The Cybils Speculative Fiction Bookmark:
As a panelist for Cybils YA Speculative Fiction, Round 1, I’m going to be briefly writing up some of the hundreds of book I read as part of the award. As panelist conclusions are not for public consumption, the purpose of these write-ups is to keep track of what I’m reading, and will mostly touch on plot synopsis, with minimal comments on thematic tropes.
Synopsis:Deirdre Moreno would like to just be the kind of girl who does well in school, makes her way in the world, and never looks back, but she can’t be. For one thing, anxiety stalks her like a rabid beast. For another thing, she’s got reasons for that anxiety; it’s been carefully cultivated by her father for years. She’s been “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” for so long that when her merit scholarship to her boarding school is revoked, it’s enough to send her seeking what she never, ever, ever thought she’d be looking to find: a demon, to make a trade. They’ll take body parts. You see people with prosthetics all the time, and you wonder if they’re happy, if they got what they paid for…
Dee finds the answers to many of her questions, when she meets a bunch of weird kids who call themselves “the heartless,” and the daemon who traded for their…hearts. She gets what she needs, to stay in school, but the possibilities for fortune and loss suddenly are much, much bigger than she’d ever imagined. There’s another world, just beyond a thin curtain of reality… and it’s incursions into this world are a terror Dee’s not ready to face. All she can do is hunker down and remember that the choices she made are what have gotten her this far — and all she has to do is choose to keep going. As things get more and more surreal, it’s one of the hardest choices she’s ever had to make.
Observations: This is a tricky novel to discuss without presenting spoilers, however, much of the narrative arc is obvious: girl meets demon, girl makes deal with demon, girl realizes she’s been a.) duped, b.) got what she didn’t think she wanted, c.) fades off into the unfinished lore of folktale history. Most readers have heard the phrase “selling one’s soul to the devil,” and read for English Lit the requisite cautionary lore from Faust, but this is an unique reimagining of devils, and those deals and exchanges. While most of the story is spent with Dee doing what she’s told, fulfilling expectations, the real story begins when she discovers how much one doesn’t have to lose, without a heart. How buoyed and lightened one’s decisions can be. Once she and her troop of “the heartless” are freed from the normal constraints of humanity, no one – including the daemon – can predict who they’ll become… or what they’ll do.
Conclusion: Collecting souls, to a demon, one would imagine has some point, but why would anyone want a heart? The answer of what one can do with a heart, that hopeful, deceitful, unpredictable, emotion-centric thing – and what or who we are as humans when we give ours away make for an absorbing narrative that will leave readers thoughtfully considering the state of their own vibrant, living, beating centers – and possibly leave them with an excuse to take up knitting again.
I received my copy of this book courtesy of the public library. You can find THE HEARTS WE SOLD by Emily Lloyd-Jones at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!
