No
matter what issue you might be reading about in a YA book ---
pregnancy, drugs, depression --- the one point that comes up time
and again is this: there are no easy answers. Ever. There are
viewpoints, there are arguments, but few come without hard-earned
discussion and none can ever hold the final word. To put it
plainly, life is never that simple. And, arguably, the most complex
of these issues, a concept that is no stranger to the genre, is the
most debatable in terms of how one addresses it: death. Even with
the seeming inability to construct a definitive, proactive response
to death, writers continue to offer meditations on how it can be
approached. Some even come very, very close to what one can only
suspect is the truth.

In CURES FOR HEARTBREAK, Margo Rabb introduces us to 15-year-old
Mia Perlman, whose mother dies 12 days after being diagnosed with
melanoma. In her efforts to cope with the aftermath and learn new
ways to relate to her older sister, Alex, and her father, Mia
begins to reconstruct her own life through a review of her mother's
past and a careful study of Mia's present life. In dealing with her
grief, Mia confronts fears of her own mortality, the shifting
paradigm of life with just her father, and her own forays into love
(all with mixed results).

What makes Mia's heartbreak hit home is the skill with which Rabb
paints a complete portrait of bereavement. Where some books rely on
presenting a protagonist who dwells on the loss of someone wholly
wonderful, Rabb chooses to explore the more complex path to
healing, one not drenched in sappy sentimentality but rather an
assault of all knowledge of the person who is lost. We see not only
Mia's sadness at losing a confidant and nurturer but also her less
happy memories of her mother: an unconfirmed marital indiscretion,
suspected hypochondria, surliness and melancholy. 

More importantly, Rabb concentrates not on the brooding and
self-pity that can often permeate this type of novel but on an
examination of death's antithesis --- love --- as it touches the
lives of her father, her mother and even Mia herself. As a result,
each chapter collides and colludes to offer both the familiar and
the uncharted with humorous and touching detail, breaking and
mending the reader's heart in turns.

CURES FOR HEARTBREAK tells it like it is --- there is no
comprehensive, sure way out of loss. There is only a drive to
comprehend how that loss fits into our lives --- past, present and
future --- and our efforts (experimental, at best) to accommodate
these new rules into who we are. And as bleak as that can often
seem, Rabb assures us with the authority of someone who's been
there that as hopeless as the endeavor can feel, a "cure" can
present itself in the most unexpected but wonderful way.

   -