Review: Gone, Gone, Gone

Author: Hannah Moskowitz
Publication: April 12th 2012
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Hardcover, 288 pages 
Buy: The Book Depository

It wasn’t easy to organize my thoughts on this book. It’s been a while since I’d added something to my ‘books that changed me’ shelf, and although Gone, Gone, Gone didn’t affect me as strongly as Raw Blue, for example, I’m pretty sure it’ll stay with me for a very long time. Truthfully, for a while I even thought my rating would be four or four and a half stars, but then I decided that I need to make it abundantly clear that this is a book everyone needs to read, and that it’s likely to change at least some small part of you and show you beauty in that calm, quiet way I’ve learned to appreciate.

A year after 9/11, two 15-year-old boys in Maryland are trying to find a way to live with themselves, and then maybe with each other. Craig’s boyfriend Cody went a little crazy after his father died in the Pentagon on 9/11. Craig is trying to get over him by taking care of as many animals as he possibly can, but he’s mostly unsuccessful. Even though he’s only 15, the loss of his lifelong friend and first boyfriend changed Craig irreparably. That’s why he’s fighting so strongly against his attraction towards the new boy in school, Lio.
Abandoned by his mother, Lio just moved from New York to Maryland with his father and two sisters. When they were children, both he and his identical twin got leukemia – the only difference is that Lio made it, and his brother didn’t. He is a quiet, quirky boy who rarely talks and dyes his hair many different colors at once.

These two boys – I can’t bring myself to call them characters – will warm their way into your heart before you even realize what’s happening. Hannah Moskowitz left nothing to chance. She built two people with fears, habits and family connections, people that are incredibly complex, but identifiable, and so fragile that it’s impossible not to love them and feel protective towards them.

I really can’t go into this right now. I probably shouldn’t have kissed him back. But I’ve sort of wanted to kiss him ever since I saw his fucked-up hair that day in Ms. Hoole’s class, and really since the conversation right after, when he told me he cuts it when he’s nervous, and I immediately wanted to know everything in the whole world that makes him nervous, and everything in the whole world about him.

Although it tackles hard subjects such as cancer, loss of a family member and insanity, Gone, Gone, Gone is essentially a warm and hopeful story. It’s a book I want my kid and my nephews to read when they reach their teens, along with Suicide Notes and Brooklyn, Burning.
I have an e-arc of this (thank you, S&S), but I’ll preorder a copy for myself right this second, and while I’m at it, I’ll get one for my sister as well. I have a feeling this book will bring a smile to my face whenever I see it on my shelf and I’ll certainly want to reread it many times in years to come.