BOOKS

Brianna Pelletier’s days are numbered, and not because she’s a math whiz or because she’s an old aging woman.  Brianna lives with Cystic Fibrosis, a disease that has no cure.  Most sufferers don’t make it past young adulthood.  Brianna realizes as she enters her senior year of high school, she may not even make it to graduation.

After a hospitalization Brianna thought might be her last, she readies herself for her final year of school. Brianna’s friends all seem to be preparing for college, but with a future as uncertain as her own, mortality rears its ugly head.  Brianna goes through the motions of academia, knowing that it is for nothing that she’ll achieve a diploma. If she applies to college and gets in, she will not make it through the entire four years. And what if the fates play a nasty game on her, and as soon as she gets into a college her health deteriorates even faster?

Her father insists that she apply to the infamous MIT in nearby Boston, and to appease him, Brianna does it.  In the process of applying and calculating her time left on earth, Brianna meets a teacher, Mr. Eccles, whose views on life and death bring on a fresh, true perspective she had yet to discover. Mr. Eccles shows how Brianna can look at life and death in terms of a mathematical perspective and, thus, better understand how her life has impacted the world she lives in.

Brianna has the loving support of her father and her best friends Adam, Melissa and Stephanie. Even though Brianna is a sickly teenager, she is still a teenager with the same problems and concerns of teens everywhere on top of her own condition.  The book takes us through the life of a girl destined for a brief stint on earth, hoping that somehow she’ll survive and live the life she deserves.

—Emily Capp

PS — Be sure to check back this week for the updated Book Club schedule. Who says gals have to only read textbooks during the school year, anyway?

9/7/2008 4:48:00 AM