Going Under - Hardcover

Koja, Kathe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374303932 ISBN 13: 9780374303938

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2006

Synopsis

Because all my life had been a chrysalis, with you, Ada and Marshall and our house; even though we did other things and saw other people, the summers at the lake, and all those homeschoolers' parties, it was still always just – us.

Hilly and her brother, Ivan, have been homeschooled by their parents. All their lives it has been just the two of them – Ivan and Hilly, brother and sister, pilot and copilot. Until Hilly breaks out of their cozy cocoon to work on the local high school literary magazine as an extracurricular activity. Ivan feels betrayed: it's no longer just the two of them. And when Hilly goes into a depression after the suicide of a friend she has made at the magazine, she drifts even further away from Ivan. Hilly's parents insist that she see a psychotherapist. Ivan steps in to help manage Hilly's recovery by taking her to and from her appointments but compounds the betrayal by establishing his own relationship with the manipulative therapist.

Through the alternating voices of Hilly and Ivan, and drawing on the myths of Persephone and Narcissus, Kathe Koja explores the souls of two teenagers caught in a world where love takes you deeper than you ever dreamed you'd go.

About this title

About the Author

KATHE KOJA is the author of several notable books for young adults, including Buddha Boy and The Blue Mirror, both ALA Best Books for Young Adults. She lives near Detroit, Michigan.

Reviews

Grade 9 Up–This novel mixes themes of betrayal, independence, and psychological manipulation with recognizable ancient Greek myths in a modern-day setting. A conniving psychologist pits two gifted, home-schooled siblings against one another, the narcissist Ivan and younger, more vulnerable Hilly (likened to Persephone). In alternating chapters, carefully paced to escalate the tension, each one tells about the assaults on their formerly close relationship. Hilly grows and finds her inner strength while Ivan simply refuses to change until his self-image cracks. Well executed in its setup, in its foreboding aura, and in the feel of each person's voice, the end result is unfortunate; the underlying character motivations are unconvincing. With the exception of Ivan's urgently earnest psychobabble (sickness can…be utilized as a mode of defense, a deep moat of illness around the castle of personality), neither one of the siblings appears to be either extraordinary or worth the machinations of the villain, whose evil actions are themselves unbaked. Still, for some sophisticated readers, the sense of paranoia and mythological references will resonate with deeply felt significance.–Rhona Campbell, Chevy Chase Neighborhood Library, Washington, DC
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Told in alternating chapters in the voices of a brother and sister, this harrowing, intense tale has a vividly drawn cast. Hilly and her older brother, Ivan, have been homeschooled by loving parents. To Ivan's great scorn, Hilly chooses to be part of a local high school's literary magazine; then a friend she makes there commits suicide. Pushed into therapy, Hilly is manipulated both by her brother and by her controlling therapist. Her voice is sad and loving and smart; his is equally smart, but self-centered. Both are near terrifying in the precise ways she recognizes her emotions, and he uses them as weapons. The therapist himself is a professional leech who publishes the work of the adolescent girls he treats and uses all kinds of emotional blackmail to get what he wants. The myths of Persephone and of Narcissus figure powerfully in the matrix of the story, which doesn't so much end as stop in a particular, possibly healing, place. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374303932
• ISBN 13: 9780374303938
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 120