Who You Might Be
A Novel
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A splintery, propulsive debut novel that brilliantly captures the unnerving fragility of youth and the unexpected turns that ultimately shape our identities.
It's the late nineties—the dawn of the internet—and Who You Might Be follows the intersecting lives of four unforgettable characters: Judy and Meghan, two girls who lie to their mothers and run away for the weekend to meet someone from a chat room; Cassie, a twelve-year-old desperately clinging to childhood hopes as she travels deep into the Nevada desert to reunite with her mother at a strange, isolated compound; and Caleb, a privileged teenager who turns to graffiti-writing escapades in blighted Detroit, with his little brother in tow, to escape the boredom of Ann Arbor.
Deftly written and peopled with indelible characters pushed to great extremes, Leigh N. Gallagher's debut novel explores the ramifications of life's most trying encounters and the resilience it takes to determine for ourselves who we might be. Each adventure derails in severe, alarming ways, only to resurface and collide two decades later in an unforgettable finale that considers the power—and limits—of the narratives that define us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gallagher harnesses the turbulence and cadence of adolescence in this ambitious if uneven debut. Two of the novel's three sections are set in the 1990s, starting with the account of best friends Meghan and Judy, both 14, as they slip away for the weekend to attend a house party thrown by a girl Meghan met online. When they get to the address, they're greeted by a disturbed elderly woman and follow her upstairs. What they find is shocking and traumatic. Gallagher then introduces Caleb and Miles, who were uprooted from their privileged San Francisco enclave for Ann Arbor, Mich., after their mother accepted a prestigious academic position. Caleb seeks thrills among the industrial ruins of Detroit and falls in with Tez, a graffiti artist, but old "beefs" between Tez and another artist culminate in a shocking assault whose consequences will reverberate across decades. Gallagher is at her best when conveying the vulnerable, yearning space between childhood and maturity, such as when Miles scurries through the dark with his companions in a former department store marked for demolition and suddenly becomes scared ("not of getting in trouble... but of finding himself unable to rise to whatever unknown challenges came"). Gallagher falters in the third section, speeding toward a conclusion where the disparate characters collide in 2016 Brooklyn. Despite some missteps, Gallagher perfectly captures a generation's dislocated vibe.
