The Best This World Can Do: Thoughts about “Not Nothing” by Gayle Forman

Christian book reviewers face certain challenges. We could review only Christian books and be reasonably assured that we won’t run into glaring content problems like profanity, sex, abuse, or LGBTQIA themes. But many such “safe” novels aren’t particularly good when it comes to character development, skillful plotting, or literary excellence. We’re looking for truth, goodness, AND literary beauty when making recommendations, and if one of those qualities far outshines the others, the book can still be worth reading. God’s common grace allows non-Christian authors access to some degree of truth, if they are honest and observant.

But truth can be stretched, or obscured, or misapplied, as any mother of verbal and inventive children knows. At Redeemed Reader, we’ve all had the experience of beginning a book that seems totally recommend-able, only to run aground on problematic content. One mention of a secondary character’s same-sex parents or nonbinary friend won’t necessarily disqualify, if the rest seems worthy (see our review of The Science of Friendship, for example). But to encounter a major character’s two loving moms midway through is like smacking a brick wall.

That was my experience reading Not Nothing, by Gayle Forman. Forman is best known for YA novels about dead teenagers like If I Stay, but recently broke into middle-grade fiction with Frankie & Bug. (F&B is kind of a prequel to Not Nothing, but I didn’t know that at first.) Alex is a troubled 12-year-old boy with an unknown father, an absent mother, and a terrible stain on his record. The very bad thing he did is not disclosed at first; all we know is that he’s under a court order of mandatory community service in a nursing home, where he sees the residents as “zombies” wandering aimlessly through their days. Even worse is Maya-Jade, the bossy girl who seems to be the self-appointed recreation director. It looks like a miserable summer until Alex meets Joseph Kravitz, a 107-year-old resident originally from Poland, who hasn’t talked for the last 5 years.

Something about the boy reminds Joseph of his lost love Okla (short for Olksandria, the Polish form of Alexandria). Whether because of Alex’s name or his wistful quality, “Josie” opens up and starts telling a story that will draw the boy into their relationship at the same time as it draws the boy out of himself.

Josie’s meeting with Okla was not auspicious, especially after he needled her into calling him a vulgar name for “Jew” (we’re not told what the name is, though older readers can guess). But he’s attracted nonetheless, and when he pursues their relationship she is touched. “When you forgave me my transgression,” she tells him, it’s “as if you’ve invited out my better self and, in doing so, invited me to rise to the occasion, rather than sink into it.”

Forgiveness and rising to a better self are thematic threads running through this story. Okla, a nominal Catholic, echoes the Lord’s Prayer with “forgive us our transgressions,” but with no appeal to God. Alex has a similar rough beginning with Maya-Jade, who he imagines looks down on him from her lofty private-school, rich-parent height. But as they get to know each other he discovers it’s possible to forgive her transgressions too.

Like Joseph, Maya-Jade is raised as a nonobservant Jew. When she invites Alex to a Shabbat dinner at her house, it’s not an occasion of God-given rest, but “a night for roast chicken and Challah,” during which her two moms offer a prayer to “Eternal Spirit who has given us life, sustains us, and allowed us to reach this occasion.”

This is secular religion that borrows from God’s revelation without acknowledging God, much less obeying him. “Our law is God’s law,” Joseph tells Okla before marrying her without benefit of clergy. “Let the mountain be our rabbi. The birds will be our witnesses. In God’s eyes, is that not enough?”

Perhaps it’s enough, in the desperate situation they find themselves in, for Poland in 1941 couldn’t get more desperate for a Jew. But Forman draws a direct line from Nazi bigotry to “hate crimes” against the LGBTQIA community. “Our law is God’s law” for the present day. once the two loving moms enter the scene, other appealing characters crowd in: the wise social worker who turns out to be a trans man, the sympathetic nonbinary guidance counselor, and the ebullient gay kid whom Alex attacked with a softball bat. It was called a hate crime, and so it was, but hatred of his own lousy circumstances, not of gays. “I am not nothing!” he screams just before the attack.

But he believes otherwise. The patience and understanding of others help him “rise to the occasion of his life,” where he acknowledges guilt and desires to “pay a price for his actions.” This takes the form of confession and asking for forgiveness, after which he is free to define himself by the best in him, instead of the worst.

This is the best our world can offer: a hopeful nod toward human goodness with the acknowledgement that “Life is not fair. The best you can hope is that it is just.” We long for justice, but after 6000 years of human experience, is that a reasonable hope? Is the answer within us, if we just try hard enough? Or must real forgiveness, renewal, and justice come from outside? To most readers of Not Nothing, I suspect it’s not even a question. They’ll be swept up by the appealing characterization, the deft storytelling, and the deep sincerity of this novel (all stuff of Newbery gold). But their true worth, the “not nothing” of bearing God’s image and receiving his other-worldly love, will be lost to them.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

Reflection: When Is a Story More than a Story? Thoughts on “The Marvels” by Brian Selznek.