The Truth of Right Now

Gr 10 Up—What happens when bad girl meets bad boy? In Corthron's heady realistic novel, troubled teen Lily returns to her high school after a year "away." New kid Dari sits alone at lunch, drawing and brooding, and catches Lily's eye. As they strike up a friendship, and more, each teen's layered backstory is unscrambled, revealing a mosaic of abuse, untrustworthy adults, and self-harm. Lily's flighty hippie mother and Dari's controlling, derisive father are no background figures here; they each play an important part in the young people's lives. Corthron's writing strikes the right balance of pitchy and pithy—no words are left unchained or events unraveling as Dari and Lily experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. True to the characters' lives, sexual situations and graphic language appear throughout the narrative.