The Realm of Possibility

by David Levithan

One school. Twenty voices.

Endless possibilities.

There's the girl who is in love with Holden Caulfield. The boy who wants to be strong who falls for the girl who's convinced she needs to be weak. The girl who writes love songs for a girl she can't have. The two boys teetering on the brink of their first anniversary. And everyone in between.

As he did in the highly acclaimed Boy Meets Boy, David Levithan gives us a world of unforgettable voices that readers will want to visit again and again. It's the realm of possibility open to us all - where love, joy, and the stories we tell will linger.

Genres: Young Adult, Poetry, LGBT, Fiction, Contemporary, Romance, Queer

210 pages, Paperback

First published August 10, 2004

About the author

David Levithan (born 1972) is an American children's book editor and award-winning author. He published his first YA book, Boy Meets Boy, in 2003. Levithan is also the founding editor of PUSH, a Young Adult imprint of Scholastic Press.

Reviews

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

OMG! Levithan is a genius. This book, a novel in verse, has 20 narrators, all students at the same high school. Each tells his or her own story, and they all are inter-related. Some are friends, some are enemies, some are romantic interests. As always, Levithan includes gay and lesbian characters with respect and affection. Each student has a distinctive voice and we grow to love all of them. To fully see the relationships, I created a chart to show whose story was whose, who they liked and didn't like, who they mentioned...this is such a layered work. I loved it.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

See more reviews at YA Midnight Reads

Mini review:

Verse books tend to be a hit or miss for me, and in most occasions, I've found myself completely sucked into the story, The Realm of Possibility is another one of those verse books that just work.

I can't pretend to know what love is. It just is.

The Realm of Possibility is a bit like an anthology, for it follows multiple people's lives--a different person per poem. The author particularly focuses the teenagers' love lives and life problems. As expected of David Levithan, what's more is that we are given a diverse array of characters; and I can always trust this author to bring the best GLBTQ+ stories, that are not only authentic but also incredibly touching. Each poem was beautiful and powerful in their own right, and some of these poems have stuck onto me. I particularly enjoyed Gospel which was such a hopeful and empowering piece. In fact, I'd say it was one of my favourites of this collection. There are others that I liked too such as The Day and Tinder Heart, but honestly, all of them touched me in some way, and only authors like David Levithan can seem to do that with verse.

Another thing that I'd like to add is that not one poem follows the same type of free verse. Some poems only have 2-5 words per line, some are have full sentences per line, some use capital letters to show their unique-ness, some are just completely sporadic. I really loved that, because it kept me intrigued the whole way through with fresh ways of presenting the free verse. I guess that's what I love about free verse too, you can do whatever you want with it as there are no rules.

General consensus? I adored this book. If you haven't read anything David Levithan yet, you haven't seen the best of YA verse or GLTBQ+ yet.

 ~Thank you Text Publishing Australia for sending me this copy!~

[Emily May · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure what it is about these books in verse that really does it for me but I'm yet to be disappointed by one. I've read some of those by Ellen Hopkins and Lisa Schroeder and I found that writing in verse only added to the emotions I felt as a reader. Maybe it's because it hones in on the point and it's all laid out within a few stanzas instead of meandering about.

Whatever the reason, The Realm of Possibility was no exception and I was constantly pulled through a rollercoaster of emotions - even though I admittedly didn't always get what was going on :)

This is definitely the kind of book that you either love or hate, both for the fact that it's in verse and because David Levithan has a very unique writing style (that I happen to love the more I encounter it).

[Tatiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know this novel was written in verse when I borrowed it from my library, but no matter, I love the format and David Levithan certainly has solid poetry-writing skills.

The Realm of Possibility is a collection of 20 stories told by the students of the same school, each written in its distinct voice and style - song lyrics, linebroken prose, free verse, etc.

These stories and lives are interconnected in very interesting and often unconventional ways. It is a pleasant surprise that Levithan didn't resort to writing some sob stories and melodramas. For a moment there I was picturing pregnant teens or druggies and prostitutes a la Ellen Hopkins's shock-inducing/stomach-turning/emotionally manipulative novels, but no, while there are some tales in which teens deal with body image issues or sickness of the beloved family members, most stories are very relatable and emotional in a not-too-sappy way - the pain of a breakup, the determination to step out of an older sister's shadow, the despair of unrequited love, the significance of the approaching 1-year anniversary of 2 boys' relationship. My personal favorites are Cara's story about her desire to become a better person and Anton's, in which he gives us an insight into a mind of a Goth kid in the back of a classroom.

All in all, a very enjoyable and memorable novel. Fans of books in verse will undoubtedly appreciate the quality of poetry. I am excited to read Levithan's Boy Meets Boy in the near future.

[Anish Kohli · Rating 4 out of 5]

9/1/20: Final review up

“Is love the gospel, or is the gospel love? Only the Lord knows, and the Lord isn’t saying. It’s up to the rest of us to make it out. To make it work.”

This book is not something that I would read normally. And what I do read normally, I have been away from that for almost a year now. The sole reason for that is how a small decision opened up a whole new world for me. One book made me look for more books like it and broadened my horizons. And I find myself trying out new genres and books that I normally wouldn’t. And it has been amazing doing that bcz of the great books that I have found along the way. This book is one of those!

First, a huge shout out to the crazy woman named Yamna for recommending this book to me. I have thoroughly loved this book and I find myself incapable of writing a review for the same at this point but try I shall none the less.

This book doesn’t fit in a box, I guess? It’s made up of short stories but then some of them are written in verse. Some have a few verses in the middle of a short story. The stories don’t have a lot of specifics and what I’d call world building. In a way, it comes close to the book Revenge by Yoko Ogawa. Although Revenge was considerably darker than this but both these books are a pleasure to read.

This book is sheer storytelling. There are so many characters whose voices we hear. But all of them are perfectly fleshed out in their own way. They are all raw, seething, dark, twisted, hurting and in love in their own ways but most of all, they’re all HUMAN.

I loved how all the characters felt so very real as if I could touch them. They could be the person sitting next to me at work or maybe it was the story of someone I knew at school or college. The stories are believable and well written. This book maybe about the kids in a high school but it is hardly limited to that. The kind of emotions and characters it deals with can be found in daily life, everywhere. The deep love of two people, the insecurities of a person who’s been hurt, the sense of non-belonging, feeling like a misfit and someone who just wants to love and be loved by that misfit. And the incapability of someone to love the one who loves them unconditionally. The need to live up to a pre-determined standards.

There are books that chalk out so many of your feelings in such a precise manner that it isn’t until the time that you’ve read a certain line that you realize feeling that way. And then all of sudden you realize a host of feelings, love and hurt, trust and betrayal, all alike that you didn’t know was there. The feelings that you believed you’d let go.

“I feel that if my soul could talk it would talk like this”

The writing was a very fresh experience to me. I haven’t read a book that had such a diverse writing style and honestly, I feel the author was trying to see what he can pull off too. There is this sad undertone in this book and it has the power to make your heart feel heavy! Such a way with words! I have soaked in so much from this book but I am just as sure that I left a lot out.
This is one book that I will be reading again for sure. It’s a beautiful book suggested to me by a beautiful person. A highly cherished read!

“We are so used to releasing words. We don't know what to do with them if they stay. Not on the walls. I'm not talking about the walls. I'm talking about what happens when they stay with us. No matter how many times we let them go, they come back. The words that matter always stay.”

26/12/18: RTC but oh this was a delight to read! So so great! Loved it! Shoutout to the crazy ass woman for the suggestion!

[Colby · Rating 2 out of 5]

How to describe this book...
It's about a bunch of people.
Who go to the same school. And they talk about stuff. So much is covered in this book, such as eating disorders, boys who feel the need to be big and strong, sex, homosexuality, and all that jazz. There are 20 different voices, one for each 'chapter'. Basically, the reason this gets such a low rating is that the characters would each talk for about ten pages (which, in verse, isn't very much.) and then it would move on to the next character without me having any attachment to the character at all. Honestly, you don't have much of an emotional connection with any of the characters by the end of the book. Really, the only character names I even remember out of the 20+ are Jed, Daniel, and Pete. That's not a very good ratio. That's because I didn't care about any of the characters at all - the three mentioned were just in the book more often, so I remembered their names.
I thought after reading Will Grayson squared, I would see how this author functioned on his own, and I will try another of his books because I really want to read Love is the Higher Law because of its subject matter, but I now see that John Green is the force that pushed WGWG to the awesomeness that it is. Not Levithan.
So right now, I'm lowering my eyebrows in a suspicious glare at David Levithan. We'll see how I feel about him in a little while, after I've read more of his work.

[Aso · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5 stars

note: I read this in english but to write a review in english need an extra effort so....

Saya membaca buku ini karena lagi butuh liburan dari novel-novel fantasi. Sudah beberapa kali kecewa dengan buku fantasi yang saya pilih, takutnya lama kelamaan saya malah terjerumus dalam reading slump.

Saya butuh sesuatu yang fresh dan tidak lazim bagi saya, dan akhirnya saya bertemu dengan buku kumpulan cerita yang disusun seperti bait bait dalam puisi tapi ternyata tiap ceritanya saling berhubungan ini. Dan saya pusing mau sebut buku ini jenis apa? kumcer? kumpulan puisi? novel?. kata orang sih ini verse novel, tapi gak ngerti juga apa maksudnya.

The Realm of Possibility adalah buku ketiga dari David Levithan yang saya baca  setelah Boys Meet Boys dan Everyday, ketiga-tiga nya syukurlah memuaskan saya. Bagi saya format dengan multiple PoV di buku ini mirip dengan Everyday (atau Everyday yang mirip buku ini, gak tau deh), tapi yang membuat fresh adalah, isi buku ini ditulis dalam bentuk puisi, dan saya tidak familiar dengan puisi. Puisi bagi saya, adalah untuk orang yang sophisticated. Namun puisi dalam buku ini sederhana, malah kayak seperti orang yang bercerita. Cocok sekali untuk anak muda penggemar YA.

20 cerita dalam 20 puisi melalui 20 sudut pandang yang berbeda yang terhubung satu dengan yang lainnya bagi saya itu Cerdas. Saya kagum dengan buku Everyday, Everyday tapi saya lebih kagum dengan buku ini.

Tema yang diangkatpun sangat dekat dengan kehidupan anak muda jaman sekarang seperti cinta, bullying, rokok, agama, sex, persahabatan, keluarga dan lain lain.

Di bawah ini adalah catatan catatan yang sempat saya buat di handphone saat membaca chapter semi chapter buku ini. Ini bukan review tapi semacam opini saya sebagai pembaca awam.

Bagian 1
Smoking : kisah kasmaran anak manusia dalam tiap isapan asap rokok. I never thought that smoking would be that romantic and leave a deep impression on me.

Tinder Heart : ketika kamu butuh bantuan jangan ragu, jangan takut, jangan sungkan untuk memintanya. Karena orang yang menyayangimu pasti selalu ada untuk membantu.

On the inside : puisi untuk para jomblo yang nasibnya stuck, tidak beranjak dari friendzone, dan hanya bisa menangis dalam hati melihat gebetannya jadian dengan orang lain yang sebenarnya gak pantas buat si gebetan tersebut.

Bagian 2:
My girlfriend is in love with Holden caulfield: sepasang kekasih yang marahan gara gara si cewek jatuh cinta sama tokoh dalam sebuah novel. david levithan kayaknya gak suka deh sama novel catcher in the rye. dia menumpahkan uneg uneg ketidak sukaannya terhadap Holden dalam cerita pendek ini, melalui sudut pandang si cowok. padahal ini novel favorit saya loh. cekikikan sendiri bacanya karena yang diomongin sebenarnya masuk akal semua.

Subuarban myths: kumpulan beberapa kejadian yang agak aneh. Saya suka cerita/puisi yang terakhir tentang anak outcast di sekolah yang menjadi stalker.

Gospel :  mirip dengan cerita yang pertama Smoking, tapi yang menjadi perekat Anton dan Gail di sini adalah lagu puji pujian di gereja. Sweet dan unik.

lying awake beside you, these thoughts run through my head : Well done David, ini salah satu puisi favorit saya dalam buku ini. Pokoke, Angst to the max. kisah dari sudut pandang cewek yang merasa tidak pantas mendapatkan cinta dari cowok, karena masa lalunya yang kelam. Seandainya cinta seperti nafas, di tiap helaan tidak pernah mengingat masanya yang telah lewat. Pokoknya angst dan quotable banget.

Bagian 3:
Fragments : bagi saya yang awam banget sama puisi, chapter ini simply beautiful. Ada pesan yang dalam di balik kalimat kalimat sederhananya. Walaupun agak agak gak ngerti juga sih.

The Day: ketika tiba di puisi ini saya baru sadar kalau beberapa kisah dalam buku ini saling berhubungan. seperti kisah ini, berhubungan dengan dua kisah sebelumnya, silahkan figure it out sendiri yang mana. intinya sih, bagaimana proses move on nya seorang cowok dari cewek yang telah mencampakkannya. di sini kita bisa belajar pentingnya orang orang terdekat ketika kita sedang down. dengan dukungan teman Jed (lihat puisi smoking) dan saudara laki-laki nya Zack, Jamie akhirnya bisa move on dari cewek yang ia anggap sempurna sebelumnya, dan ini dikisahkan dengan puisi yang cukup dalam dan panjang dan angst yang meluap luap (?), tapi ditutup dengan manis dan optimis. kamu yg baru saja dicampakkan silahkan baca puisi ini.

Strong : awwww i cannot help it, once again awwwww.  this is a sad poetry but at the same time it's so sweet. perfecto. Intinya adalah love conquer all. Dalam cinta segala perbedaan bukanlah jurang pemisah namun merupakan hal yang menjadi daya tarik, cieeeeh.

The Patron Saints of Stoner: puisi ini dimulai dengan lucu, kemudian sedih, dan diakhiri dengan manis. Hahaha setelah rokok, lagu lagu gospel, sekarang ganja yang mempertemukan satu lagi pasangan. Ya sutra lah mas David Levithan.

Bagian 4

Writing : "The words that matter always stay." Keren. jangan anggap enteng kekuatan kata kata. mereka bisa menjatuhkan, bisa pula menginspirasi.

Your Sister: tak ada yang paling berharga bagi kita selain keluarga. saudara apalagi kakak adalah seseorang yang selalu bisa kita andalkan.  Walaupun kadang menjengkelkan dan berharap mereka untuk hilang saja. namun selalu ada momen di mana kita kangen dengan kehadiran mereka. di kisah ini kita disuguhi kisah betapa sulitnya hidup di bawah bayang bayang seorang kakak yang sempurna. rasa jengkel muncul ketika guru guru dan teman terus membandingkan kita dengan kakak. namun bukan berarti kita harus terus berdiam di bawah bayangan tersebut. kenapa kita tidak menciptakan sinar kita sendiri. dan itu bukan alasan untuk membenci kakak kita sendiri. another happy ending poetry.

Comeuppance : "Being a bitch is easy. It's finding the alternative that's hard". Semua orang bisa menjadi orang yang lebih baik namun itu butuh usaha ekstra. Dibutuhkan suatu turning point untuk sadar bahwa selama ini kita bukan orang yang baik. butuh shock therapy untuk membuka mata kita. Tapi di mana ada kemauan di situ ada jalan (halaahh).

The Grocer's Daughter : Jatuh cinta sendiri dalam diam. Semua orang pernah merasakannya. Tidak semua cinta harus diungkapkan. Kadang cinta akan lebih terasa jika dipendam dalam dalam dan dinikmati dalam kesendirian. Hahaha. This poetry is a bittersweet one. I like it. Gue bangettt

Part 5

Experimentation: Sex and love and other things. I don't know man, I don't know...

Unlonely : sekali lagi puisi yang "dalem". Kurang ngerti.

Escapede: This. This. I need a friendship like this one. Melakukan hal hal yang ridiculous sampai yang gila bersama. Gak perlu sering bertemu, namun selalu membawa kebahagiaan di tiap pertemuannya, dan kamu bisa mempercayakan hidup mu pada sahabatmu itu.

Possibility : Aaawwww, kalau memang sudah jodoh gak akan ke mana. hehehe. everything is possible.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how David Levithan does it. But he does.

This book may look odd at first. You flip through the pages and find that it looks more like a collection of poetry than a novel. But that's the beauty of it. The unique quirkiness of it that allows for 210 pages of words floating along a river of human emotions. Or something like that.

I found myself trying to keep track of the name of the character while reading each poem-like prose. But as I went on, I realized I didn't need to try so hard. That will come with re-reading. Reading this book is less about the story and more about the emotions and thoughts. Reading this book is like reading journal entries of individuals bearing their hearts.

This book is beautiful. It swept me away in ways that I'm not sure I have words for. I've read Levithan's "Boy Meets Boy". I'm excited to continue making my way through his books.

~~~

Future readers - I don't want you to get your hopes and expectations out of control. That would only spoil everything. Remember what I said up top. This book may seem odd to you at first. It isn't written like most other books, but if you open your heart you'll get the hang of it in no time. <3

[Yamna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book four months ago and still trying to think of a suitable review.
But I've decided that I can't.
I just can't.
This book has too many sides, too many stories interwoven to form a lovely nest and too many topics for me to cover in a review.
And that's why I loved it.
I would have called it the best of 2017 but I'm afraid another book has taken its place.
In a high school, you always find questionable characters, lonely people, evil friends, backbiters, depressed kids, suicidal thoughts, bullies, victims and more. It's a place where kids are in the stage of learning the difference between right and wrong. And it's where kids slowly start to accept the reality that soon they will be adults. Where uni life demands more attention and more seriousness, high school life is like living in a trance; you want it to both end and not end.

And to voice out these feelings, the author speaks to us through twenty voices. All kids from the same school, all with several problems, and all with different personalities.

And though it's a hard feat to achieve, David succeeded in reaching the tiniest parts of our hearts through

1. Subtly voicing out what the child within each one of us feels.
"People called them freaks not because they were identical, but because they were so damn happy."

2. Making us feel things we do not want to feel
"Yes, he is dressed in darkness. But my eyes are getting used to the dark."

3. Getting us to wonder what it will be like to be a teen in love
"I was amazed by her slightness, by the bones of her pale arms. She was so breakable. I wondered: If I lifted her, would it feel like a wing?"

4. Voicing out thoughts that make us ponder
"She was so light, but her emotions were heavy."

5. Head spinning philosophies
"Maybe this is what happens when life is no longer about bodies. You find yourself in your own body, and no matter how strong it is, it is separate. It contains its own space. It must find its own way."

"We are so used to releasing words. We don't know what to do with them if they stay. Not on the walls. I'm not talking about the walls. I'm talking about what happens when they stay with us. No matter how many times we let them go, they come back. The words that matter always stay."


6. Igniting a flame in your heart through his words
"Run outside during a thunderstorm
That downpour, that conquered hesitation, that exhilaration
That's what unlonely is like
The Discovery
This is what my voice sounds like
I don't need to be talking to someone else
To hear it"

7. Taking a book out of Halsey's Colors to describe people
"We can go weeks without speaking, and then, when my blue moods threaten to turn black, he will show up and tell me my moods are
azure
indigo
cerulean
cobalt
periwinkle
and suddenly the blue will not seem so dark,
more like the color of a noon-bright sky."

8. Aptly detailing relationships
"Our friendship is made of bendy straws, long midnight letters, my so-called life marathons, sleepless sleepovers, diner milkshakes, apron strings, a belief in beauty, sucking helium, and the most trust I have ever felt for anyone."

9. And lastly, proving his worth as an author
"There is always a possibility. The ring marks the realm of possibility
We will want to know each other
Years into days
Days into hours
Hours into minutes
Minutes into moments
Moments into
Possibility."

[Sophia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I often feel I am living in fragments, skipping

Over words, leaving the rest of the sentence
Blank in order to move to the next page.
Maybe there is hope in fragments, that what is lost
Can always be filled in by someone who knows."

Every person is a planet with an atmosphere, that sometimes collides or fuses with other ones. If this book shows anything, it's that we never know what really goes on in people's minds, even when we think we figured it out (like we think in high school, where everything seems predictable). The life in someone's atmosphere doesn't give us the clues we imagine as to what's happening on or in a planet itself.
'The realm of possibility' is a book about the daily life of students, but it's so much more to me. The poetic & thoughtful chapters, a little love & drama, experiments in style & devices; it all adds up to this wonderful image of what's going on in our heads & hearts when we're young.
I most enjoy the lines that paint a picture, where language makes me feel things I've pushed aside for too long, where the glimpses we get of the characters suddenly make me cry.
I understand why people dislike this book, it's not for everyone & it also took me a few tries to understand its full beauty. But the moment I was in the right mindset, ready to be touched & pushed away, then pulled in again - that's when I started to truly love it.

[Ritu · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book seemed extremely promising especially since it is a David Levithan book, but I am completely done reading about Teenagers who believe that their life is terrible(When it is pretty much regular) and go on Complaining about it. The issues mentioned here are so goddamn petty that I couldn't help rolling my eyes .
It's hard to believe that I was a teenager just two years ago ! I feel so old and matured already .

[Mia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Here's what I know about the realm of possibility-
it is always expanding. It is never what you think it is.
Everything around us was once deemed impossible. From the airplane overhead to the phones in our pockets to the choir girl putting her arm around the metalhead.
As hard as it is for us to see sometimes, we all exist within the realm of possibility. Most of the limits are of our own world's devising. And yet, every day we each do so many things that were once impossible to us."
The Realm of Possibility delves beneath the surface of the people we see every day. Instead of the tired, one-dimensional labels used in too many YA novels like The Jock, The Popular Girl, and The Gay Kid, we get The Girl Who Buys Pot for Her Sick Mother, The Boy Whose Girlfriend is in Love with Holden Caulfield, and The Girl Who Writes on Walls. Except we get twenty viewpoints- one from each of them.
And each of their narrations is special, with a voice separate from all the rest. It's fascinating to get a bite-sized chunk of someone's life, people you know and didn't think you did, who remind you of yourself or someone else- the girl you sit next to in Spanish class, the guy your sister is dating, the enigmatic friend- to get to see through their eyes and hear through their voices for a bit.
The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan is humorous, dark, lovable and deeply true, with characters as real as they are different. It's a look into how different people go through the same things, how we hesitate over the same dilemmas and share the same sorrows and joys as people we may not have thought twice about.
This book is about so many things. It's about The Big Ones, like Love, Loss, Grief, Breaking Up, Getting Over It. It's about being mean, being nice, being smart, being who you are. It's about getting back up, getting even, getting marijuana. It's about new discoveries, new love, new embarrassment, new sensations, new friends. About cigarettes and prom dresses and notebooks and our actions, big and small, and how they're perceived by others.
But mostly, as per its title, it's about all the possibilities we hold precariously in our hand at any given moment- the possibility that everything will turn out okay, and the possibility that it won't, as well as all the ways- kind and cruel, meaningful and trivial- that we connect with those around us.
There's a lot we can learn from teenagers, a lot that plenty adults refuse to hear or read, simply writing them off as horny emotional hormone factories. I hate when adults pretend like they were never teens themselves, but adolescence is really a time when you either find out who you are or try to get as far away as possible from it, and it is seldom isn't always pretty. I can see why people would want to distance themselves from it.
But to all the people that would, I would tell them to read this book first, and with an open mind. I would tell them to listen to the sex, to the awkwardness that comes with being a young adult, but also to the profound love and grief and pain that these characters feel. You might not like everything you read in it, but that's as natural as not liking everybody you meet.
-Mia

[Neil Franz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel-in-verse with 20 POVs. I like it as it's style is unique and unconventional but I didn't like it either since the characters didn't linger that much on me. The thing with these kind of books is that the connection built get lost fast. But it still a good book, anyway. This book made me feel what the teens truly feel as an individual and as a human.

[stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is a fantastic work of art.

20 separate people, united in this book, tell a story that is more than just about them, but about their school, society, friendship, love, and being a teenager.

i was very skeptical when i picked this up because usually verse-books don't do it for me. however, since this is my trip of reading David Levithan, i opened it. and man, am i ever glad!

it works kind of like a mystery - who is talking to who, who's name is what, how everyone intersects - but it's not overdone to that point - it just is. so many teens write poetry, and it seems to be a perfect way to communicate in this book.

and the writing! the writing is amazing - the voices of each individual are so clear and yet the book is cohesive. it's amazing. and jed! oh, jed, i love you. and charlotte and mary and lia and pretty much every person in this book. it's utterly brilliant.

i can't say enough.

"i am seeing, as if by the light of a match,
a glimpse of my life
and having it feel right.

this will linger."

"I'm talking about what happens when they stay with us. No matter how many times we let them go, they come back. The words that matter always stay."

"You think you know your possibilities.
Then other people come into your life
and suddenly there are so many more."

READ THIS.

[autumn · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to Be Alone
Remember that at any given moment
There are a thousand things
You can love

this is my favorite david levithan book (which is saying something) and one of my favorite contemporaries. i've read it a million times and every time i appreciate something new!

Ignoring all the strange roads that led to us
being in the same time and place, there is still
the simple impossibility of love. That all of our
contradicting securities and insecurities,
interests and disinterests, beliefs and doubts
could somehow translate into this common
uncommon affection should be as impossible
as walking to the moon. But instead, I love him.

[karlé · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's David Levithan, what do you expect?

[Jessica White · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review and more can be found at A Reader's Diary!!

I love teen fiction.
I love novels written in poetry form.
I love David Levithan.
But, I hated this book.
This was a fairly quick read for me, but nothing about it stuck with me. The main issue I had with The Realm of Possibility is that I couldn't keep track of the characters throughout the book. Each section started with a page listing all the characters that were going to be in that specific section, usually about 3 or 4 characters. See the poems in that section went in order of those characters listed at the verrrrrry beginning. I was constantly having to flip back and forth throughout the book just so I could recall which character I was reading.

However, there was one character that stood out to me.
I cannot recall her name, but she was the girl who invited the "metalhead" to church with her. I was intrigued by the fact that she so openly stood up for someone so different from herself. It was by far the most touching poem. She knew exactly who she was. She was comfortable with herself and her love in the Lord. But that boy was not comfortable with himself. Yet, he still attended her church and experienced her entire life through the hymns she sang. He even played her a little gospel of his own. Their relationship is just something that fit together so well.

Anyway, shout out to my sister for loaning me this book without telling me how confusing it would be!

[Kaje Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that should be in the library of every high school and middle school. All kinds of teenage relationships, problems and possibilities are explored in short autobiographical-style segments. The writing is sparse and lucid, and illuminates without preaching and with a minimum of sentimentality. There is hope, pain, acceptance, fear and love, and the clear message that all possibilities are human and shared. Highly recommended reading for adults too.

[fiksbaas · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You think you know your possibilities. Then other people come into your life and suddenly there are so much more"

[chickienuggies™ · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

This is basically a poetry anthology that reads like interconnected stream of consciousness short stories. Love, longing, and possibility are explored from multiple perspectives of students who all attend the same school. And it isn't just wishy washy stuff like I thought it might be. Somehow the author was able to bring out a convincing inner voice for each of the characters. Sometimes they felt so real that it made me uncomfortable. Felt like I was peering into someone else's deepest thoughts. Lots of enjoyable wordplay and a great introspective read that is short and bittersweet.

[Nicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't mean to read this in one go, it just sort of happened. I wasn't sure at all about the form, particularly: it's very hard to please me with poetry because I look for very specific things. And honestly, I'm still indifferent to that choice even for this book, which I enjoyed quite a lot. On the one hand, it works: poetry is so personal, and it brings out the different voices in this interlinked collection -- and being poetry, some of it is very dense and allusive. I enjoyed figuring out the links between poems, who knew who, and where and why their lives overlapped.

On the other hand, I prefer my poetry to be very dense and allusive, more so than in most of these. I think if it were all written like that, you'd lose all individuality of the voices, so it's probably for the best.

I liked the whole range of people and personalities, all warm and handled with respect. They're all people trying to get on with life, not clear good guys and bad guys. And the diversity of the characters -- straight, gay, black, white, Goth, church-goer, rebel... -- and their stories too. It's not all about who loves who, but also about family, friendship, faith, loneliness, fear, courage.

I think I'll have to go ahead and say I highly recommend this, even though I'm not so fond of the format.

[Alarra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually liked this quite a bit, but the low rating is for the unwieldy format. It's 20 interrelated prose-poems, each from a different character's POV, and as the book progresses we pick up different plotlines through hints back to earlier events in earlier poems (though some go nowhere, and that really annoyed me). The poems are a bit hit and miss in quality, and the stories they tell are the same, but there's a lot of heart in the characters. I particularly liked Anton and Gail's story - I thought the voices were very well brought out for the two characters, and that Gail's response was beautifully touching.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Realm of Possibility is the story of twenty diverse teenagers all attending the same high school. Their stories are sad, meaningful, and touching - they weave within one another and connect in the places the reader would least expect.

The unorthodox writing style confused me at first, but once I got into the characters the book took off. I did not absolutely love or hate any of the poems, but enjoyed some more than others.

Overall, a good book, recommended for people who are looking for unique stories told in verse.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was just not my thing at all.

[Norah Al-Tararwah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great experience! Such a wonderful book. I loved how it starts with Daniel and ends with Jed.

[Jarvis · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 srars rounded down to 3.

[Owen · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a fan of David Levithan, I was intrigued when I found out this book was written in verse, a compilation of poems. I was anxious to see how he would recreate the minds of teenagers in writing about love, life, etc. After reading it, I realized that it is just like any other collection of poems or short stories: some are better than others.

I am sad to say that I found the characters in this book very unrealistic. Teens don't act like this is in 2013, and I highly doubt they acted like that in 2004, when this was first published. As a teen myself, I've seen enough relationships and I don't believe teen romances should be classified as love. I don't believe teens even understand how to love someone. The word "love" is thrown around so often, and it happens sometimes as early as mere weeks after a relationship begins. And when later, after a breakup, they claim to hate each other and never loved the other person, that is not love. They do not acknowledge the fact that what they had in the beginning wasn't love at all.

So for all of the characters in this book to be in loving relationships and not care about sex, I just don't buy it. Unfortunately, I can't say that in general most teens would take sex over love. Teens are coming into their bodies and trying to understand their desires, and pretending they are all grown up and want and feel love is not realistic. The characters in The Realm of Possibility felt to me like those actors that play teens in movies but are really adults. As if they had experienced love and more, and then pretended like as teens they were wise beyond their years in the first place.
Also, I really doubt that in 2004 homosexuality was very accepted because although homophobia was mentioned briefly, it was seemingly less prevalent than in our society; in which I really think it is going to become less of a problem soon. I know that every problem in society wasn't going to be mentioned in a 200 page book, especially with a lot of pages being really tiny poems, but given the fact that sometimes Levithan writes about future Americas in which things are drastically different, I am a bit unsure about this whole situation.

Levithan did a good job of connecting the twenty characters through poems written about each other. I was pleased that it had a core through which the poems were connected and it made the book feel as if it had a purpose or main idea, even if it was never clearly expressed. The characters really understood where they were in the world and what love is, and I did like that.

This is a quick read and I wouldn't even say it is neccessary to read if you want to be exposed to David Levithan's work. He is a great writer but I don't think this book was his best. What ruined it was the constant attempts of philosophy and adult wisdom in minds that would not actually present that type of thing, because our brains don't fully develop until, what, 25 or so? Also, don't go into this expecting cute love stories because a lot of them actually have more serious tones.

[Rissa Flores · Rating 4 out of 5]

To be more specific, 4.5 stars.

"Here’s what I know about the realm of possibility— it is always expanding, it is never what you think it is. Everything around us was once deemed impossible. From the airplane overhead to the phones in our pockets to the choir girl putting her arm around the metalhead. As hard as it is for us to see sometimes, we all exist within the realm of possibility. Most of the limits are of our own world’s devising. And yet, every day we each do so many things that were once impossible to us."

One school with 20 different voices. David Levithan's The Realm of Possibility captures 20 different personalities with their own stories to tell. Stories about their relationships, unrequited love, self-doubts, feelings and a lot more.

The book already captured my interest from the first chapters- the book's structure was so refreshing. As they sometimes say, less is more, and the book displayed just that. What I loved about the book was how some chapters are just composed of broken sentences and simple words but the message of the person speaking still gets through. The book shows you that you don't need long sentences with highfalutin words to impress a reader. A lot of chapters had a lot of depth despite its short length. So basically, the book may look/seem incomplete at first, but it's really not.

What I also loved about the book was how it was really filled with different types of personalities. I also loved how each of the stories connect to each other; how someone's story was someone else's minor supporting detail. Probably the only reason why I'm not giving this book a perfect 5-star rating was that sometimes I wanted to read more than what I was already reading. Haha, okay sort of hard to explain, but hopefully when you do get to read the book you'll eventually get what I'm saying. :D

Overall, it was definitely a fantastic read. You can finish this book in one day or even in a matter of hours. Light and fun, but you will surely get something from it. A great read!

[AP · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Realm of Possibility is a book of collated poems. This is really an interesting read because all of the poems made up by each character are bound to fall into such similarities they all have, despite of the boundaries the society has created. The book also covers a lot of important social themes - that's one of the main reasons I love this book. It might be a bit hard to follow along in the beginning because c'mon we're talking about David Levithan here he hates following the standard rules of novel writing - but seriously give it a try, trust me. You'll love it. Lovely, artistic "prosetry".

[Cath · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 stars.
I've read a few of David Levithan's books and I've liked them. And I liked this one.

This is a book of poetry, it's written beautifully and so simply as well. Many peoples stories are told in this short book and their lives all connect with each other's somehow.

This book was a great voice for all those angry teenage emotions, a voice for people who may not realise what others are going through.

A lovely short book with diverse characters and powerful messages.