I give you the sun
| I give you the sun | |
|---|---|
| Title of the original edition | I'll give you the sun |
| Author | Jandy Nelson |
| translator | Catrin Frischer |
| country | United States |
| language | American English |
| genre | Youth novel |
| Publication date | Sept 16, 2014 (USA)
Nov 21, 2016 (Germany) |
| pages | 384 (USA)
480 (Germany) |
| publishing company | Dial Books (USA)
cbt (Germany) |
| Awards | Michael L. Printz Award (2015) |
| Website | Dial Books (USA)
cbj (Germany) |
I give you the sun , original title I´ll Give You The Sun , is a book for young people by the American author Jandy Nelson, which was published in 2014 by Dial Books in the USA and in 2016 by cbt in Germany. The novel won the Michael L. Printz Award and the Stonewall Honor in 2015. It received numerous positive reviews from the international press and has been referred to as "dazzling" ( New York Times Book Review ) and "blazing prismatic explosion of color" ( Entertainment Weekly ).
The story is about the dizygotic twins Noah and Jude. The two are very different, but in some ways they are amazingly similar. They love each other and are very close, but compete for their parents' love and attention.
The book deals with the topics of first love, art, jealousy and envy, homosexuality, growing up and one's own insecurity and search for identity.
action
The story is told from the perspective of both twins, but at different ages. When both are around 13-14 years old, the story is told from the point of view of Noah and at the age of 16 from the point of view of Jude. The narrative perspective alternates in chapters between the two.
Noah, 13-14 years
Noah is a talented artist. His biggest wish is to go to art school next year, the only place he thinks he can belong, otherwise he feels like a freak himself. His twin sister Jude also describes him as strange because he has no friends. She is very different from Noah. She is popular and conforms to others, has lots of friends, goes out and surfs.
She is also an artist and makes sculptures out of sand. One day Noah meets Brian, who is spending the holidays with his mother, who lives in the house next door. Noah and Brian quickly develop close friends, share their secrets, and spend most of their time together. Noah is strongly drawn to Brian, but doesn't know if Brian feels anything like him. When the two are insulted as "homos" by older boys, it is Brian who defends both, but from then on Brian also meets with other girls and builds an "electric fence" between the two of them for the rest of the summer.
Noah, through a misunderstanding, believes that Brian and his sister are now together. Jealous and desperate, he becomes furious and destroys photos of Jude's sand art works that he had secretly taken. He vows never to speak to her again. Only much later can Jude tell him that nothing happened. She knows that her brother sees Brian as more than just a friend.
5 months later, Brian shows up again for the winter vacation. He and Noah finally find each other. But when the two kiss in Noah's room, his mother bursts in unannounced. Brian then loses his composure. He fears losing his athletic scholarship and being bullied by his baseball team if his homosexuality becomes known. He ends the relationship with Noah. Noah blames his mother for this and asks her not to tell his father, with whom he has developed a good relationship for the first time, about all of this and to forget all about it, since it has no meaning. His mother, who has no problem with his homosexuality, encourages and asks him to be honest with himself, even if it takes a lot of courage.
By chance, Noah finds out that his mother is having an affair with an artist. He confronts her and she admits that she wants to get a divorce. But then she has a car accident in which she dies.
Jew, 16 years
Two years have passed since the mother's death. Jude was accepted into art school, but Noah was not. Both have changed a lot, almost as if their characters had switched bodies. They still suffer from the loss of their mother and feel responsible for their death for various reasons.
Jew has become a loner. After an initial negative sexual experience, she boycotts boys and her only friend is her dead grandmother, with whose spirit she speaks and whose proverbs and superstitions play an important role in her life. She doesn't feel at home at art school and is only known there as a disaster Jew because everything she makes breaks. She blames the spirit of her mother, who is mad at her because she knows what she did: After her mother's death, Jude only sent in her own application for art school out of jealousy and Noahs did not. She is ashamed of this decision and deeply regrets it, but fears that she will lose Noah for good if she tells him about it.
Noah has changed a lot. After not being accepted into art school, he destroyed all of his art and stopped painting. He's now part of a sports team, meets up with girls and has friends. He has no more contact with Brian and he has also completely excluded Jude from his life. Both rarely speak to each other, even when Jude seeks contact with him. He told neither Jude nor his father about his mother's affair, but led them to believe that she wanted to return to his father.
Jude wins the artist Guillermo García as her mentor for a work for the art school, who helps her to make a stone figure - made of stone so that no one, especially her mother's ghost, can destroy the sculpture. There she also meets Oscar, who was taken in by Guillermo, on condition that he could get his drug addiction under control. When Noah is drunk one evening and almost falls off a cliff, Oscar saves him and brings Jude and Noah home. There Jude realizes that Oscar is the boy for whose picture she once handed over the sun, stars, ocean and trees to Noah in a game between Noah and her in which they divided the world among themselves. Then she allows her feelings.
Jude now wants to do everything possible to make up for her mistake and is ready to give up her own place at art school for her brother. The next day, Noah bursts into Guillermo's studio and Jude learns that Guillermo and her mother were lovers and wanted to get married. She understands why Noah always said he knew her mother better than she did and that he just wanted to protect her from the truth.
The two speak out and also talk about Brian. Noah thinks he ruined his life when he publicly called him gay. But now he has a baseball scholarship at Stanford and publicly acknowledged his homosexuality. Jude confesses to Noah that she didn't send his application to art school. But Noah is not mad at her, he has rediscovered his love for art and that is all that matters to him. He finally wants to be honest with himself again and meets up with Brian. His father now also finds out about his homosexuality and Noah and Jude both get a place at the art school in the end.
characters
- Noah
- Noah is a talented artist, painting means everything to him. Even in his mind he paints portraits of situations from his life. At first he is very shy and introverted; he has no friends until he meets Brian, which changes his life. He falls in love with him and now wants nothing more than to be with Brian, for whom he would give all his 10 fingers.
- Jew
- At the beginning of the book, like many girls, she is in puberty. She puts on makeup, goes out, meets with boys and argues with her mother. After their death, she changes and becomes a loner. She gets a place at the art school, but is not happy there.
- Dianna
- Dianna is Judes and Noah's mother, but dies in a car accident when they are 14 years old. She is impressed by Noah's artistic talent and supports him in applying to art school, but often ignores Jews who do not dare to show her her art for fear of not being enough. She has an affair with the artist Guillermo García, which Noah finds out about shortly before her death.
- Brian
- Brian plays baseball and lives with his mother for the holidays, which is how he and Noah meet. The two fall in love. Brian is homosexual but is afraid to come out for fear of being left out. Only later does he come out and thereby change history as an open homosexual baseball player.
- Oscar
- Oscar works as a model for life drawing. After his mother's death, he has an alcohol problem and is taken in by Guillermo García. Handsome, with a leather jacket, motorcycle and an English accent, he is popular with girls. However, his mother predicted that he would meet a girl like Jude whom he fell in love with.
- Guillermo García
- Guillermo García is a sculptor and artist who falls in love with Noah's mother and Jude. The two start an affair and want to get married. After Dianna's death, Guillermo isolates himself and no longer gives classes to art students. He only makes an exception for Jude, ignorant of the fact that she is Dianna's daughter.
Public presentations
I give you the sun was presented at the children's and youth program at the 15th Berlin International Literature Festival in September 2015 as an international premiere in the presence of the author.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ 2015 Newbery, Caldecott and Printz awards announced . Los Angeles Times website . February 2, 2015. Accessed June 8, 2015.
- ↑ Stonewall Book Awards List -Winner 2015 . American Library Association . Retrieved June 8, 2015.
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/books/review/ill-give-you-the-sun-by-jandy-nelson.html?_r=0
- ↑ http://www.ew.com/article/2014/09/10/ill-give-you-sun
- ↑ http://www.literaturfestival.com/kjl