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WORK TITLE: Our Chemical Hearts
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://krystalsutherland.com/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Australian
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2136031/krystal-sutherland
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.:
n 2016040636
LCCN Permalink:
https://lccn.loc.gov/n2016040636
HEADING:
Sutherland, Krystal
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PERSONAL
Born in Townsville, Australia.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist. Foreign correspondent in Amsterdam and Hong Kong.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Novelist and writer Krystal Sutherland was born in Townsville, Australia. She edited her university student magazine, and worked as a foreign correspondent in Amsterdam and Hong Kong, where she lived even though she doesn’t speak Dutch or Cantonese. About her first novel, Our Chemical Hearts, Sutherland says on her Krystal Sutherland Home Page: “[It’s] is slightly better than that hot mess. Nonetheless, I’m notoriously bad at explaining what it’s about, except to say that it involves the terribly tragic and awful experience of falling in love for the first time.”
The 2016 Our Chemical Hearts has been called John Green meets Rainbow Rowell. The book features smart high school senior Henry Page who expects to feel that romantic, slow-motion, can’t eat or sleep love this year. Instead, he finds Grace Town, a disabled girl who walks with a cane, dresses like a boy in baggy clothes, has unkempt hair, and rarely showers. When Henry and Grace are both chosen to edit the school newspaper, Henry begins to get close to Grace, admiring her as a good writer.
Henry eventually learns about Grace’s tragic past which threatens to pull them apart. Sometimes she flirts with Henry, while other times she seems to keep him at a distance. Helping Henry with his love life is his older neuroscientist sister and quirky friends. Sutherland offers not a story of love at first sight, but the pain of a young man in love for the first time. According to a writer in Kirkus Reviews Online: “There is never any doubt that this couple is marching toward romantic oblivion, but it’s an effectively drawn journey.” Lightening the story is the creative teen banter and dry wit of Henry’s parents.
A writer in Publishers Weekly said the book eloquently conveys the complexity of love and grief, and “debut novelist Sutherland creates a story filled with intriguing and memorable characters.” Marla Unruh and Savannah Withrow noted in Voice of Youth Advocates, “Best of all, though, is the engaging story that unfolds at just the right pace, drawing the reader in as the stakes get higher and decisions must be made.”
As for including a disabled character in the book, online at Disability in Kid Lit, Alaina Leary, observed: “The book—and Henry’s—characterization and descriptions of Grace do disabled readers a disservice in more ways than one.” Leary explained that Henry is obsessed about why Grace walks with a cane, yet doesn’t realize it’s not okay to ask her, and that Grace’s disability and her mental health issues are treated as plot devices.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, August 1, 2016, review of Our Chemical Hearts, p. 71.
Voice of Youth Advocates, October 2016, Marla Unruh and Savannah Withrow, review of Our Chemical Hearts, p. 70.
ONLINE
Disability in Kid Lit, http://disabilityinkidlit.com/ (November 18, 2016), Alaina Leary, review of Our Chemical Hearts.
Kirkus Reviews Online, https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ July 20, 2016, review of Our Chemical Hearts.*
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Krystal Sutherland is the author of Our Chemical Hearts. She was born and raised in Townsville, Australia, a place that has never experienced winter. Since then she’s lived in Sydney, where she edited her university’s student magazine; Amsterdam, where she worked as a foreign correspondent; and Hong Kong. She has no pets and no children, but is fond of naming inanimate objects: in the Netherlands she owned a Dutch bicycle called Kim Kardashian, and a small, inflatable velociraptor called Herbert.
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BOOKS BY KRYSTAL SUTHERLAND
A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
Our Chemical Hearts
Hello. It's me.
I am Krystal Sutherland, writer of books. Or, more specifically, I am the writer of one book, Our Chemical Hearts, which was published in October 2016 by Penguin in the US and ANZ, Hot Key in the UK, and various other publishers in more than 20 countries around the globe.
I was born and raised in Townsville, in the far north of Australia. Since moving to Sydney in 2011, I've also lived in Amsterdam, which was awesome but cold, and Hong Kong, (though I speak neither Dutch nor Cantonese).
Growing up, I never dreamed of being a writer. I wanted to be a) a florist, then b) a volcanologist, then c) an actress. It wasn't until shortly after my 18th birthday that I sat down to write my first (terrible) novel.
Our Chemical Hearts, thankfully, is slightly better than that hot mess. Nonetheless, I'm notoriously bad at explaining what it's about, except to say that it involves the terribly tragic and awful experience of falling in love for the first time.
I have no pets and no children, but in Amsterdam I owned a Dutch bicycle called Kim Kardashian. It was somewhat difficult to get along with; I was fond of it regardless.
From Goodreads:
John Hughes meets John Green in this irresistible story of first love, broken hearts, and the golden seams that put them back together again.
Henry Page has never been in love. He fancies himself a hopeless romantic, but the slo-mo, heart palpitating, can’t-eat-can’t-sleep kind of love that he’s been hoping for just hasn’t been in the cards for him—at least not yet. Instead, he’s been happy to focus on his grades, on getting into college and finally becoming editor of his school newspaper. Then Grace Town walks into his first period class on the third Tuesday of senior year and he knows everything’s about to change.
Grace isn’t who Henry pictured as his dream girl—she walks with a cane, wears oversized boys’ clothes, and rarely seems to shower. But when Grace and Henry are both chosen to edit the school paper, he quickly finds himself falling for her. It’s obvious there’s something broken about Grace, but it seems to make her even more beautiful to Henry, and he wants nothing more than to help her put the pieces back together again. And yet, this isn’t your average story of boy meets girl.
Krystal Sutherland’s brilliant debut is equal parts wit and heartbreak, a potent reminder of the bittersweet bliss that is first love.
4/12/17, 11(58 PM
Print Marked Items
Sutherland, Krystal. Our Chemical Hearts
Marla Unruh and Savannah Withrow
Voice of Youth Advocates.
39.4 (Oct. 2016): p70. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC http://www.voya.com
Full Text:
4Q * 4P * S
Sutherland, Krystal. Our Chemical Hearts. Putnam/Penguin Random House. 2016. 320p. $17.99. 978-0-399-54656-3.
She certainly does not appear to fit into any of the known high school circles. Grace is the new girl on the first day of her senior year, wearing guys' clothes that are too big for her, with unkempt hair, and walking with a cane. Yet, she brings with her a reputation for being a writer and is appointed coeditor of the school newspaper with Henry Henry, finding himself intrigued by Grace, takes her appointment gracefully, and, with his best friend Lola as graphics editor, the three of them form a bond. As Henry finds himself falling in love with Grace, he wants to know why she seems to respond at times but at other times, keeps him at arm's length. Discovery gradually reveals her heartbreaking past.
As Henry says in the beginning, this is not a story about love at first sight, but it is a kind of love story The author depicts the agony of a young man in love for the first time, and reveals Henry through his first-person narration. Lola and Murray, Henry's other best friend, are quirky but authentic, and the adult characters are unique as well. Perhaps one of the most entertaining features of the novel is the irreverent and funny teen banter that masks their deeper feelings. Best of all, though, is the engaging story that unfolds at just the right pace, drawing the reader in as the stakes get higher and decisions must be made.--Marla Unruh.
In Our Chemical Hearts, Henry experiences first love when he gets to know Grace, but then all sorts of havoc ensues: confusion, heartbreak, and loss. Readers will instantly pity both Henry and Grace, and then fall into the mystery that is Grace Town. Even though this intriguing story demands attention, it lacks appeal. When readers have finished, they may feel unsatisfied, and sadly, this book does not have the type of plot that could be used in a sequel. 3Q, 3P. -- Savannah Withrow, Teen Reviewer.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Unruh, Marla, and Savannah Withrow. "Sutherland, Krystal. Our Chemical Hearts." Voice of Youth Advocates, Oct.
2016, p. 70. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA467831135&it=r&asid=7fe40cda782a563260636f8ac9caa9a1. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A467831135
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4/12/17, 11(58 PM
Our Chemical Hearts
Publishers Weekly.
263.31 (Aug. 1, 2016): p71. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Our Chemical Hearts
Krystal Sutherland. Putnam, $17.99 (320p) ISBN 978-0-399-54656-3
Anyone who has felt the ache of first love will relate to Henry Page, a bookish high school senior unexpectedly swept off his feet. Henry, who has*never had a girlfriend, isn't immediately attracted to new student Grace Town, who enters the school with a conspicuous limp, "dressed head to toe in guys' clothing" ("I'd seen junkies that looked in better shape than she did that morning," Henry says). Yet after Grace and Henry are asked to co-edit the school newspaper, his interest in her grows, fueled by Grace's on-again-off-again flirting. As romance blossoms, secrets about Grace's past and current situation emerge, and Henry begins to think that Grace may be beyond his help. Eloquently conveying the complexity of love and grief, debut novelist Sutherland creates a story filled with intriguing and memorable characters. Henry's quirky friends, dry-witted parents, and rebel-turned-neuroscientist sister (who offers sage advice on matters of the heart) add touches of brightness to this dark romance. Ages 14-up. Agent: Catherine Drayton, Inkwell Management. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Our Chemical Hearts." Publishers Weekly, 1 Aug. 2016, p. 71. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA460285766&it=r&asid=886a9456d22d22dd0c78a639097d6df0. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A460285766
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Review: Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland Comments: 1
BY ALAINA LEARY ON NOVEMBER 18, 2016 REVIEWS
ArticleContent
Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland bills itself as “kind of” a love story, and also “not your average story of boy meets girl.” The novel starts off with Henry Page telling readers about how he expected to first fall in love, and then introducing us to his unexpected first love, Grace.
Cover for Our Chemical HeartsI was hooked by the premise that the love interest, Grace Town, walks with a cane and wears male-coded clothing. I’m a cane user, and I went into this book with a lot of hope. I wasn’t a cane user in high school, but I have been disabled my entire life, and have always combated internalized ableism, especially about the use of mobility aids.
Although I could tell from the beginning that the novel was going to make Grace into a tragic character, I was hopeful that it would still find a way to subvert tropes and harmful representation of characters with disabilities.
Unfortunately, Our Chemical Hearts did not live up to my hope. The book—and Henry’s—characterization and descriptions of Grace do disabled readers a disservice in more ways than one.
Several times in the book, Henry obsesses over Grace’s limp and cane use, wondering why she uses a cane and thinking about whether he can ask her. This is somewhat understandable. Almost every disabled person I know has had an awkward encounter with an acquaintance or a stranger that’s along the lines of, “What happened to you?” That doesn’t make it okay, but I would’ve been fine with the story if this plot point was about Henry realizing that it isn’t cool to obsess over why disabled people exist. The storyline, instead, presents his obsession with Grace and her disability uncritically, leaving readers to believe that it’s okay that he’s so persistent in understanding and “fixing” her.
Henry also frequently refers to Grace’s appearance as “looking like a heroin addict,” which I found very off-putting. I’m not sure if the author was doing it on purpose, but it seemed almost like she wanted readers to find Grace unappealing and unattractive—so we’d be even more endeared to Henry for daring to like her. Wow, he likes a girl who uses a cane, wears non-gender-conforming clothing, rarely showers, and seems to have a mental illness? He must be fabulous. The way he refers to Grace is also problematic because it rests on the assumption that heroin addicts are inherently disgusting, which further plays into ableism, and this is never criticized or called out in the text. Henry simply continues to refer to Grace in these terms without learning from it.
In addition to this, Grace’s disability and her mental health issues are treated as plot devices; they’re treated as reasons why she and Henry can’t be together, and they’re supposed to be shocking mysteries that are revealed to the reader to garner our sympathy. Midway through the book, we learn that Grace and her ex-boyfriend, Dom, were in a car accident that killed him and seriously injured her leg, causing her to limp and walk with a cane. She hasn’t been able to drive a car since the accident, although she is willing to ride as a passenger. She also reads as having severe PTSD and survivor’s guilt from the incident, compounded by her grief over losing Dom.
As a trauma survivor with PTSD, I thought Grace’s thoughts and actions were somewhat realistic. Although I haven’t lost a significant other as Grace has, I lost my mom in a very traumatic setting after watching her have a seizure. For a while after her death, I dealt with survivor’s guilt because I was the one who found her and helped call 9-1-1. I wore her clothes and had an altar set up in my room in memorial of her, much like Grace—who moved in with Dom’s parents and lives in his old room—keeps Dom’s room exactly as he had it before his death.
There is also a scene in the book where Henry catches Grace struggling with running track, and Grace hits herself repeatedly in the leg with her cane. I was torn about this scene. On the one hand, it fits in with her survivor’s guilt and PTSD, since she is clearly blaming herself for having lived through the experience while Dom didn’t, and she wants to punish herself physically. But it also screams of ableism, as we hear about it from the non-disabled narrator’s perspective and not from Grace’s own words. If we were getting Grace’s perspective on these issues, the reader would still be dealing with Grace’s internalized ableism, but we might also come to understand why she feels this way and see her combat those feelings.
Despite the realism involved, I felt like Grace’s mental health was treated as a plot device. Grief is a deeply personal, complicated thing, especially when the person grieving also has PTSD from the event, but Grace doesn’t really seek professional help for this. Henry doesn’t really offer steadfast support, either. Most of his inner thoughts about Grace’s mental health are that she’d be a bad influence on him, that she’s incapable of loving him in return, and that she’s “no fun” when she’s having one of her “Bad Days.” She’s referred to many times in the book as “broken,” even as “too broken.” We don’t get a full, nuanced picture of what it’s like to love someone who is dealing with grief or mental illness.
This all seemed to have a purpose in Sutherland’s narrative. Similar to John Green’s Paper Towns, it reads as though she was trying to make the point that you can’t love the idea of a person, and that Henry didn’t really see Grace for who she is. In execution, however, the story did more harm than good. At the end of the story, Grace’s limp becomes less noticeable, she stops walking with a cane, she starts driving to school, and she starts wearing some of her own clothing. All of this happens without any professional help (to the reader’s knowledge) and because Henry is the narrator, we don’t learn anything about how Grace is feeling about it. We also never really learn what caused these changes. It simply happens after Grace tells Henry that the two of them can’t be together, because he doesn’t see her as a person, only as an idea, and because she is still grieving over Dom.
This is portrayed as a positive ending for Grace, despite the fact that we don’t really learn anything about why it happened or how she feels about it. There are, of course, real cases where people are disabled by a car accident and only have to walk with a cane for a short period of time, such as the case in Tess Sharpe’s Far From You. In Our Chemical Hearts, however, we never see nor hear about Grace going to physical therapy or getting any kind of physical or psychological medical treatment, both of which would have been critical to her healing after this trauma. It’s almost like a “magical cure” scenario, except the magic cure in this case is Grace realizing that she can’t use Henry to fix her and run away from her trauma, and she magically moves on by herself instead.
In the end, Grace is a character who remains largely a mystery to the reader. Instead of serving as a nuanced and complicated portrayal of PTSD, trauma, and disability, her mental health and disability serve as plot twists and reasons why she can’t be with Henry.
ABOUT AUTHOR
Alaina Leary
ALAINA LEARY Twitter Instagram
Alaina Leary is a Boston-based publishing professional. She's on the social media team at We Need Diverse Books, and an editor for Her Campus and Luna Luna Magazine. Her work has been published in Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Marie Claire, Bustle, Bust, The Establishment, Everyday Feminism, and more. When she's not busy reading, she spends her time with her two literary cats.
OUR CHEMICAL HEARTS
by Krystal Sutherland
Age Range: 12 - 16
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KIRKUS REVIEW
Two teenagers suffer through their first heartbreak.
Henry Page has spent his high school years with his nose to the grindstone, avoiding romantic relationships and focusing on becoming the editor of the school paper. At the start of his senior year Henry is offered the job, but there’s a catch: transfer student Grace Town is offered the gig as well, making the two white teens co-editors. Sparks fly as Henry works with the aloof, unkempt new girl, who walks with a cane. As Henry and Grace grow closer, Henry falls deeper for her even as he learns just how broken she is. In her debut, Sutherland mixes her love story with equal parts hope and ominous dread. There is never any doubt that this couple is marching toward romantic oblivion, but it’s an effectively drawn journey. The characters speak with a John Green–esque voice, but they are never overbearingly precocious. Narrator Henry’s a smartly rendered character, a decent kid who has goals and works hard to achieve them. His new goal is Grace’s affection, and the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object that is Grace’s emotional unavailability provides the novel some of its sharpest moments. When the walls tumble down, the connection between the two is clearly an unhealthy one, and the author pulls no punches, devastating Henry, Grace, and readers in equal measure.
An emotionally engaging and draining debut. (Fiction. 12-16)
Pub Date: Oct. 4th, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-54656-3
Page count: 320pp
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: July 20th, 2016
Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland (review)
Karen Coats
From: Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Volume 70, Number 3, November 2016
p. 149 | 10.1353/bcc.2016.0927
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
Reviewed by
Karen Coats
Sutherland, Krystal Our Chemical Hearts. Putnam, 2016 [320p]
Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-399-54656-3 $17.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-399-54658-7 $10.99
Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12
Henry has small dreams for his senior year—hang out with his friends Lola and Murray, edit the school newspaper, and have no interesting scandals or dramas. Enter Grace Town, an unkempt girl in boy’s clothes who somehow invades his territory and steals his heart. She’s quirky, but he has long experience with quirky; what he has no experience with is the pull she exerts on his heart and the tragedy she carries with her. While it’s a little hard to believe that he doesn’t do more internet research on her situation, the reveal that she has been in an accident that killed her long-term boyfriend won’t come as a complete shock to readers. However, by the time Henry finds out just how damaged she is, he is in way over his head. The question is—will she ever be ready to move on, and when she is, will it be with Henry? The draw here, besides the romantic melodrama, of course, is the voice. Henry’s first language is clever, angst-driven wit, and this pair is as sharp and quippy as John Green’s Hazel and Gus, crafting multiple personae who always have the right things to say on the tips of their tongues or fingers (when texting), even as they avoid getting too close to the truths of their breaking hearts. The secondary characters are just as over-the-top in their adorable comic set pieces, making this a story of family, friends, and first love like it never was but we wish it had been, smart and smart-alecky with some genuine heart thrown in. Fans of romance driven by stylized narration are the audience for this.
BOOK REVIEW: OUR CHEMICAL HEARTS BY KRYSTAL SUTHERLAND
NATALIE XENOSNOVEMBER 27, 2016
BOOK REVIEWSBOOKSFEATURED
“I always thought the moment you met the great love of your life would be more like the movies”, says protagonist Henry Page on the first line of Krystal Sutherland’s debut novel, Our Chemical Hearts. He’s referring to new girl Grace Town, who limps into his drama class with a cane, dressed in boy’s clothes and looking like she hasn’t showered or eaten a decent meal in weeks. Grace isn’t the great love of Henry’s life though. He just thinks she is.
As Henry muses early on, his attraction to Grace isn’t instant, but once he realises he’s fallen for her – after they break into the flooded basement of an abandoned train station – he becomes consumed by her oddness and eccentricities, her withdrawn and moody temperament hooking him in like a drug. Tasked to work on the school newspaper together, Grace and Henry become something of a couple, though Grace refuses to let it become public. At no point does she ever tell Henry she shares his strong feelings and yet she doesn’t discourage him either, which is both confusing and tormenting for a teenage boy who never cared much about girls before he met ‘the one’.
Grace is not a typical leading lady; she’s damaged and traumatised – though she’ll never discuss it – and she’s like a poison to Henry, sucking the life out of him as he spirals further into her toxic existence. As a reader looking in, it’s easy to see where Henry’s going wrong. He tries to play it cool but his heart is firmly on his sleeve, and Grace toys with him because he makes her feel good, he makes her forget. The story holds all the bittersweetness and yearning that comes from giving your heart to someone for the first time and having it squeezed, prodded and pulled at like a piece of Play-doh.
“Maybe it was possible to love two different versions of someone at the same time. And maybe, just maybe, some people still wanted redemption for sins they didn’t need absolved anymore.”
Sutherland has perfectly captured the angst of not only awkward first love but also being a teenager in a world that doesn’t always make sense and is rarely fair. It can be difficult to get your priorities right – school should come first and yet romance often feels like the more important thing. The love that Henry feels for Grace is a warped kind of love; he’s addicted to the idea of her, this manic pixie dream girl, but how do you tell love and infatuation apart when you’ve barely experienced either?
Part of why Our Chemical Hearts is so affecting and genuine is because of the peripheral characters away from Henry and Grace: Henry’s parents for example, who seem to have the sickeningly perfect marriage that gives their son unrealistic expectations, or his best friends Lola and Murray, who both have their own views of the Henry-Grace whirlwind romance but support their friend no matter what. These are real, honest and loveable characters who never once feel forced or false. As for the leads, Henry and Grace, you’ll go through moments of loving and despairing with them both – they’re only human after all.
Our Chemical Hearts is a poignant YA story of friendship, romance, heartbreak and tragedy, which refreshingly doesn’t promise a neatly bow-tied ending. It might not be a typical love-at-first-sight story but it is a love story. “Well”, as Henry himself says, “Kind of.”
★★★★
KRYSTAL SUTHERLANDOUR CHEMICAL HEARTS
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