. this book was beautifully written, it was one of the first books to ever make me cry at the end, This is one of my favorite books of all time, I first read it as a junior in High School, and related to deeply to some of the issues that the protagonist faces.
While I did not have the added stress of dealing with cystic fibrosis, I felt empathy towards her feelings of meaninglessness.
Somehow, Halpin describes life and death in a way that makes each individual seem meaningful, I felt comforted in his descriptions of infinity, rather than terrified as I normally do, The voice was beautiful and there were passages that touched me so deeply that I framed them, The ending was beautiful, and was not overwritten or trite,
“But here, Ms, Pelletier, is the thing. Without infinitesimals, the calculus as we know and love it simply wouldn't exist, It is these nearlyzero, sortofzero, sometimeszero quantities that allow us to understand the world, Something which seems to be nearly nothing turns out to be crucial to everything, So though I, or for you that matter, or any of us, may be, as a collection of atoms, practically indistinguishable from zero, this does not necessarily mean we are insignificant.
Indeed, it may be that we are actually crucially important, ”
Brendan Halpin, Forever Changes Brianna is just about to start her senior year of high school: all regular classes, plus AP Calc.
But despite being a math whiz, she's not really gungho about applying to colleges, because she's not sure if her cystic fibrosis will allow her to even live long enough to bother.
She knows her time is limited, and so she spends that time with her friends, her family, and yes, with calculuspeople and ideas that make her happy.
Brianna is more or less a regular teenager who goes to parties, helps her friends through boyfriend troubles and parents' divorces, and just happens to have a terminal illness.
Her mortality is never far from her mind, but CF isn't her defining characteristic, She bonds with her calculus teacher who is himself staring an early death in the face due to heart disease as they discuss life, living, and the importance of infinitely small numbersand people.
The writing is a little clunky in places, though: the line "Even the fact that guys were buzzing around Melissa like bees did to that honeysuckle bush near the beach in the summer didn't bother Brianna" was a particular delight to parse.
On the whole, though, I liked this better than I'd expected to, It's not maudlin the way Lurlene McDaniel books are Brianna is very relatable as a character, The novel does require some suspension of disbelief, particularly in that Brianna is not the only student with CF at her high school, but her friend Ashley has it, too.
It is a tearjerker, of course, as we head toward the inevitable conclusion, but really this is about Brianna's relationships with the people around her.
The beginning was slow and that's why I didn't give it the fifth star, Other than that, I loved this, It was so deep yet somehow short! That's a talent, The characters weren't as developed in the end as I expected them to be but maybe that's what made it so unique.
Warning: I sobbed for fifteen minutes finishing this, SOBBED. the best book about a dying teenager in the world,stars.
Brendan Halpin, you're killin' me here with the tearjerkers! Good thing I like tearjerkers, . .
Good book for teens who like realistic fiction with a dash of gutwrench, I picked up this book thinking "oh it's gojng to be stupid, look at the cover, it's already corny, " And then I started reading it and I just couldn't put it down, The ending still has me dazed, like I still can't believe what happened, because the way the author was writing it didn't really give away anything, and if the author did maybe I just didn't want to believe it.
I recommend this book to anyone who wants to confuse themselves, to anyone who wants a good cry or laugh, Sooooooo traurig und viel zu kurz! Was für ein Buch, . .
Auch wenn ich am Anfang noch nicht so ganz in die Geschichte rein kam
und es auch stellenweise ein wenig "langatmig" wirkte, gab es doch immer wieder unglaublich tolle Stellen, Szenen und Sätze, dass man es einfach nicht aus der Hand legen wollte.
Was definitiv für das Buch spricht, sind die letzten Seiten, Ich hatte guteSeiten durchweg glasige Augen und stand am Schluss kurz davor, eine Träne zu vergießen, was bei mir wirklich viel heißt.
Diese Geschichte hat mich ganz schön aufgewühlt, bewegt und ich muss das alles jetzt erst einmal ordentlich sacken lassen.
Absolute Empfehlung von mir, . . mehr will ich auch nicht mehr sagen, . . I wish I loved math more so I could fully appreciate it, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt betweenandbecause cystic fibrosis hasn't been a real popular topic as of late, and I enjoyed the update in treatment.
a beautiful and very sad book, sitelinkForever Changes jumps into the life of a girl, Bri, with Cystic Fibrosis a disease/condition I know very little about.
It's an interesting read, Halpin doesn't make the book about Bri, or even about CF, He makes it about purpose,
Case in point: Throughout the narraration, Bri's dad is never read as "Bri's dad, . . " He's always "Dad. " So, even though it sometimes feels like first person narration through Bri it really isn't, Which makes it seem like the book isn't really strictly about Bri as much as it's about her purpose,
Bri's a whiz kid at math a shooin for MIT, and the unlikely hero of the book is her overweight math teacher.
Being a social studies teacher who was never very good at math I was disappointed with Bri's disinterest in MY favorite subject.
Social studies was a drag throughout the book, You really let me down there Halpin, . . really let me down Although, Halpin really encouraged my teaching with his sitelinkLosing My Faculties so I guess we're square, . . it's my alltime favorite memoir, go on put it on your goodreads "toread list," what could it hurt, . . I know we all have different favorite subjects, . . sigh.
I won't say too much more about the book because I hate putting up spoiler alerts,
I will say, I found the math teacher's name interesting, "Mr. Eccles. " He said at one point in the book that infinity is inside every person, One of the craziest, and discussed verses of the Bible comes from Ecclesiastes:where it says, ", . . He has set eternity in the hearts of men, . . " Also, Ecclesiastes is all about the purpose in life you all know the beginning "Vainity of vainities all is vainity, . . " everything is pointless It says that for the majority of the book, but then it goes on to say that life itself is beautiful, and whatever you do enjoy your life.
That's a rather surfacy summary of Ecclesiastes, but you get the connection I'm trying to make, And hey, maybe there's no connection, . . maybe Halpin was high when he wrote this, like the songwrites of the music group "Love" I don't know, but it's worth reading.
:a. m. , Brianna Pelletier gets ready for her daily pounding, As she lies on the couch, her dad beats her chest, then her back, coaxing the mucus out of her lungs.
The pounding doesnt take care of everything, Briannas held out for a long time, but a body with cystic fibrosis doesnt last forever, It doesnt matter that Brianna has a brilliant mathematical mind or that shes a shooin for MIT, Or even that her two best friends are beautiful, popular, and loyal, In the grand scheme of things, none of that stuff matters at all, The standard life, lasting maybe seventyfive years, is no more than a speck in the sum total of the universe, At eighteen, and doubting shell make nineteen, Brianna is practically a nonentity, Of course shes done the math, But in her senior year of high school, Brianna learns of another kind of math, in which an infinitely small, nearzero quantity can have profound effects on an entire system.
If these tiny quantities didnt exist, things wouldnt make the same sense,
Funny, tearjerking, and memorable, the authors second novel for teens introduces readers to an extraordinary girl who learns that the meaning of forever can change, and that life and death is filled with infinite possibilities.
It's not like the books that I usually read, but right now I am having troubles with myself, and I read this and somehow, the Mathematical statements he did made me think critically, about life and things in it, and how small things make up a whole and every infinitesimals are important and beautiful.
Might reread this before I die, ha,
The fact that this is not merely the typical YA novel made it even better, Also, it made me think of Mathematics in a different light, I've always hated it, but with Halpin or Mr, Eccles, I would like to believe, he made me WANT to really know what it is, and for me to be able to understand such a strange but beautiful, if not crazy, thing is to study Mathematics and be some kind of math whiz kidding but yeah, I'm taking kumon.
It's a really good book, and I didn't actually expect that when I started it, This sat on my shelf for ages because I suspected it would be a tough read, A teen with cystic fibrosis But I was pleasantly surprised, because rather than taking advantage of every opportunity to wring a tear from his readers' eyes, Halpin treats the majority of the book as a smart, thoughtful YA story.
Sure, Brianna spends time thinking about her own mortality and her illness, her role as a mentor to a younger girl with CF, and her own mentor who recently died but it's also got all those classic high school moments, which serve to emphasize how Brianna's life is different without turning the whole thing into a pity party.
Then there's her love of math, and the fascinating conversations she gets into with her math teacher they don't require remembering anything you learned in high school, and my eyes didn't glaze over from the geekdom, but the story doesn't shy away from the fact that Bri is looking forward to going to MIT and being surrounded by math nerds.
And this is really an important part of the story, not just a fact about Bri to make her seem unique.
AND it didn't make me cry until right at the end, which I appreciated,
It's a quick, easy read without sacrificing any thoughtfulness recommended to teens who like realistic stories,
One mild spoiler I couldn't help but wonder what the story would've been like if it cut off before her death, leaving the reader knowing that she'll die before too long, but without actually writing the death scene.
I don't think it would've made the story any less sad, and I'm not saying that a death scene is easy to write, but it would be refreshing to read an illness story that doesn't actually end with the death or maybe I've just read too many books like this.
Regardless, I think it's a great example of the genre, .