Because You'll Never Meet Me - Leah Thomas

Leah Thomas’s debut Because You’ll Never Meet Me is hard to categorise. It would be easy to brand it sci-fi (and a quick look at reviews shows many readers have); however, I would, personally, call it contemporary YA with some sci-fi elements. The story is told in letters between fourteen-year-old American, Ollie and sixteen-year-old German, Moritz. Both have serious medical issues. Ollie cannot go near electricity without having a seizure so lives alone with his mother in a cabin in the woods. Moritz was born without eyes and has a serious heart defect. His need for an electronic pacemaker means that, in theory, he and Ollie can never meet.

Seriously ill kids facing love, heartbreak and death are very much in vogue in YA fiction at the moment and most of what I have read of this type is, to me, exploitative and not very good. Because You’ll Never Meet Me is refreshingly different. Ollie and Moritz are two ordinary boys who happen to have lived extraordinary lives. They don’t spend their days soul-searching and blaming the universe for their plight but instead engage in the sort of activities most boys their age would. The boisterous Ollie reads comic books, rides his bike and falls for a girl who doesn’t appreciate him. The more studious Moritz listens to audio books of classic novels. They make a great change to the usual wise-beyond-their-years sick teenager in YA.

I loved how different they are from one another without being two extreme stereotypes. Ollie tells how he was born screaming; Moritz replies that he was born listening. This concept has the potential to be cheesy but instead is quite touching. Each boy’s relationship with his environment is also interesting – Ollie is loud and bubbly but lives in the middle of nowhere where nothing can hear him. Moritz lives in a busy town but is naturally quiet and finds all the noise surrounding him too much, especially as he ‘sees’ by echolocation, so every sound wave translates into an image. You can’t help wishing they could swap – or, even better, that they could somehow meet…

As hinted at by the blurb, much of the drama takes place in a government-condoned laboratory in Germany… talk about giving a country a bad name and hanging it! We all know the Nazis performed sinister experiments on kids, but that’s exactly why the modern-day German government would be the least likely to allow something similar to happen again. I wish Moritz had been from some other country; this book will contribute nothing to dispelling American stereotypes (and the UK doesn’t come out of it much better, either).

However, both narrative voices are fresh and you can easily tell them apart; the idea is pretty original and the ending was satisfying, if sad. There is a lot I would change about this book, yet I feel I did gain a lot from reading it… not least experiencing a YA novel that isn’t afraid to depart from the rules.


*This review was originally written for Cuckoo Review (New Writing North) and is reprinted with permission*