Because You'll Never Meet Me
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Ollie and Moritz are two teenagers who will never meet. Each of them lives with a life-affecting illness. Contact with electricity sends Ollie into debilitating seizures, while Moritz has a heart defect and is kept alive by an electronic pacemaker. If they did meet, Ollie would seize, but turning off the pacemaker would kill Moritz.
Through an exchange of letters, the two boys develop a strong bond of friendship which becomes a lifeline during dark times – until Moritz reveals that he holds the key to their shared, sinister past, and has been keeping it from Ollie all along.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two teenage boys separated by geography and unusual disabilities forge an unlikely friendship in this epistolary story from debut author Thomas. Verbose and energetic, Ollie lives as a hermit: encountering electricity triggers his epileptic fits. Moritz is a humorless German boy born with no eyes, a weak heart that requires a pacemaker, and a superhuman ability to use echolocation to see. The two may be eccentric outcasts, but their conflicts, heartbreak, and eventual bond form a relatable and engaging narrative despite their farfetched backstories. Most of the time the setup works, although the boys penchant for writing lengthy direct quotations from other conversations can stretch the bounds of an already improbable story. The dual plots coalesce like yin and yang, a roller coaster of role reversals that sees both boys struggling with typical teenage problems in an absurdist landscape. While Ollie is closed off from the world and longs to see mundane things like a humidifier, Moritz has seen and knows too much. The two inevitably (and rewardingly) balance each other out as their first real friends. Ages 14 up.
