In “This Song Will Save Your Life,” Elise is a mostly relatable misfit trapped by a feeling nearly everyone has experienced: “I don’t belong here.
“All I ever wanted was attention.” Spurred in part by the frequency with which teenage suicides have been linked to bullying, young adult literature has evolved to tackle increasingly life-or-death issues. “I didn’t really want to die,” Elise explains in narration. When she faces the apparent failure of her efforts only halfway through the first day of school, she quickly replaces that plan with another: She’ll commit suicide.Īt home, accompanied by a playlist of songs she “wouldn’t mind dying to,” she cuts her wrist with her father’s X-Acto knife and calls a classmate, who in turn calls for help. “You think it’s so easy to change yourself,” 16-year-old Elise Dembowski begins, offering a world-weary but appealing frankness from the first sentence of Leila Sales’s new young adult novel, “This Song Will Save Your Life.” “You think it’s so easy, but it’s not.” Elise has spent the summer before sophomore year trying to transform herself into someone who won’t be mocked in the yearbook, have her iPod stolen by classmates, or be forced to sit alone on the bus.
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