“Depression isn’t a war you win. It’s a battle you fight every day. You never stop, never get to rest.”
-Shaun David Hutchinson, We Are the Ants
This is another book that I read with my friend Alyssa for a book club that she’s doing for one of her classes. It’s also a book that I’ve had my eye on for a while, and I’m glad that I finally got the chance to read it. It definitely didn’t disappoint.
Henry Denton has had a rough year. His grandmother’s Alzheimer’s keeps getting worse, his brother just dropped out of college because his girlfriend is pregnant, his mother is struggling to keep the family together, and his boyfriend committed suicide. Among all of these things, Henry keeps getting abducted by aliens, who have given him the opportunity to save the world from impending disaster. Henry just doesn’t know if its worth saving. Until he meets Diego Vega.
This story is just heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Shaun David Hutchinson has crafted a story that feels so realistic, yet it is intertwined with all of these theories about how the world is going to end, theories that pull the reader from important points in the story. In fact, these interruptions coincide with Henry’s own interruptions from his own life, giving the reader a glimpse into Henry’s mind and thought process.
It’s just so real. I can’t really think of any other way to describe this book. Hutchinson’s prose makes you feel so many emotions from beginning to end that by the time you finish the book, you are exhausted. Major book hangover. It was hard for me to get into my next book because I was still feeling all of these emotions from We Are the Ants.
Hutchinson also deals with suicide in a very realistic and important way. He not only shows how suicide affects the friends and family left behind, but he shows that the depression that Henry’s boyfriend (I think it was Jesse?) was feeling wasn’t something that was just going to “go away;” it was a sickness, an illness that Jesse had to deal with, but in the end, he wasn’t able to. I can’t really think of any other YA books that deal with suicide in this way that I’ve read, and I think it’s incredibly important that this one does.
This is a complex, insightful, all-encompassing book that will leave you thinking long after it’s over. And maybe even prompt you to want to read it again.
5/5 stars