Title: The Weight of the Stars Author: K. Ancrum
Published: March 19, 2019
Genre(s): Realistic/Contemporary
Page Count: 384
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Ryann Bird dreams of traveling across the stars. But a career in space isn’t an option for a girl who lives in a trailer park on the wrong side of town. So Ryann becomes her circumstances and settles for acting out and skipping school to hang out with her delinquent friends.
One day she meets Alexandria: a furious loner who spurns Ryann’s offer of friendship. After a horrific accident leaves Alexandria with a broken arm, the two misfits are brought together despite themselves—and Ryann learns her secret: Alexandria’s mother is an astronaut who volunteered for a one-way trip to the edge of the solar system.
Every night without fail, Alexandria waits to catch radio signals from her mother. And its up to Ryann to lift her onto the roof day after day until the silence between them grows into friendship, and eventually something more...
Ultimately, I believe that The Weight of the Stars suffers from its author’s attempt to do too many things at once. This novel is, simultaneously: a found-family tale of teenage misfits; a story about a girl uncovering secrets about her mother and reckoning with them; an audio-diary of a pioneer astronaut; an epic interstellar lesbian romance; and…an epilogue to Ancrum’s first novel, The Wicker King.
Perhaps with some revision with an eye for consistent storytelling, The Weight of the Stars would hit differently. I say this because towards the end of the book, Ancrum’s prose and focus improve so vastly that it feels like an entirely different novel—so different that I had to swallow my frustration, because clearly this is a talented writer with a knack for beautiful imagery and deep character work.
In contrast, the first 75% of the novel (approximately) feels entirely untethered from reality. There’s very little depth or background to any of the characters; motivations and emotions are mentioned but not explored. If your main characters are a group of outcast high schoolers supporting each other, that should be felt. Here, the author alleges that the “glue” bonding together protagonist Ryann and her friends is a collection of traumatic pasts, but nobody’s backstory is ever addressed beyond oblique references. And speaking of trauma: one of the charaters is sexually assaulted on-page, but Ancrum does absolutely nothing with that moment, and it seems to have been included only to show how unhappy the characters are, in their own unique ways.
Perhaps as a result of their collective trauma, Ryann and her friends are portrayed as bullies, and I truly don’t think that’s what Ancrum was going for, but that’s the truth. New girl Alexandria arrives in school, and one of Ryann’s teachers tell her to befriend Alexandria. “Befriending” in this case looked an awful lot like harassment, and ended with Ryann and her friends throwing rocks at Alexandria’s house in the dead of night, witnessing Alexandria fall off the roof, and then…speeding away in their car without alerting anyone of her potential injuries.
Yet somehow, Ryann and Alexandria become friends, then something more.
Truly, I don’t get it.
Additionally, I was miffed (?) that the most interesting parts of the entire first half of the book featured August, Jack, and Rina, an adult polyamorous couple who were the protagonists of Ancrum’s debut, The Wicker King. They don’t serve much of a purpose to Ryann’s narrative, and all of the references to their backstory felt like a gratuitous wink and nod to their novel, which I have not read. I’m glad they got some sort of happy ending as adults, but their appearance was really unnecessary to this book.
Yet as I said, towards the very end of the story, The Weight of Stars switches gears and becomes something altogether more beautiful (and less confusing). Alexandria’s mother is an astronaut on a one-way mission to the outer reaches of the solar system—a living Golden Record, if you will. After breaking into the headquarters of the space-exploration corporation that deployed her mother, Alexandria is given all of the transmissions her mother has sent back to earth. And also an opportunity to join the next generation of one-way space flight.
The final chapters of The Weight of the Stars beautifully combine the intensity of your first love, the devastation of your first breakup, and the awe-inspiring vastness of deep space. Ancrum’s prose becomes fluid and descriptive (perhaps a bit pretentious, even). Ryann and Alexandria’s emotions are vividly portrayed on the page, where before their personalities were confusing and brittle. I loved loved loved this book so much in its final chapters.
I am reminded that I no longer have to wonder, or look back at what was left behind. Because I know who and what I am, and I know where I am going. And I know that when I finally get there, you’ll be coming to join me.
Because we’ll always wind up at the same place when the sun goes down for good, Raleigh.
We are all together in this incomprehensible wait
It’s tough to reconcile my thoughts and feelings here. On one hand, I think this author is talented, and that the ultimate story she told was brilliant. On the other hand, the majority of the book is confusing and shallow and weirdly unreal. It’s a shame that there seemed to be so many missteps along the road to such a gorgeous conclusion. I liked The Weight of the Stars, but with some serious reservations.
Oh interesting!! I definitely liked this more than you, and I did feel the emotional weight of these kids who had pulled together to support each other. I thought that was lovely and it really carried me through the story. I haven’t read Wicker King though!