Everything, Everything (novel)

Everything, Everything

Author	Nicola Yoon
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Young adult fiction
Published	2015
Publisher	Delacorte Books
Media type	Print (hardback, paperback), e-book, audiobook
Pages	310 pages

Everything, Everything is the debut young adult novel by American author Nicola Yoon,^[1] first published by Delacorte Books for Young Readers in 2015.^[2] The novel centers on 18-year-old Madeline Whittier, who has severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), also known as "bubble baby disease". Due to her condition, Madeline is stuck inside her house in Los Angeles, where she lives with her mother, a physician who takes care of her.^[3]

Plot

The story follows 17 year-old Madeline Whittier, who suffers from severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) and therefore cannot leave her house, or interact with anything that has not been "sanitized". Her world consists of her mother, her nurse Carla, and the books she immerses herself in, her father and brother having died a long time ago. A family moves in next door and Madeline watches them from the window. Olly, the son, befriends her and the two begin to message each other online. She also notices that Olly's father is abusive and that his sister has a smoking problem.

One day, Carla sneaks Olly into Maddy's house, and the two meet face to face for the first time. They begin meeting in Maddy's house regularly, and at one point Maddy even goes outside for a few seconds. When her mother discovers Maddy has been secretly meeting Olly she fires Carla and bans Maddy from ever seeing Olly again, but they continue secretly texting. Olly and Maddy decide to go to Hawaii together, which is the last place Maddy believes she had a "normal family." However, Olly only agrees to go after Maddy lies and tells him that she is on a new medicine that will keep her from getting sick.

The two go to Hawaii. The next day, Maddy has to be taken to a hospital because she begins to feel extremely sick. Olly calls her mother, who comes to Hawaii and takes Maddy home. A few weeks later, Maddy gets a letter from the doctor who treated her in Hawaii after she got sick, and in the note the doctor says that Maddy does not have SCID, and she got sick because she had spent her whole life inside and has never formed a natural immunity. Maddy, angry and panicked, searches her mother's medical files, but does not find the test results or doctor's notes that would confirm she had SCID. Instead she finds some notes her mother wrote and a few articles about SCID from the internet. She confronts her mother, who breaks down and admits she does not have SCID. Maddy tells Carla, and Carla says she always suspected that.

A few days later Maddy sees Olly, his sister, and his mother load all their belongings into a moving van while their father is at work, escaping his tyranny. Maddy and Olly continue to email and text. Maddy's mother, after therapy, reveals that right after Maddy's father (a police officer) and her brother died, Maddy got very sick, and her mother, not wanting to lose her, decided she had SCID, and needed to be kept away from the world. In the end Maddy and Olly happily reunite in New York, where she sent him on a mini scavenger hunt in a used bookstore.

Reception

A reviewer for The Guardian wrote about the book: "The way the author describes Madeline's world using such beautiful imagery makes the reader appreciate the little things in life".^[4]

Film adaptation

The novel was adapted into a feature film. In July 2016, it was announced that Amandla Stenberg would play Madeline Whittier and Nick Robinson would play opposite Stenberg as Olly. Stella Meghie directed the film, and J. Mills Goodloe wrote the script.^[5] In February 2017, Warner Bros. debuted the trailer.^[6] The film was released on May 19, 2017.

References