Name: No and Me
Author: Delphine de Vigan
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Star Rating: * *
I began with high hopes for this book, but it didn't really live up to my expectations.
Lou is a highly intelligent young teenager. She's two classes ahead at school, possesses a sky high IQ, and is clearly struggling in the wake of a terrible loss in her recent past. The passing of her baby sister Chloe, several years previous to the beginning of the book, left a gaping hole in her life, one that is finally filled when she meets the young homeless girl No. This story is about homelessness in a world where anything is possible, a family's diverse reactions to grief, and the pressures that a young girl must face while growing up.
My biggest problem with this read was that I didn't feel connected enough to the characters. This is a really important factor for me, and impacts how deeply I enjoy and engage with the story. I need to either passionately love (or passionately hate) at least some of the characters, in order to love the story. There were moments in the book that I really rooted for No, where I wanted her to break out of the tragic cycle of homelessness that she had fallen into, but these were rare in the entirety of the book. The relationships between the characters also didn't sit quite right with me. The friendships didn't seem real- even Lucas didn't seem to have much of a personality.
As this is the first translated novel that I've read, it was interesting to consider how it affected the flow of the story. No and Me did definitely feel different to read, especially as at times the language choice and sentence structures felt a bit repetitive. One thing that I did really enjoy was that this book didn't lose its distinctive 'Frenchness', despite being a translation. It was packed full of French language that represented the names of people, places and things that the characters encountered. I know that English language writers can, and do, write tales set all over the world, but this book felt genuinely French, which was pleasing.
Overall I was pretty disappointed with this book, and felt that it had a lot of unused potential. Homelessness is an incredibly prominent and often under addressed issue, but I just didn't feel engaged enough with the plot or, most importantly to me, the characters. It's a short read at only 258 pages in length, and I'd say to pick it up if you're feeling curious, but it is not a book that I would recommend. I've settled on awarding it only two stars.