Hey, y’all! I’m Mandy, I’m new in town, and you’ll be seeing me in Oz working alongside the effervescent Emily. I recently earned an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, but until I earn my own shelf space at Lemuria, I’m hoping to earn your trust as a resource for all of you children’s, YA and Not-So-YA YA readers. I’m a recent transplant from California, where I’ve lived for the past six years. I’ve lived in every other region of the US and even spent eighteen months in Spain, but this is my first taste of southern living, and from tasting fried pickles with ranch for the first time to learning how to properly pronounce ‘Biloxi,’ I’ve found the experience thus far to be wholly fascinating.

As I considered what to tackle for my first blog, I kept thinking of the many Canadian YA authors I favor. Sigh. Poor Canadian authors. Unless they are given the honor of a major book prize (see: Tim Wynne-Jones’ Blink and Caution, Erin Bow’s Plain Kate), they are sadly underestimated, underrepresented, and undersold here in the USA. So today I’m turning the spotlight on a personal favorite in my YA library, Canadian Alan Cumyn’s 2011 novel, Tilt.

Tilt is the story of Stan, an awkward teen boy who is dealing with some majorly complex family drama while also seriously falling in love for the first time. I absolutely adore all of the characters in this book, even Stan’s dysfunctional parents. Full of human frailty, even when they make you mad, Cumyn’s fictional people find their way in to your heart.

The beauty of the novel lies in the inherent respect Cumyn has for his teen readers. Wholly realistic, believable, and riveting, the book is also brimming with true literary sensibility that only thousands of hours of revision and editing can produce. Each word is deliberate; the sentences so crisp, subtle and multi-layered that at times I was so overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of it that I had to set it down and turn the language over and around in my mind for awhile.

In a YA market that at times seems saturated with sloppily written and edited Get-The-Next-Hot-Thing-Out-NOW genre novels, it was such a joy to read a novel for real teenagers about a real teenager, written by an author who writes for the love of books and the people who read them rather than the love of hitting the trend and cashing in a seven figure paycheck.

While there is one fairly explicit (and authentically, painfully awkward) sex scene which some may prefer to avoid (so I feel obligated to mention it), it is not gratuitous by any means. I hope you will give Tilt a chance—and let me know how you like it. Stay tuned for more in coming months on my opinions on what is and is not “appropriate” in books for teenagers, which are many and varied. Until then, happy reading!

by Mandy

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