Madeleine and Rogan are first cousins, best friends, twinned souls, each other’s first love. Even within their large, disorderly family—all descendants of a famous actress—their intensity and passion for theater sets them apart. It makes them a little dangerous. When they are cast in their school’s production of Twelfth Night, they are forced to face their separate talents and futures, and their future together.
Title: Illyria
Author: Elizabeth Hand
Publisher: Viking Juvenile (May 13, 2010)
Pages: 144
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Filed under: Books, Reading Lists
Sounds intriguing, did you enjoy it?
I did enjoy this one. Dark and atmospheric, it was a stand-out for sure. It one the World Fantasy Award in 2008 for a previous British publication. The fantasy element was subtle, more of a magical realism than outright fantasy. It’s essentially a story of forbidden love but also much more than that. You have crumbling families, waning wealth, the passion of the theater, ambition, conformity, wasted talent and so on.
The edgy, explicit description of the cousins’ relationship is charged with the thrill, sensuality and angst of young love. I didn’t find it to be gratuitous but I’m sure others might. Still, I would recommend this for mature readers, not just because of the sex and drugs that appear in the story but also because it’s simply a mature story. The characters move into adulthood, reflecting on their accomplishments and failures. It’s clear to me the story wasn’t written as a YA story and that is a bonus for me. It isn’t constrained by expectations of the genre, yet it still is essentially YA.