What's Left of Me (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- What's Left of Me
In an alternative world, everyone is born with two souls, two consciousnesses that share control over a single body. In the U.S. most "settle" at an early age, with the dominant soul taking over and the other disappearing. Those who don't settle, known as "hybrids," are institutionalized as a threat to society, and the fact that hybrids predominate in every other country drives an intense xenophobia. Eva and Addie never completely settled; instead, Eva's consciousness remains trapped and awake, a voice in Addie's head. Then Hally and her brother Devon befriend Addie, reveal that they are hybrids passing as settled, and promise to teach Eva to surface again so that she can have a real life. When all three (six?) of them are exposed and taken to a government treatment center, they fight to stay whole and uncover some disturbing truths about the nature of hybrids and how they are controlled and "fixed." This startlingly original concept provides a compelling gateway to intensely personal discussions of prejudice, stigma, identity, and loss. Debut novelist Zhang makes the emotional complexity of two souls sharing a body feel deeply real, and she doesn't shy away from issues of privacy (Eva likes a boy Addie isn't wild about) and resentment (both girls' lives are immensely complicated by the others' mere existence) even as she completely sells the centrality of this relationship, fraught with envy and comfort and love and fear, to the girls' lives. It's this relationship that makes the thoughtful world-building pay off in a climactic reveal that will have readers clamoring for volume two. [End Page 56]
