Y

Written by Marjorie Celona

Narrated by Erin Moon

With her powerful debut novel, author Marjorie Celona has made a mark with critics and listeners everywhere. In Y, Shannon is abandoned as an infant on the doorstep of a local YMCA. Taken into the foster-care system, she endures years of abuse. But her luck finally changes when she's sent to live with a kind single mom named Miranda. Even so, Shannon remains haunted by a burning question: why did her birth mother leave her on the very day she was born?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781470340063

Reviews for Y

[jslantz1948 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wonderful little book. Beautiful images, well written, thought provoking.

[rdra1962 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Alternating chapters tell the story of a baby abandoned on the steps of the Y and her birth mother. While not as harrowing as some books with similar themes (foster care, etc) it is an unsettling read. The author can certainly write and she tells the two stories in a manner that is both straight forward and poetic. I am looking forward to reading more from this writer!!

[iambookish-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3.5
When I started this story I didn't think I would even make it past the first 20 pages, but the writing kept me reading even if the subject matter wasn't much to my liking.

[keyboardscoffee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I received this book through Goodreads First Reads.

I don't think I have ever been so sad to see a book end. It caught me by surprise and I must have stared at the last page for 5 minutes before I finally closed the book. It was like saying goodbye to a friend that you don't want to lose. I grew so attached to the main character that I almost cried.

One of my favourite things about this book is the way it was written. The narrative is beautiful and 150% suits how you imagine Shannon would think if she was an actual human being. She doesn't always describe what's going on in full sentences, but when you think about it, when does anyone in real life think to themselves in full sentences when something is going on? I sure don't. In my opinion the narrative is pretty much what made this book exceptional.

I loved how not one character in this book was perfect. Their flaws don't get pointed out blatantly, but you know that they have them and you know what they are for the most part. It's like you've been talking to this character for a bit and you notice they have a tick or something. Their flaws are slipped in just like that. And it makes them so much more vivid and life like.

Last but not least, the plot. I only have one word for this: phenomenal. I seriously can't explain it any other way. If I had the time and I thought someone would actually read it, I'd write two pages on just the plot alone. It flowed so smoothly and weaved together so wonderfully that I didn't even feel like I was reading a book. No questions were left unanswered, and yet there was still a hint of mystery at the end. But I was left satisfied instead of upset with that.

I would, and have already, recommend this book to everyone I meet. Strangers walking down the street might even be told to read this book. I loved it that much.

[wassilissa · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Das ist in ganz erstaunlich schönes Buch mit einem sehr ernsten Thema . Die achtzehnjährige Yula setzt ihr neugeborenes Baby aus. Das Buch beschreibt aus der Sicht des Mädchens, wie sie zurechtkommt, es schildert die Pflegefamilien und Beziehungen, all die Schwierigkeiten und Chancen, die dem Mädchen Shannon begegnen. Mit sechzehn versucht Shannon ihre Eltern zu finden. Mir gefiel das Buch ganz außerordentlich gut. Die Geschichte ist nicht kitschig, Shannons Probleme und die Probleme, die sie anderen bereitet, werden ganz klar thematisiert. Es wird auch deutlich, dass Pflegefamilien für niemanden ein Spaziergang sind, weder für die Kinder, noch für die Familien selbst. Und doch hat dieses Buch eine so hoffnungsvolle Botschaft und gefällt mir daher sehr,. Denn es ist möglich, es gut zu machen, Glück zu haben, Beziehungen einzugehen. Es ist möglich, trotz aller Einsamkeit in Verbindung zu treten. Es ist möglich zu leben.

[mjspear_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Shannon, abandoned at birth, has a stable foster family and a good life but she is angry and unsettled and wants to find her mother. Yula is a young and pregnant; surrounded by drug abusing men and economic hardship, she does the unthinkable and gives up her newborn daughter. Two halves of the story, mother and daughter find each other and make an imperfect whole.Beautifully written, unsympathetic look at the bonds of mother and child, tough decisions and what family really means. Step mother Miranda is the real heroine of the book. She provides Shannon with stability and tough love. The Y of the story is both the question and the fork in the road the characters face... lots of symbolism for this literary-critical mind to love.

[nickelini · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Y takes its title from the opening scene where 18 year old Yula leaves her newborn baby at the front door of the YMCA, and it also suggests the word “why?”, as in “why would someone abandon her baby?” The novel shifts back and forth in time and follows the baby, now named Shannon, as she is passed through foster care and eventually into a more stable home, and alternates with the story of Yula and what happens to her in the time leading up to Shannon’s birth. Y has received rave reviews and was nominated for the Giller Prize. I’m stunned, because I thought the writing was fairly atrocious. I was able to make it through only because I listened to the audiobook, but if I’d been reading the paper copy I would have thrown it in the recycling bin before getting halfway through. A few of the negative comments I read were that readers found the characters unlikeable and the story unrelentingly depressing. This may be true, but is not my complaint. To give the writer some credit, I think she handled the alternating storyline and the pacing well. Of course from the beginning the reader knows that this is going to be Shannon’s quest for her birth mother, and I was mildly interested in the path that would take. So it wasn’t all bad. If I had a paper copy, I would have noted all the problems I had with how the story is written, but since I’ve already erased my electronic copy, I will just outline a few of my problems. Overall, I could see the author at work, and picture her checking her copious notes as she sat at her keyboard. I can see that she took a creative writing course, and was given the advice to add an air of reality and to paint a picture through the use of rich detail. She was also told to know absolutely everything about all her characters—not to use it in the novel necessarily, but to understand what makes them tick. Celona’s problem is that she couldn’t stop herself from including every single meaningless detail. The result is that for every minor character that is ever mentioned and every major character that enters a scene, the reader gets a sentence describing their hair, a sentence or two describing their complete outfit, and a sentence describing the effect of their physical appearance on Shannon. This made the narrative flow very clunky and mechanical. Before the end of the first chapter, it was making me scream. She also layered on the forced details like this with settings and locations. I often admire the magic an author can achieve with subtle details, but here I felt like she was bludgeoning me over the head with them. Celona chose an unusual narrative technique, one that I will dub “first person omniscient.” The narrator, Shannon, knows details about other characters thoughts and motivations, even when she wasn’t there, even when she wasn’t born yet. Ultimately this is just a hinky form of third person narration. And to really make sure I hated this book, Celona employs my pet peeve cliché of the young woman having sex for the first time and getting pregnant. In actuality, the chances of conceiving from any single sexual encounter is 3%-11%, but in literature, if you’re young and unmarried, it’s 100%, cause sluts have to be punished. Authors: if you want to have some credibility, stop. Please stop. It’s pretty clear from the start where the novel would end up, and that was fine with me as it was really about the journey. However, I was surprised at how judgemental and preachy the ending was—colour me Not Impressed.

[radioactivebookworm · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Goodreads Synopsis:"Y. That perfect letter. The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass. The question we ask over and over. Why? . . . My life begins at the Y." So opens Marjorie Celona's highly acclaimed and exquisitely rendered debut about a wise-beyond-her-years foster child abandoned as a newborn on the doorstep of the local YMCA. Swaddled in a dirty gray sweatshirt with nothing but a Swiss Army knife tucked between her feet, little Shannon is discovered by a man who catches only a glimpse of her troubled mother as she disappears from view. That morning, all three lives are forever changed. Bounced between foster homes, Shannon endures abuse and neglect until she finally finds stability with Miranda, a kind but no-nonsense single mother with a free-spirited daughter of her own. Yet Shannon defines life on her own terms, refusing to settle down, and never stops longing to uncover her roots — especially the stubborn question of why her mother would abandon her on the day she was born.Brilliantly and hauntingly interwoven with Shannon's story is the tale of her mother, Yula, a girl herself who is facing a desperate fate in the hours and days leading up to Shannon's birth. As past and present converge, Y tells an unforgettable story of identity, inheritance, and, ultimately, forgiveness. Celona's ravishingly beautiful novel offers a deeply affecting look at the choices we make and what it means to be a family, and it marks the debut of a magnificent new voice in contemporary fiction.My Review: I received this book probably two years ago in exchange for a review, and I misplaced it for forever, or so I thought. It showed up at the weirdest time, right when I thought I lost the other book I read, and my kobo was dead. I thought, hey, I should probably get around to reading this! And am I glad I did. It's an amazing, touching story that I couldn't put down from the moment I opened the first page. It kept my attention for the whole entire book, and even though the ending didn't turn out like I thought it would, I loved every minute of it. The characters were exciting to learn about, I loved how the book was written, I loved every single chapter. It's an amazing read that I definitely think that more people should read, and definitely check it out if you get the chance. I'm sorry this review took so long to write! I didn't mean too, I just got busy! Thanks for reading. (':(Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)

[theampersand · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read the excerpt of this novel that appeared in "Best American Non-Required Reading" and was very much impressed. For better or worse, this novel differs from that early version in some important ways: Celona's writing here is less dense and more inclined to take its time worrying over its characters. This doesn't mean that "Y" doesn't succeed in other ways, though. It's got a strong sense of place, a keen appreciation of the challenges faced by its teenage characters and, in places, beautiful and affecting descriptions of the familial and romantic ties that bind them. The book's plot revolves around a couple of big unknowns in the life of its orphaned narrator, but relationships are its real focus: its concerns, like most of its characters, are decidedly female-centric and most of its characters' motivations are plainly emotional in nature. Its characters struggle to cope with physical difference, to hang on to the lower reaches of the lower-middle class as best they can, to find a place for themselves in the world, to know themselves. It's not riveting stuff, sometimes, but it's still important. The book, it should be said, is committed to its characters' decidedly unglamorous patchwork existences, and there's something praiseworthy about a novel that doesn't try to get its characters exactly square by its last page. "Y" is probably a bit too long for its own good, and readers who prefer to think of the characters in the novels they read primarily as actors and decision-makers aren't likely to find much to entertain them here. But readers who believe that the most relevant literary journeys take place in the province of the human heart won't be disappointed.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ms. Celona has successfully told a story from an unsual perspective: Shannon begins narrating her story from before she was born. In Shannon's voice, we hear the story of her mother and father, as well as her own, in alternating chapters. The author allows Shannon's voice and perspectives to change as she ages -- a remarkable talent in character development. Shannon will warm your heart: you'll want to hold her, give her a good talking to....you will care deeply about her.This book is also interesting because we have the perspective of the abandoned child, as well as that of her mother and father. Her parents were irresponsible and made many bad choices in their lives. This book will help you explore a young woman's search for identity and belonging. I loved it.

[tfs93 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The writing was good. The characters were well written, but unlikeable, filled with sorrow, and depressing. The story itself was sad and weighed me down. Obviously all stories can't be uplifting, but this one weighed me down long after I stopped reading. I really disliked Yula and wanted to slap her. Shannon's story is heart breaking and will make you think twice about what family means to you.

[debnance_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There are times that I think it might be a good idea to have warning labels on teen books. When I was an impressionable teen (are there any other kind?) I found myself reading The Bell Jar, a book that spiraled me into a six-month-long depression. (I blame Bell Jar, in any case, for my senior year angst...it certainly didn’t generate any happy thoughts.) This is, then, a book that could use a warning label. On a scale of Bleak to Grim to Mind-Numbingly Depressing, this book would fall far to the right.

[shazjhb · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excleent book. Sad but real. It will probably end up on my best book list. I loved the people who populated this book.

[maryann12_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

And the Y is where the story begins as well - the YMCA in a town on Vancouver Island. The Y is where Shannon's mother Yula leaves her when she is a day old, wrapped in a dirty sweatshirt with a Swiss Army knife as her legacy.Shannon grows up being tossed to one foster home to another, neglected, abused and never knowing where she will be next. The book is very heartfelt and hard to read at times thinking a baby grew up into a system that really failed her in ever way. It is a story that will make you cry and feel like this can't be happening to Shannon. No hope or love for her growing up really being on her own. It is sad to think she never really had any peace in her life even after finding her real mother.Very well written and a must read with a box of tissues by your side. I was given this book from GoodReads.

[twink_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Y is Marjorie Celona's newly released debut novel. I think you're going to be hearing lots more about this author and title. "Y. That perfect letter. The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass. The quetion we ask over and over. Why?" And the Y is where the story begins as well - the YMCA in a town on Vancouver Island. The Y is where Shannon's mother Yula leaves her when she is a day old, wrapped in a dirty sweatshirt with a Swiss Army knife as her legacy. As a baby Shannon is shifted through various foster homes until she lands with Miranda and her daughter Lydia-Rose. It is with Miranda that she finally finds some stability and safety. But it is here that she also begins to act out, to question, to search, to need and to want to find her parents and answers. "I want to know who my real family is, who I really belong to, why I look this way, why I feel this ay. I want to know these things more than anything in the world." "I don't need my mother to be a good person. I just want to know who she is." Celona has chosen an unusual narrative style for her book - but it's one that absolutely works. Young Shannon recounts her life and that of her mother as an almost disinterested third party observer, then switches to current day. The story goes back and forth, past and present, between Shannon's story and that of her mother Yula. Each woman's tale is so addicting and absorbing that I could not find a place to stop. I had to keep reading, to discover the why of Yula's decision, to discover if Shannon finds her way, her place, the answers she needs and if it is enough. Celona's prose flow easily and seamlessly, drawing the reader deeper and deeper into the story. Both Shannon and Yula's narratives are powerful and poignant. Although Yula's story is no less compelling, it was Shannon I wanted to hug and comfort. Their lives are not easy to read about, but impossible to turn away from. I was thinking about Y long after I turned the last page. Did I like the ending? What if....? What is the right thing to do? Who can judge? What is love? And that's the mark of a good book - one that keeps you thinking about it after the last page is turned. Definitely recommended.