Holding Up the Universe (Review)

Title: Holding Up the Universe

Author: Jennifer Niven

Genre: Young Adult/Contemporary

Rating: 4*

Immediately, starting this book, interest sparks. In the first page, a disorder is spoken of: prosopagnosia, which means face-blindness. It’s mentioned in a letter, telling the reader that whoever is writing it is about to do an awful thing. That whoever turns out to be Jack Massalin, and he is struggling in school because of this disorder.

Libby Strout, the female protagonist making up one of the two viewpoints that carry the narratives, has a very different story. Her first chapter, consisting of just less than two pages gives intense information about her. Her mother has died, she wants to join the Damsels—her school’s dance team (her school that she hasn’t attended since fifth grade and is now going to be a junior). There are stats; Libby’s story is her weight and how that affects her life. Immediately, Jennifer Niven states just how big she is and just how much she lets that panic her at first. How Libby gets through her life and all the time she spent locked away from society is found in books, from which she writes quotes on her shoes, the first one being: “As long as you live, there’s always something waiting; and even if it’s bad, and you know it’s bad, what can you do? You can’t stop living.” As a reader who has similar panic issues to going out, this quote struck me and it made me realise that this was a book I really needed to read and and not just one I wanted to read.

Both central characters have a massive, obvious problem that alters their daily life. Every moment, the story is about how they either overcome it or, in Jack’s case, disguise it. Libby’s endurance mechanism at first? Smile at everyone, fake the confidence until it comes to her a lot more naturally, be herself. She seems to contain her unhappiness in herself so she doesn’t outwardly spread it. Jack’s mechanism? Being a great jerk without entirely meaning to.

Having a cancer-survivor of a cheating father and being undiagnosed with prosopagnosia, Jack is immediately shown as having to rely on identifiers of people he knows at school and at home, even with his mother. He relies on two boys at school who are even worse than him to others because otherwise he’d be lost in a sea of faces he can’t recognise. Jack makes lists, which is something I liked in the book. He lists why he likes something, or his embarrassing moments, and he lists how to make a robot, his younger brother’s Christmas present.

Jack and Libby have their first interaction in a situation that sets a lot of things off in the story. Despite her panic and fear and past, Libby continues to go to school and is completely herself. Her confidence grows and grows and is inspiring to read, knowing how much she went through, the hate she received, and then how much she starts to believe in herself. Then Fat Girl Rodeo happens, which involves the “shitty thing” Jack states he’s going to do in his letter at the very beginning: by being the boy to “grab onto” Libby, the fat girl. He knows how awful it is and how humiliating it would be for her but he goes along with his two friends, Seth and Kam, to fit in, to keep his dependability in school on them.

What Fat Girl Rodeo starts: Jack seeing Libby, which becomes incredibly important later on in the story; the breaking down of Jack’s insecurity that he needs to be horrible to fit in; Libby’s weight gaining more attention, turning into bullying, which becomes the fuel she gets to find further self-empowerment; Libby gaining a group of friends who stand up for her as well as just be her friend for wanting to be and the Conversation Circle.

A major thing that stands out from Fat Girl Rodeo is that nobody cares as much as they should about Libby getting grabbed because it wasn’t sexual assault. As a reader, that was angering to read—that nobody cared even though she was touched beyond her will and wasn’t let go of until she had to physically throw off the boy and then got into trouble for punching him in the mouth, which is completely supported. Her initial anger towards Jack at humiliating her in front of everyone in their high school slowly dies off when she finally discovers the letter he wrote about his disorder (undiagnosed, heavily researched at the time) and in the Conversation Circle they’re forced to attend each week, they talk and they grow closer.

Eventually, Libby attends a hospital appointment with Jack so he can be properly tested for prosopagnosia, where he’s told he has a very severe case of it. (Because, as I joked with my mum, characters in books cannot just have something in a minor way; they have to have the full, awful thing, which in Jack’s case, adds to his torment.) But his face-blindness is an intense thing, from something as minor as passing the ball to a boy on the opposite team during a basketball game in the Conversation Circle, to kissing a girl who looks like his on-off girlfriend, Caroline, when it turned out to be her cousin, to not getting a response from his younger brother at a kids’ party and ends up trying to drag the wrong boy out with him.

Meanwhile, Libby is receiving notes in her lockers: “You aren’t wanted.” Students involve themselves in the meanest way possible in Libby’s past once it comes out that she was the girl from the news story a while ago, when she had to be cut out of her house, which went national. Whilst Jack is pretending to be someone that he isn’t, Libby never pretends to be anyone else. All she tries to do is be a more confident version of her. Throughout the book, Libby has a rise and fall in her confidence, as many people do with a warped vision of themselves. One minute she is psyching herself up to march on; the next minute she’s writing horrible comments about herself in the girl’s bathroom before anyone else can. Even throughout the bouts of falling, Libby is a very inspiring character, in the sense that despite her weight and how she is perceived, she still does things. She refuses to lose weight for a costume if she was accepted into the Damsels because she’s already proud of who she is and what she’s achieved already. She still sees her friend Rachel and her friends she makes in school from when she used to go, and she still goes on a date with Jack, once they start understanding each other a lot more. Libby, despite her panic, goes out and that really hit me.

Overall, I was surprised of how easily Libby forgives Jack and starts to feel attracted to him but that’s just how she seems to be: she feels sorry for the people who do wrong by her more than angry. Which leads to one pivotal moment in her life: “This is your moment in history. This belongs to you,” and then Libby stands in the school hallway in a purple bikini with the words, I am wanted scrawled over her stomach. Libby stands up for herself and hands out flyers explaining what the notes had said and how she wants everyone to know that they are wanted and those who say otherwise obviously have massive insecurities of their own to stoop to the lowest level of verbally hurting somebody.

Holding Up the Universe is a beautiful story wrapped in family, paranoia, friends, self-love and perception. It’s the story of a girl who is never seen past her weight until one boy who can’t recognise faces finally sees her and sees everything in her. Surrounded by a tormented household where his mother and father decide to separate after his father breaks of a side relationship, he finally plucks up the courage to tell his family about his disorder, because of Libby’s courage in herself. Libby Strout stole this book for me entirely—she inspired me page after page and ignited a new motivation in me. She’s had it a lot worse; if she can do it then surely I, as an inspired reader, can too.

Plagued by the panic of her mother’s death hanging over her every time her chest tightens, Libby still lives and loves and dances freely and expresses herself, ending one of her final chapters with a note: “You are the only you there is. Don’t be afraid to leave the castle. It’s a great big world out there.”

I loved this book and found it to be a book I needed to read and wasn’t disappointed, with the passion and courage and inspiration pouring from the pages.