Teenagers of the 21st century are as likely to bond over video games as they are rock music or movies. Gabrielle Zevin’s exhilarating, timely and emotive book is perhaps the first novel to truly get to grips with what this means.
Sadie and Sam meet as precocious, somewhat awkward children in a hospital where Sadie’s sister is being treated for leukaemia and Sam is recovering from injuries sustained in a car crash. Sam hasn’t spoken since the collision, but Sadie gradually drags him from his self-imposed exile, via long sessions of Super Mario Bros in the hospital games room. Their video game-enabled friendship sets in place a major theme of the novel. “To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk,” writes Zevin. “It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt.”
