“The Heart is Not a Size” by Beth Kephart

Award-winning adult author Beth Kephart is getting attention for turning her talents to YA fiction. Her latest book, “The Heart is Not a Size” has considerable buzz going into awards season. I can understand the appeal from the award committees. The book is one of those rich literary novels that give English teachers a deep thrill. It’s also one of those YA novels that seem to be labeled YA because of teen protagonists, rather than literary style. For me, the problem is that the literary trappings disguise a meandering plot. It’s a story beautifully told, but not a particularly compelling tale. And it should be. There are strong characters: Georgia and Riley are best friends at one of those moments in life, the end of Junior year, when the pressures of the next step in life seem overwhelming. They decide to spend two weeks in Mexico on a social service project. Georgia wants to find purpose in an overly stable life, Riley wants to escape the confines of her loveless home. The girls are well-off, suitably self-absorbed yet curious, straining at their self-definitions like most teens. The writer tries to focus on Georgia’s internal explorations, but ends up veering along a multitude of storylines. In the end, the teen angst, the prerequisite anorexic, the hints at a blossoming romance, all fall flat. In her acknowledgments, Ms. Kephart states that the book began “as a series of impressions glimpsed,” and that is how it comes off. The impressions one is left with are not unlike the photo essays Kephart made of her actual journey to Juarez. Despite the stabbing attempts at story, the end result is nothing but snapshots, colors, and incredibly rich descriptions. Phrases like “the parabola of sun” were too high-falutin’ for me, and didn’t help connect me to characters I found to be just a tad two-dimensional. This book being a very faint echo of Mackler’s “The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things” and Anderson’s “Catalyst,” I have no doubt that a specific teen reader might find characters to connect to, but to me, they sounded far too much like the life of a teenager remembered rather than created. Georgia sounds like the person I would describe myself as being with 20 years of hindsight. I’m not sure she sounds like one of the teens I interact with who lives “in the moment.” Nonetheless, this book is likely to show up on some recommended lists in the coming month. Read only if it is your cup of tea.