom to Marin to fill her with happy memories. The Gramps went off because he couldn’t see how talking about the mom would do any good. But it would have done soooo much good rather than bottling it in. I feel like because Marin remembered those moments where her Gramps would get angry, it became instilled in her brain to never speak about the mom and that made it harder for her to feel loved/less alone.
But then the Gramps passes away randomly one night. He never came home and it was said he was witnessed to have walked to the beach that night and he never came back. Because they lived such distant and separate lives, they never talked about the obvious fact that the Gramps was sick. And if Marin and him just talked to each other, maybe the Gramps would have gotten the health care that he needed.
But they never bridged that gap.
So it hurt Marin immensely when he passed. She felt resentment and anger, but also the typical pain. She was mad at her Gramps from keeping so much from her, especially the memory of her mom. But she also loved her Gramps because he took care of her all these years and loved her unconditionally. And I get it. But she didn’t have to be alone after her Gramps passed.
But I could understood where she was coming from in not feeling like she had anyone else in her life because Mable left for college and she had no parents. So she didn’t feel like she had anyone to go to or anywhere to go period, so she just thought it was better to get as far away from her past life.
In the beginning, the book described how bare and minimal Marin’s room was in how she had an empty cork board and walls. She only had yellow bowls and a potted plant that she had to take care of. And I like how the empty and bare room kind of reflected how Marin felt on the outside—-empty and only taking care of herself enough to survive. And I feel like he plant is the part of herself that holds onto hope that one day she’ll grow, but for right now she’s just surivivg and trying to live.
When Mabel, her friend and ex-lover, was coming to visit her, she felt the need to fill up her room to make it feel lived in. So Marin spends hours, printing and writing out quotes, finding pictures, and tacking them onto her cork board. And then she just throws all her hard work away because she knows she can’t fool Mabel who’ll see it as an attempt to hide something. When I read this scene, part of me knew Marin was just trying to save face that oh, she was so “happy” and she was living the typical, normal life, but when she takes down all the hard work to create this “happy and perfect” image, part of me was happy for Marin because at least she could acknowledge that she wasn’t fully happy in life and that’s okay not to feel that way sometimes.
Mabel sounds like a legit good friend.
Mabel goes through lengths to get to Marin and to be there for her despite being ignored. It really highlighted how she truly does care for Marin because anyone would have given up on her at this point with all the texts and calls, but not Mabel. And her parents were so sweet to Marin in cleaning out the brother’s old bedroom in the house and making it Marin’s room by waiting her name on it. And the mom’s like, I”‘ve always wanted you to be my daughter.” And if that doesn’t break your heart in the best way, I don’t know what will.
It defiently broke something in Marin’s heart. And I just felt her pain and her bottled up loneliness and tears, just break free. And it was the best feeling to feel as a reader—the main character finally letting her walls down for the people in her life to let love in.
And Marin needed that maternal love because she never got it as a child and her Gramps never loved her in that way—-like a mom would. And I think that Mabel’s mom just saying that filled her heart in making her feel like she wouldn’t be a burden to the family if they took her on, but a true want. And Marin wanted to feel loved and wanted. And as much as she distanced herself from her past and was complacent with where she was, deep down, Marin truly didn’t like her loneliness as much as she put on; she just learned to accept it.
But I think Mabel coming over allowed her to just finally talk about something that made her feel vulnerable when most of her life she felt like she had no one to turn to to do so.
Spending time with Mabel in those 3 days, was the best thing for Marin because it allowed her to be excited about something. It allowed her human connection. It made her go to the grocery store to buy snacks and to got to the pottery store and buy presents for people, and it even gave her the courage to ask for a job at the pottery studio. One of the things Marin buys at the pottery studio was the pot for her plant. To me, that just symbolized how Marin was ready to move on and grow in a new environment like the plant would grow in a new pot. A new pot for a plant might not seem like the most life changing thing in the world, but a new pot allows the plant to feel like it has more room to grow or to just feel aesthetically beautiful. That’s what the pot was to Marin—-a new place to grow and feel okay.
One of my favorite moments between Mabel and Marin was the part where they are analyzing the painting Two Fridas. It was such an intimate moment for two past lovers to analyze a portrait of Frida who felt split in two. Kind of like how Marin felt. In the painting Two Fridas, Frida is painted as two versions of herself with one versions her heart inside her chest and the other version with a heart outside her chest. Marin thought the painting meant that Frida was trying to pull the wounded part of herself back to her and was guiding her old self to her new life. Marin also thought that the painting could be interpreted as Frida holding onto the last shred of her old self before breaking apart. I thought that those interpretations were so interesting because Marin’s really trying to figure out who she was and she knows she’s not who she used to be, but that she’s someone else. So much has changed in her life that she feels like two separate people like Frida depicted, in feeling like she feels that separation in herself, but doesn’t know if it’s her trying to pull her wounded self to the person she is now, or breaking apart and becoming someone else entirely. Who knows? But I just felt that separation in Marin come through so much with this scene and I loved that she knew that she was figuring things out for herself.
And I understood where Marin was coming from as well. Because when so much has changed in your life, it cannot not change you—it will always impact your life or yourself for the good or the bad. And sometimes when you change, people constantly bring up the fact that you did by saying things like “You used to be so this” or “What happened to him/her?” And it’s like I get that I used to be someone else, but that someone else has grown and evolved. When you grow and evolve, you obviously feel that split of who you used to be and who you were and those remarks you get make you feel bad for changing and makes you feel like you have to be who you were and to hold onto who you were.
But sometimes you can’t.
And you do split.
And I think Marin split. She wasn’t that person who was complacent with life, but someone who was pained and had to grow through that. And this book was just that journey through loss of not just people, but memories and yourself. You lose people in life and that’s the HARDEST THING to feel and experience and nothing will ever prepare you for the pain that will surround you. But sometimes in life you also lose yourself, whether it be to the pain, to new situations, to loneliness, or to heartbreak; people evolve and change and there will be parts of yourself you will carry over from who you were, but there will also be new parts of who you were that make you stronger and better.
I’m so happy Marin said yes in the end. By saying yes to going back to California with Mable’s family, she allowed love in her life and for growth
. Pain should never be faced alone. Sure, you can grieve by yourself for a while, but ultimately it’s always better to cry on someone’s shoulder because at least there’s someone there holding you up when you can’t hold on anymore.
Anyone who has ever felt pain, loss, heartbreak, or any of the emotions that makes you feel alone and sad, I hope that you take the time to feel those emotions. But don’t fester and dwell on them too long by yourself. Talk to someone about them and if you want to cry tears and snot on someone’s shoulder than don’t be embarrassed to soak their shirt. We all need to be there for each other in our times in needs. And then, we will be okay.
We are okay.
As always, with love,
Rating
4.75 Full Bloom Flowers
Characters: I think a lot of people can resonate with Marin and her feelings. This book really sheds light as to how it’s like to deal with the loss and grief of a loved one and how that changes not only your life, buy yourself. You can also understand the growth of Marin in the way she doesn’t feel like the same person after everything and there’s something so raw and honest about that.
Plot: A good book to hold onto like you might do to another when you need human connection when you lost someone who meant the world to you.
Writing: Timeless and honest.