The Opposite of Invisible

by
Liz Gallagher

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Overview

Alice and Jewel have been best friends since grade school. Together, they don’t need anyone else, and together they blend into the background of high school. Invisible. To Alice, Jewel is the opposite of invisible. Jewel is her best friend who goes to Indie concerts and art shows with her. Jewel scoffs at school dances with her. Alice is so comfortable around Jewel that she can talk to him about almost anything. But she can’t tell him that she likes the cool, popular Simon. And then Simon asks her to the school dance the same day that Jewel kisses her for the first time. Still, she can’t say no to Simon. He seems like the easy choice, the one she’s attracted to, the one she’s ready for. But will it mean losing Jewel? In a bright debut novel set against the lively backdrop of Seattle, Alice must learn the difference between love and a crush, and what it means to be yourself when you’re not sure who that is yet.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Former children's bookseller Gallagher offers a diverting view of familiar terrain in her first novel. The artistic but in-the-shadows protagonist, 16-year-old Alice, and her more talented pal, a boy named Jewel, are joined at the hip-and have been since they were three. So, when Jewel breaks the rules of friendship and kisses her, she doesn't know what to think-especially because the hunky football player, Simon Murphy, surprisingly locked lips with her, too, just the day before. Now her heart is frantically pounding out "two-guys-at-once-two-kisses-you-have-to-choose," and, she says, "I don't know if my heart can survive that kind of beating." Yes, this story has been told before. But Gallagher infuses the usual fluff with personality, in part via the offbeat Seattle setting. Alice and Jewel are regulars at the Green Bean organic coffee shop, friends with the video store clerk ("Greetings, darlings," he says as they return a Japanimation DVD) and connoisseurs of the indie music scene. Although Jewel conforms to the "Mr. Outsider Artist" label that Alice tags him with, Simon isn't the stock football player (he volunteers at the aquarium and has actual feelings); members of the artsy and popular crowds overlook stereotypes long enough to commingle willingly by the end. The author's voice is strong-she bears watching. Ages 14-up. (Jan.)

VOYA

Fifteen-year-old Alice has spent most of high school feeling invisible-not that she is complaining. She has always been content staying on the perimeter, with her best friend, Jewel, observing and shunning all things typically teenage. Alice and Jewel exist in their own little world where they spend time creating and appreciating art, drinking coffee, and trolling junk shops and other offbeat attractions in Seattle. When Alice starts dating Simon, a popular athlete who is surprisingly complex, her relationship with Jewel suffers. With Simon, Alice begins to step out of the shadows. Less shy now, Alice makes new friends and participates in things she once mocked, such as high school dances and parties with the football team. As Jewel pulls further away from Alice, she questions her feelings toward him and why she can not stop thinking about Jewel when she is with Simon. Now that Alice no longer feels invisible, she must decide if she can step back and take a good hard look at who she really is. The struggle to fit in is a common theme in young adult novels. What sets this title apart is that Alice ultimately understands that who she is cannot be defined by the company she keeps. Although nervous to leave the shelter of her relationship with Jewel, Alice discovers that it is okay to have more than one friend from more than one group. With its striking setting and diverse cast of well-developed characters, Gallagher's debut-like Alice-shines. Reviewer: Amanda MacGregor

More Reviews (2) Fewer Reviews

KLIATT

This is Gallagher's first novel and it's a fine beginning. The story is set in Seattle (whew, a change from NYC or LA) and Alice, a sophomore in high school, is the narrator. She is a good student, interested in art, and her best friend is Jewel (Julian), one of the school's most talented artists. They have been friends for years, they do everything together; they are so comfortable with one another and their little routines, Alice feels somewhat invisible. What would change that? The interest of another guy, Simon, handsome, popular, an athlete. Alice feels newly alive and beautiful . . . for a short time, until she misses Jewel. There's some lust involved, of course, and jealousy (Jewel takes up with Vanessa) until things become clearer. It isn't only a new boyfriend that makes Alice feel the opposite of invisible. She makes a new friend, Mandy, and she discovers glass blowing, which challenges her creativity in a new way. When she and Jewel become best friends once again, ready perhaps someday to change from friends to lovers, Alice is excited about the future and feels much more confident about herself. Gallagher never misses with dialog, interior monologues, and subtle shifts in relationships. She has no good guys and bad guys, just struggling teenagers trying to discover who they are. Age Range: Ages 12 to 18. REVIEWER: Claire Rosser (Vol. 42, No. 1)

School Library Journal

Gr 8-10- Alice has never been part of the in-crowd at school. She hangs with the artsies, as well as her best friend, a boy named Jewel whom she has known since grade school. Then one day something weird happens-a popular football player named Simon starts noticing her. Jewel starts noticing her too. In the course of one week, both boys kiss her and she likes both kisses equally. Initially, she dates Simon, and, as a result, her friendship with Jewel is shattered, and she must make a decision about what's really important to her. The story is upbeat, but the pacing is slow, and the plot is a bit obvious. However, the mood of reflection is sustained throughout, the characters are fully fleshed out, and high school life is accurately portrayed.-Jennifer-Lynn Draper, Children's Literature Consultant, Aurora, ON, Canada

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780375841538
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Publication date: 10/13/2009
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 160
Sales rank: 859,565
Age range: 14 years
Lexile: 0530L (what's this?)
Product dimensions: 4.00 (w) x 6.80 (h) x 0.60 (d)

Meet the Author

Liz Gallagher is a former children’s bookseller and early education teacher. She received her MFA in writing for children from Vermont College. This is her first novel. She lives in Seattle, Washington.

Read an Excerpt

Some girls have journals. I talk to my poster.

It’s Saturday afternoon and Jewel should be here soon. While I wait for him, I’m talking to the poster over my bed.

“Dove Girl, please help me.”

She’s a print made by Picasso in the fifties: Le Visage de la Paix. The face of peace. Much wished-upon by me. It’s something about how comfortable she seems; calm.

“Please help me with creatures of the male persuasion,” I say. “Other than Jewel.”

What I want, I tell her, is a boyfriend. Maybe I won’t find my soul mate. But I want handholding and kissing and I want someone to go to the Halloween Bloodbath with. Like everyone else.

Not just like everyone else, maybe. But a date. With someone who wants to be there with me. Someone I can slow-dance with, off in the shadows.

I hear the front door open, the chimes above it clinking. “Hello, Davises!” Jewel says.

My parents yell hello. Their voices boom, in a happy way.

I can’t tell Jewel that I want to go to the Bath. Of course he’d go with me. But he’d say, “Alice, this is ridiculous,” and “Alice, let’s go rent a movie instead.” And no way would we hold hands or slow-dance. Or kiss. We’ve been friends since we were three.

He’s the only person who knows I have this habit of, like, praying to an inanimate poster. We talked about it just a few days ago. “It’s healthy,” he said, sharing a bag of popcorn with me in my kitchen. “You need someone to talk to.”

“I have you to talk to,” I said. But there’s plenty that I can’t share with him. “Anyway, you don’t really talk to anyone else either. What’s your version of the Dove Girl?”

He swallowed the last handful of popcorn. His camera was hanging from its shoulder strap. He picked it up, fiddled with the lens, and snapped a photo of me staring at him. “That.”

“Hey,” I say now. Jewel squeezes me hello.

He’s watching my parents as they screen-print T-shirts in their headquarters for saving the world, which used to be our dining room. They’re working on a new design. A plastic soda six-pack-holder-together thing is choking a tuna on the front of the shirt; on the back, the rings are being cut by scissors.

Both of my parents are in their fifties, but when I look at them now I can see exactly what they must’ve been like at my age. Passionate. Excitable.

Good-looking, too. My dad has blue-blue eyes and black hair spiked gray around his temples. My mom has kept her orange hair long, and the only thing that betrays her age is that now she uses those little half-glasses for reading.

Jewel’s mom comes in. “Hi, Brenda,” I say.

She holds up a grocery bag. “Supplies for the troops!” She’s cute, younger than my parents, in a linen jumper and clogs.

Jewel’s reddish brown hair matches hers. He raises his thickly lashed eyelids and flashes his hazel eyes at her. Something in Jewel is so vibrant; it’s like he’s in color when most of the world is sort of sepia-toned.

Mom gives Brenda a hug. “We can use all the hands we can get.”

They go into the kitchen.

“Ready?”

Jewel nods.

The parents are laughing about something; Brenda teaches preschool and she usually has stories about the kids. My parents love to relive having toddlers.

I lean through the doorway. “Be back later.”

Jewel and I tink the door chimes as we leave.

The sky, our Seattle sky, is gray, like it usually is, and it drips rain onto every part of us, raindrops so tiny that we hardly notice them. We’ve grown up here, so we’re amphibians.

But we wear our hoods up.

We walk to the scone shop with the best lattes. Chunky Glasses is behind the counter; the guy looks like a fifties square, but in that way that’s hip now.

The people in here always act superior because they know whether a marionberry or a raspberry goes better in a scone with an orange glaze. And they sell buttons that say things like kill your television. But they have the best lattes. We come here, but it’s strictly a to-go situation.

“Double tall vanilla,” Jewel says to Chunky Glasses. “Two.”

Chunky Glasses nods and makes the espresso machine swell into a frenzy of sound like a helium balloon inflating. When he presents our lattes, he says, “Lids right behind you,” like he hasn’t seen us a hundred times before. “And sugar.”

That’s an insult; no one adds sugar to this drink. He’s testing our Seattle coffee sophistication.

Jewel pays, and Chunky Glasses puts our change on the counter, even though Jewel is holding his hand palm up right there.

Outside, Jewel and I drink our coffee. He gulps like a giant. I remember our first lattes, when we were twelve. We ordered triple grandes and I thought the espresso tasted like acid. I trashed mine about halfway through. Jewel drank his by clamping his lips around the cup and letting the tiniest bit through. He drank the whole thing, so slowly.

The scone shop window is covered in flyers. I notice a dog walker looking for new clients, a yoga studio beginning its next six-week Vinyasa session, and a glassblowing workshop.

“Glassblowing,” I say, nodding toward the flyer. I take a step toward the window. fire art glass studio. now registering for saturday workshop. all levels. call jim. “Cool.”

Jewel steps next to me. “Yeah, totally. It’s eighty dollars, though.”

I consider. “I still have some babysitting money from the summer. I’ve been saving it for something special.”

“You should do it. You’d love it.” His gaze lands on my face.

“What makes you think so?”

He keeps looking at me. “You want to try a new medium, right? This is perfect. I bet glass will really be your thing.”

“I have always wanted to try it.”

“Do it!” He goes over to the flyer, rips off the phone number, and hands it to me.

“We’ll see.” I put the scrap of paper in my pocket.

“Let’s walk,” Jewel says, and we head down Fremont Avenue toward Ballard.

In the window of the big junk shop on the corner, plastic skeletons dance. Jack-o’-lantern heads top scarecrow bodies. A wooden witch wearing the perfect dress—black and netty—soars across a Mylar moon.

“Holy Halloween, Batman,” I say, and stop.

“Almost makes you want to go to the Bloodbath, doesn’t it?” Jewel says. “If you were a cheesier type of person.”

He thrusts around his latte cup like it’s a pom-pom. “Go, team!” he yells.

“Rah,” I say, but I’m not really concentrating because my brain has been taken over by the witch dress. “Jewel.”

His gaze follows my pointing finger to the witch. “Seriously? Okay. Fun.”

We take down our hoods and head inside.

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TeensReadToo

Posted November 12, 2008

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Reviewed by Jaglvr for TeensReadToo.com

Alice and Jewel (Julian). That's how it's always been. A seemingly invisible pair of sophomores at their high school. They've been friends for forever and are never without the other.

Until the day Simon Murphy acknowledges Alice.

Jewel jumps all over Alice, asking what it was about, but it wasn't anything, really. Was it? Then Alice and Jewel go to a concert and Simon comes over to Alice while Jewel is in the restroom, and stays with the two of them throughout the show. Simon went so far as to ditch his friends to be with Alice. Nothing happens, and it leaves Alice more confused than before.

Alice has wanted a boyfriend for ages, but she doesn't want to lose Jewel in the process. When things with Simon actually start working out, the distance between Alice and Jewel grows. After a confession from Jewel about his true feelings for her, the chasm seems insurmountable. Alice is finally coming out of her shell and making friends beyond Jewel, but losing her best friend leaves a void inside.

Alice has to struggle to figure out who she is and what she really wants. Is having a great guy like Simon as a boyfriend what it's all about? Or is having a best friend that knows every little thing about you more important?

All young adults have to struggle with an identity issue as they go through their teen years. Alice realizes that she needs more than just Jewel in her life, but soon learns that a best friend is next to impossible to replace.

Ms. Gallagher writes an honest book about the internal struggles of an insecure girl. We all have that same insecurity inside of us and can understand what Alice has to figure out on her own. Definitely a book that everyone can relate to from some point in their lives.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
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Miss_Reckless

Posted May 13, 2011

The Opposite of Interesting

Alice is stuck between two guys, Simon, a popular guy, and Jewel, her best friend. When she starts seeing Simon, it affects her friendship with Jewel, her only friend since she can remember who has always seen her for who she is. My problem with this book? The characters NEVER developed throughout the 130 pages and I wasn't in love with any of them by the end of this. Simon is a douche and Jewel isn't anything special, neither is Alice to be frank. This entire book was predictable and the ending was stupid. It was also poorly written (constant switching of subjects and just boring) and ridiculously short. Do not read this book if you're looking for a fluffy love triangle. Do not read this AT ALL. Try Anna and the French Kiss. Now that's entertaining AND romantic, a completely lovable book unlike this one.
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-Capri-

Posted May 5, 2010

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One of the best books I have ever read

This story of a teenage girl and her best friend is easy to relate to for many young people today. The main charachter, Alice, explores love and friendship. She's a teenage girl with a guy best friend, Jewel. I enjoyed connecting with how she was feeling everyday in her high school. Alice adventures through the waters of love, friendship, and self-identity. She learns by the end of the book that there is nothing better than having your best friend with you. She would never purposely lose him as a best friend again. She learns that not everyone is what they look like, and some are just the same as you on the inside. Alice eventually finds where her heart belongs and who belongs in her heart. The book has a happy ending that made me smile. It was very addicting and I devoured it quickly.
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Anonymous

Posted September 23, 2008

Opposite of Invisible

It was just alright. An average book for the plane.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted February 2, 2008

Opposite of Invisible

At first, I thought the book was too slow, but as it progressed, I found I was enchanted by Liz's fabulous prose. I loved the plot and how Alice grew. Please stick through the begininng because you'll be rewarded with a heartfelt, romantic tale of love and forgiveness.

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Anonymous

Posted November 30, 2007

A reviewer

this was a very good book. im a fast reader and i read this in about 1-2 hours. :]

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The Opposite of Invisible

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Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

More About This Book

Overview

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

VOYA

KLIATT

School Library Journal

Product Details

Meet the Author

Read an Excerpt

Customer Reviews

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Reviewed by Jaglvr for TeensReadToo.com

The Opposite of Interesting

One of the best books I have ever read

Opposite of Invisible

Opposite of Invisible

A reviewer