UrbanWireBy Sylvia Koh
A bittersweet tale about friendship, imperfect families and neglect, No and Me revolves around a 13-year-old child prodigy, Lou Bertignac, who befriends a destitute teenager living on the streets, No, when she works on a school presentation about homelessness.
Their friendship continues even long after the project has ended, and Lou, despite being a painfully shy girl with problems fitting in at school, finds a confidante in No, a capricious and self-destructive realist who seems to be her polar opposite.
Unable to let No go back to the life of a vagrant, Lou goes to great lengths to give her a place in her home. Yet, Lou’s family life is not perfect either and as she comes to learn, it also takes more than clean clothes, food on the table, and a comfortable home to help No.
Originally published in France, No and Me is Delphine de Vigan’s first English novel and an award-winning bestseller with the 2008 Prix des Libraries (The Booksellers’ Prize) to its name.
The heart of the story, and what keeps us invested, is Lou’s determination to challenge one condescending testament: “Things are what they are and there are lots of things you can’t do anything about.”
Delphine de Vigan’s ability to capture Lou’s voice consistently and sharply is demonstrated beautifully by the quick-witted, simple, and plain narrative that propels the novel. Lou’s naïve world-view incurs her to be labelled a “utopian”, while her endearing empathy for others and matter-of-fact way of uttering sage-like truths is somewhat reminiscent of Mark Haddon’s autistic protagonist, Christopher, in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time.
Through Lou, de Vigan steadily reveals how the shortfalls of society keep the homeless on the streets, how there is a lack of proper intervention from the people, and, implicitly, the government to rectify the issue.
We can send supersonic planes and rockets into space, and identify a criminal from a hair or a tiny flake of skin… yet we’re capable of letting people die in the street
– Lou
These few bits of social commentary are what keep de Vigan’s fourth novel rooted as it unfolds stories of friendship, family, neglect, heartbreak, depression, and circumstance in a socially relevant fashion.
With compelling short chapters, No and Me explores grief and loss in a deceptively simple and engaging narrative that has readers turning the pages until the very end.
Title: No & Me
Author: Delphine de Vigan
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
Publication: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Rating: ★★★★✩