Review: Every Day by David Levithan

Every Day
by David Levithan
Published: August 28, 2012




Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.

There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.

"Everyday I am someone else. I am myself - I know I am myself - but I am also someone else. It has always been like this."

This book is real inspiration and enlightenment. This book is a metaphor of life and love in complete and true package. This book is an irony. This book is perfect. From the beginning to the way it ended—priceless.

This book deserves to be read real slowly, which was what I exactly did. Not because it was uninteresting, but because of the reflections I learn and realize at the end of every chapter. David Levithan is a genius. Where else to explain the meaning of life and love and perspective but in this book which inclines us to the truth, importance, and differences of every individual—put into action by the story of A waking everyday to spend a different person’s life, while falling in love with the same someone every day. Imagine how hard that case is. Now imagine how Levithan managed to pull it off perfectly. Exactly. He managed to inject beauty into it, his words painting the world in such wonderful colors, making me imagine skylines and oceans and sunsets, but at the same time the loneliness, misery, and longings along with it. His work is an irony of happiness and sacrifice, possibilities and wrong decisions, great moments and bad moments, desire and acceptance, rushing on with life and patiently awaiting for it to happen.

Life—its purpose and its meaning—is presented with each day A lives as someone—as a wallflower, a soccer player, a drug addict, a Baptist, a cheerleader, a homo, a geek, a bully, an inferior, an actor, a traumatic, a metalhead, a lesbian, an obese, somebody abused, somebody’s twin, somebody depressed, somebody rich, sometimes somebody typical, somebody he likes to be, even somebody he loves. It contemplates a new perception of somebody’s self and gives a deeper truth and understanding to who we really are inside. It also imposes the thought that how we encounter life, how we see and experience the world, how we live it up—is sometimes governed by our perspective. Whether we want to live it easy, or we strive to create the definition of who we really are, if we want to make our mark or if we choose to lay back and watch.

There are times when we just give up and live about how people expect us to, the person we just allowed ourselves to become. But this book teaches me that if we look deeply within we will see that it’s not about how people see us and what they think, but the reality underneath the skin. Some cease to live as nobody, but if we have limited time in our hands, if we live one day at a time and exist in only the present, we’ll learn the wealth and enormity of every moment—as this book tries to convey. It also tells me that we have to do the conquering for love to do anything at all. It is in every person who believes in us, the ones we love and who care. We fight for them, because life is built in the foundation of people we need. We learn to accept the love we think we deserve, but can we really deserve anything at another’s expense?

This book also imparts that love is also sacrifice. So much happiness in love can also cause too much sadness. Love is in knowing and understanding. Love is in searching and finding. Love is recognition and obedience. Love is being at peace. Love is the nice note. So amazing how one book could become part of me so much. I swear, it was like ninjas cutting onions at the last part. So many onions. I was honestly almost afraid to write about it, scared that I might not put in the right words and ruin it but I thought, “Oh well, no review could probably describe how great this book truly is, so alright.”

Every Day is such a big big inspiration and I just love love it. From the very awesome cover to the acknowledgment (Yeah, I like acknowledgments of great authors). And oh, sorry for the long review but I feel there’s just too much to say. And I say, gotta live the enormity of the moment. :) This said, I wanna share some of the best parts that moved me in this book:
(that’s actually all of it, but I think I gotta choose, so here goes)

Words!

“If there's one thing I've learned, it's this: We all want everything to be okay. We don't even wish so much for fantastic or marvelous or outstanding. We will happily settle for okay, because most of the time, okay is enough.”

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“I wake up thinking of yesterday. The joy is in remembering; the pain is in knowing it was yesterday.”

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“I want love to conquer all. But love can't conquer anything. It can't do anything on it's own. It relies on us to do the conquering on its behalf.”

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