Author: Nina LaCour
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Copyright: 2009
Format: Audiobook
Hold Still Book Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XYJQa4u2jQ
School Library Journal Review:
Grade 10 Up—After losing her best friend, Ingrid, to suicide, Caitlin is completely immobilized. Unable to function, and refusing to visit a therapist, she begins the long journey to wellness alone. During this year of heart-wrenching, raw emotion, Caitlin finds Ingrid's journal, which not only reveals her descent into irreversible depression, but also serves as Caitlin's vehicle for renewed hope in the future. The book is written with honesty, revealing one's pain after the loss of a loved one. Caitlin learns, with the help of new friends and her parents, that there is life after Ingrid.—Sharon Morrison, Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Durant, OK
Hold Still is a quiet, but noteworthy book. It tells the story of Caitlin, whose best friend Ingrid commits suicide. The only thing she leaves behind for Caitlin is her last journal, with drawings and entries that speak of depression, loneliness and finally the loss of hope.
This novel follows teen Caitlin's difficult year back at school after the loss from suicide of her best friend, Ingrid. Caitlin's interactions with peers and teachers are often painful, such as the strange withdrawal of her previously adoring photography teacher and acquaintances either insensitively asking how Ingrid killed herself to over-gushing and treating Caitlin better than they ever have before. I feel like LaCour skillfully captured pretty much every awkward reaction, to an extent, that could happen in the wake of such a tragedy.
Hold Still mostly takes place in the fictional inland East Bay suburb of Los Cerros, but the most important aspect of the setting is not geography, but the shaky terrain of adolescence. There may be a fortunate few readers who can't identify with feeling insecure around the popular kids, wondering how to approach a new potential friendship, and what to do about a crush, but for the rest of us, these matters will be all too familiar. I'm thankful that I never had a friend commit suicide, but the swirling mix of despair, rage, guilt, loss, antisociability felt painfully realistic.
This is, of course, a novel of slow and hard-earned recovery, and it really feels genuine. Caitlin's recent solitude makes her understand what makes the new outsider girl at school tick (Dylan, an artsy lesbian from the city) and they slowly and awkwardly become friends. Caitlin discovers one of Ingrid's journals and finds that her friend was experiencing a lot of pain she never knew about, and may not have been able to help with. However, she also experiences Ingrid's catharsis through art, and her longing for a genuine relationship. Despite the fact that Ingrid is dead, I really felt her presence in this book. She is in the photos Caitlin takes, in her memory and in her journal entries. She is portrayed in so many facets: The talented artist, the friend and daughter, the reckless teen. Some of these thoughts spur Ingrid on toward her own propensity for building things and realizing her crush on a classmate. A nice pacing of ups and downs that seems to do a realistic job of capturing the sorrow and unexpected joy in the year after a major loss.
What this story shows off more than anything is Nina's keen ear for powerful truths, and just as good acting draws attention not to itself but to the story being told, Nina's gracefully unadorned style provides a clear window into the human heart--and in that way, it's the best style of all. Hold Still was executed brilliantly. There was enough hope in the novel to keep me reading but still enough pain to break my heart. This was such a realistic depiction of someone going through an unexpected loss. I grieved with Caitlin and I went with her in her journey of figuring out how to live without someone you love. It was so fresh and new to see Caitlin find solace in her creativeness. She was creating new things out of the wreck around her. The writing was beautiful and the flow of the plot was smooth (as much as it can be concerning suicide).
