Book review: Another Day

David Levithan – Another Day

I adore David Levithan’s work. He writes gorgeous prose about teenagers dealing with love and other disasters, and offers up optimism and hope alongside acknowledgement of the hardness of life. In this book, the companion to Every Day, we see what it’s like to be a girl stuck in a relationship that isn’t obviously abusive but isn’t healthy, a girl who wants and needs love and support but isn’t getting it, and what happens one day when her boyfriend’s body is taken over by someone else: A.

A shifts bodies daily, never knowing whether they’re going to be male or female, black or white, gay or straight, able-bodied or disabled, or a whole range of other things. A has a unique take on the world: but is it possible to love someone just for their mind and not the body they’ve wound up in that day? And is it even fair to the people whose bodies A inhabits to try to make a connection last?

This book invites the reader to think about love, and identity, and souls, and to ponder how much of attraction is to do with the physical body. However, Every Day did all that as well, and Another Day, while a great read, doesn’t feel sufficiently different: this is territory we’ve visited before, and getting Rhiannon’s take on it doesn’t offer up anything particularly new, except perhaps at the very end. We empathised with Rhiannon in the first book, and could imagine things through her eyes; there isn’t much more than we get from the same events related to us in her voice. The opportunity to address issues around the female body isn’t really taken, either, and Rhiannon’s comfort level with A taking over her body for a day doesn’t quite ring true. I would suggest reading one or the other, rather than both: they ask many of the same questions but not enough different ones.

(There is a sequel about A coming soon, which will be interesting…)