That Two Percent

Novel: Everyday 
Author: David Levithan
Blogger: Emma Walton

There are many vehicles of communication from which one can choose to express an idea. In David Levithan's fictional masterpiece, Everyday, this vehicle of communication comes in the form of a delicately innocent love story - with a catch. Awaking everyday in a different body, main character, A, crosses paths with the life of a female character named Rhiannon, leaving A to fall irrevocably and complicatedly in love with her. However, through this seemingly simple and sweetly straightforward  love story, Levithan is able to communicate much heavier and more complex themes.

Using the plot line of A's constant body transformations, the author explores such topics as religion, race/ethnicity, gender, mental illness, homo vs. heterosexuality, body image, and addiction in a way that translates these otherwise dense thematic elements into a simple and easy-to-grasp vernacular. Through this, Levithan creates a sort of ode to humanity which serves to celebrate both the differences and the commonalities that simultaneously distinguish us from and connect us to one another. Exemplifying the focal idea of the novel, the author writes, "For whatever reason, we like to focus on the 2 percent that's different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that. The only way I can navigate through my life is because of the 98 percent that every life has in common" (77). Confronting the controversial, Levithan challenges the reader to look past the individually important, yet nonetheless minuscule, differences in others that too often lead to misunderstanding, seclusion, conflict, and even war. Instead of fearing what contrasts with our own characteristics and what we have not yet personally experienced, the author offers this novel as a subtle challenge to cross those boundaries that inhibit understanding and to focus on the aspects of our humanity that we as people and human beings all share.

Leaving me with a lot to ponder, this proved to be a fantastic novel that was most definitely worth reading. The beauty about this particular book is that, due to the fact that the main character takes on such a multitude of personas, no matter who the reader is, he or she will be able to find that relatability factor that everyone searches for in a literary work. I would definitely recommend this book to other people, especially to those who are between the ages of 14 and 19. The beautiful message that this novel has to offer is a message that every young person should be exposed to.

And I promise you - after you read Everyday by David Levithan, you, too, will have to stop and truly ask yourself, perhaps for the first time, if that meager two percent difference that we are so quick to judge in other people is worth the hate and conflict that proves to continue to separate and hinder us from the opportunity to connect and make peace with one another.