Book review of We Are All So Good at Smiling by Amber McBride

In her second novel in verse, National Book Award finalist Amber McBride blurs the traces between fantasy and actuality.

Eighteen-year-old Whimsy has been hospitalized for the eleventh time in 10 years. Although her grandmother taught the younger conjurer that “Fairy Tales are real, / magic is real,” she additionally provided a warning: “Careful, Whimsy, / sometimes your own mind will unroot you.” When a green-haired boy named Faerry is admitted to the hospital, Whimsy immediately identifies him as Fae. 

When the 2 are launched from the hospital, Whimsy discovers that Faerry’s household just lately moved to her neighborhood. As Whimsy and Faerry are drawn each to one another and to the forest at the tip of their avenue, they uncover that their lives have intertwined earlier than, they usually embark on a journey to a haunted backyard the place the embodiment of Sorrow has trapped a quantity of fairy story characters. To free them and return residence, Whimsy and Faerry should face a fact they’ve spent years working from.

In a prolonged dedication at the start of We Are All So Good at Smiling, McBride explains that the novel “borrows from my personal experiences with clinical/major depression” and that she wrote it to remind herself and readers “that whenever you find yourself in Sorrow’s Garden—you have tools & you can find a way out.” The e book’s important again matter contains psychological well being assets, in addition to a playlist, a glossary and extra.

McBride conveys Whimsy’s battle with melancholy by way of uncommon and placing language, textual content alignment and construction. Words and phrases often seem in parentheses, mimicking intrusive ideas. When Whimsy speaks, the textual content is aligned on the right-hand facet of the web page, actually separating her speech from the remainder of the textual content and reflecting the way in which her melancholy alienates her from herself. McBride usually establishes after which modifications structural patterns, mirroring the disorientating nature of restoration. 

We Are All So Good at Smiling elevates the whole lot that made McBride’s debut novel, Me (Moth), so successful. Readers who cherished Ibi Zoboi’s American Street or Anna-Marie McLemore’s Blanca & Roja will particularly get pleasure from its mix of magic and emotion.