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You are here: Home / Favorites / Literary Crush: Chase from Some of the Parts

Literary Crush: Chase from Some of the Parts

March 21, 2017 by Cassie Leave a Comment

Literary Crush: Chase from Some of the PartsSome of the Parts by Hannah Barnaby
Published by Knopf Books for Young Readers on February 16th 2016
Pages: 304
Amazon|IndieBound|B&N
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Sometimes bad things happen, and we are not the same when they are over.
For months, Tallie McGovern has been coping with the death of her older brother the only way she knows how: by smiling bravely and pretending that she's okay. She’s managed to fool her friends, her parents, and her teachers so far, yet she can’t even say his name out loud: “N—” is as far as she can go. But when Tallie comes across a letter in the mail, it only takes two words to crack the careful façade she’s built around herself:
ORGAN DONOR.
Two words that had apparently been checked off on her brother’s driver’s license; two words that her parents knew about—and never confided to her. All at once, everything Tallie thought she understood about her brother’s death feels like a lie. And although a part of her knows he’s gone forever, another part of her wonders if finding the letter might be a sign. That if she can just track down the people on the other end of those two words, it might somehow bring him back.
Hannah Barnaby’s deeply moving novel asks questions there are no easy answers to as it follows a family struggling to pick up the pieces, and a girl determined to find the brother she wasn’t ready to let go of.

After a long hiatus, Literary Crush is back with Chase from Some of the Parts by Hannah Barnaby.
Name: Chase Abbott
Age: 16
What does he look like? Tall and lanky with dark curly hair and dark eyes. A dead ringer (please excuse the unfortunate pun) for the female main character’s dead brother.
What does he do? Reads biographies about Harry Houdini, fights with his dad, keeps a scrapbook of tragic deaths, and worries about Tallie McGovern.
Whom does he love? Tallie McGovern, the pariah of the school ever since her brother died in a car crash that was her fault. Tallie is going through a lot of rough stuff and has become obsessed with tracking down the recipients of her brother’s organs, and Chase gets pulled into her scheme largely because he’ll do anything he can to stop the pain he knows she’s in.
Why him? Chase Abbott is a bright spot in an otherwise simply okay novel. I love everything about who he is and how he treats Tallie and the way he lives his life, and I’m not just projecting because I’m married to a Chase. Chase quickly wins Tallie’s trust, because he’s honest with her in a way hardly anyone else is, and he keeps her trust because all he asks for in return is that she not lie to him. He doesn’t demand that she tell him the whole truth or share everything she’s feeling. He just asks that she not lie to him, and he’ll give her the same in return. He is there for her even when her motives are questionable. He understands that she’s doing what she needs to do, and he’ll help her to keep her safe. But what I really love about him is that in the end, when Tallie’s actions become dangerous to herself, he doesn’t fall into the classic trap of not saying anything because he doesn’t want to betray her. He helps her, both by being there when she needs him to be even when he doesn’t know all that’s going on, and by telling people better able to handle the situation when Tallie spirals into actions that are self-harming. I was so pleased to see that representation in a YA novel about grief and trauma — addressing the reality that sometimes loving someone means doing what’s best by them, even if it makes them hate you.

Memorable Quotes:

I let him talk, his voice floating around me like a cloud, and I think about how I wished so much, in the early days of after, that my brother would send me some kind of sign. A sign that he forgave me, or at least that things were going to be okay. Could this be it? A boy who looks like him, who is a bottomless well of words about magic and possibilities? Not a reincarnation of my brother of course, but maybe a representative.
‘I can’t,’ I tell him.
‘You can if you want to,’ he says.
I look at him. His eyes are the color of melted chocolate. I can see that he’s really listening to me, and I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t think I was completely crazy if I said I killed my brother and my parents donated his body and I have to make it up to Amy but I don’t know how.
‘You don’t owe me any explanations,’ he says. And then he adds, ‘I don’t require total disclosure. Only honesty.’
‘Meaning?’
‘You don’t have to tell me everything. Just don’t tell me anything that isn’t true.’
‘You don’t believe in lying by omission?’ I ask.
He shrugs. ‘There’s usually a good reason to leave out certain parts of the story. Just remember the story won’t make sense with holes in it.’
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