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A surreal and timely novel about isolation and human connection from Michael L. Printz Award-winner A.S. King.
Time has stopped. It’s been June 23, 2020 for nearly a year. Frantic adults demand teenagers focus on finding practical solutions to the crisis. Sixteen year-old javelin-throwing prodigy Tru Becker lives in a house with a switch that no one ever touches, a switch her father guards every day by nailing it into hundreds of larger and larger boxes. Somehow, from box seven, Tru has to deal with her father trying to protect her, her troubled brother in box eleven, and come up with a solution to the world’s problems in her science class. But why was her sister sent away, and will her mother ever return? Will anyone ever feel emotions properly again? Tru has a crowbar, and one way or another, she’s going to see what happens when she flips the switch.
Written with the same heart, nuance and depth as A. S. King’s other prize-winning YA books, Switch is about re-setting, finding ways to deal with past trauma, to trust and to care: To understand anything is to understand energy / anger / love.
‘One of the best Y.A. writers working today.’
‘Anyone who thinks YA books can’t also be great literature needs to read this author.’
‘King understands and writes teen anxieties like no other, resulting in difficult, resonant, compelling characters and stories.’
‘Maybe there are writers more adept than King at capturing the outrageous and outraged voice of teenagers, but it’s difficult to think of one.’
‘A.S. King shows a deep understanding of teen anxieties and writes with streetwise humour, tenderness and originality…Hers is a magical style that dances off the page.’