Under Rose-Tainted Skies

by Louise Gornall

Overview

Norah has agoraphobia and OCD. When groceries are left on the porch, she can’t step out to get them. Struggling to snag the bags with a stick, she meets Luke. He’s sweet and funny, and he just caught her fishing for groceries. Because of course he did. 
     Norah can’t leave the house, but can she let someone in? As their friendship grows deeper, Norah realizes Luke deserves a normal girl. One who can lie on the front lawn and look up at the stars. One who isn’t so screwed up.
     Readers themselves will fall in love with Norah in this poignant, humorous, and deeply engaging portrait of a teen struggling to find the strength to face her demons.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781328742049
Publisher:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date:	01/09/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	60,579
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

A junk food enthusiast, film nerd, and rumored pink Power Ranger, Louise Gornall writes about her own experiences to help encourage and facilitate conversations with other people also facing challenges with mental illness. She lives in England. Visit her website at www.bookishblurb.com, and follow her on Twitter at @Rock_andor_Roll.

Read an Excerpt

1

I’m going to kill the damn blackbird sitting on my windowsill, chirping and squeaking at the top of its lungs. It hops back and forth, wings spread and flapping, but has zero intention of taking off.
     The point is, it can fly away whenever it wants. And it knows it can. It stops chirping, turns its tiny head, and looks at me. Smiling for sure.
     Smug bastard.
     I pick up my pillow and lob it at the window. It crashes against the glass then plops onto my window ledge, catching a pile of books as it dies a deflated death on my bedroom floor.
     The blackbird is unperturbed, but it pales into insignificance as my eyes home in on my copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Its corner is now ever so slightly out of line with the books beneath it.
     It’s the Reader’s Choice edition. Two hundred and twenty-eight pages exactly. Just like the five books under it. To the left is another pile of six books. They all have two hundred and seventy-two pages. The book on top of that pile is Pride and Prejudice, the Dover Thrift edition.
     “Norah,” Mom bellows up the stairs. “If you don’t get your butt down here in the next ten seconds, I’m canceling the Internet service.” I’ve been testing her patience for the last twenty minutes.
     “I still have a stomachache,” I call back. There’s a pause, and I think maybe she’s giving up on the idea of making me go outside.
     “I don’t care if you have the bubonic plague.” Pause. Inhale courage. Exhale guilt. “If you’re not down these stairs in the next eight seconds, you can kiss your Internet connection goodbye.” Her voice cracks, but wow, she’s really taking this whole “tough love” approach seriously. I don’t think she’s an enabler, but ever since she watched Doctor Motivator and his know-nothing special on mental health, she’s been grappling with her conscience.
     I surrender.
     To her, at least. I look back at the books, see a crumbling tower, a broken wall. Dr. Reeves is in my head, telling me to test myself, telling me to leave the discombobulated book as it is and observe how the world does not collapse around me.
     I huff a breath, climb off the bed, pick up my pillow, and place it back where it belongs. It’s one of four. They all sit angled, diamond shapes, on top of my military-smooth bed sheets.
     Neck hot, fingers tapping thighs, six beats each, I leave the room.
     But before I hit the stairs, that tiny corner, no longer in line with the other five books, is consuming me. Like that song you heard but can’t quite remember the name of. Or that actor you’ve seen in another film but can’t for the life of you recall which one. The thought is a fungus, a black mold rotting my brain. I ache. My teeth itch.
     I stand at the top of the stairs, close my eyes, and try to make my mind go blank.
     Don’t go back. Don’t go back. You don’t need to go back. Clear your mind.
     Here’s the thing. The blankness in my mind turns into a piece of white paper, the white paper reminds me of books, and then I’m thinking about The Picture of Dorian Gray again. Fuck.
     I march back to my room, push the book to its rightful position, and then hate myself.
     The blackbird catches my eye. It hasn’t budged. Bet it knew I would be back. I slam my fist into the window and shout, “Boo!” It shrieks and takes to the skies. I smile. Throw it a sarcastic five-fingered sayonara wave. It’s a small but satisfying victory.
     Then I see a boy through my window. He’s stopped halfway up the garden path and is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind. He’s carrying a box labeled Bedroom. I take note of bulging biceps testing the durability of his shirtsleeves.
     New neighbors.
     Why has he stopped? Am I supposed to smile? Wave? Throw him a thumbs-up? I feel like an idiot.
     It’s awkward; we’re both just staring at each other until a woman in a floaty summer dress sails outside. He’s distracted, so I slip away.
     Like a giant in cast-iron shoes, I make my way down the stairs. Eleven steps, so I have to take the last one twice. I have this thing about even numbers.
     You don’t have to take the last one twice, Dr. Reeves would say.
     But I do, I’d tell her. Then she’d ask me why, and I would say, as I always do, Because that’s the way my mind works.

Editorial Reviews

10/24/2016
Seventeen-year-old Norah has incapacitating OCD and agoraphobia: she hasn’t been outside of her home, except to see her therapist, in nearly four years. After a cute boy named Luke moves in next door and takes an interest in her, Norah manages to fight her urges to hide away, slowly befriending him and showing him who she really is, phobias and all. Norah’s unease permeates the pages (“Musings, meanderings, conversations that haven’t even happened run in one continuous loop around my head”), leaving readers with a deep understanding of the limitations of her conditions. While Luke’s almost-too-good-to-be-true patience and persistence help spur Norah to push herself in new ways, Gornall doesn’t minimize the role of therapy in the progress she makes nor the difficult work that still lies ahead for the teenager. Through Norah’s poetic internal monologue, Gornall, whose own experience with mental illness helped inform Norah’s story, provides an intimate glimpse into the mind of a young woman battling some very real demons. Ages 12–up. Agent: Mandy Hubbard, Emerald City Literary. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"...[Gornall's] managed to craft her own experience into fiction that is as engrossing as it is enlightening."
–Bulletin

"Through Norah’s poetic internal monologue, Gornall, whose own experience with mental illness helped inform Norah’s story, provides an intimate glimpse into the mind of a young woman battling some very real demons."
–Publishers Weekly

"A love story set against the backdrop of debilitating mental illness, this debut novel is a poignant work, infused with humor, self-doubt, and, eventually, self-acceptance."
–School Library Journal

From the Publisher

11/01/2016
Gr 10 Up—Seventeen-year-old Norah Dean hasn't left her house in four years, and the only people she allows around her are her mother and her therapist. She has been diagnosed with agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety, and because she attends school online, she experiences life mainly via social media. Norah's tightly structured world begins to change when her new, very cute neighbor Luke spies her using a stick to pull groceries in from the porch. Romance quickly blossoms but not without setbacks. A love story set against the backdrop of debilitating mental illness, this debut novel is a poignant work, infused with humor, self-doubt, and, eventually, self-acceptance. Drawing from personal experience, the author intelligently and sensitively presents Norah's myriad emotions and her constant battle against her own mind, depicting panic attacks, stream-of-consciousness inner monologues, and more. Mature language and situations combine with the frank, realistic detail as Norah explores her first relationship and her own mental health. VERDICT Great for teens who appreciated Sophie Kinsella's Finding Audrey and Nicola Yoon's Everything, Everything.—Erin Holt, Williamson County Public Library, Franklin, TN

School Library Journal

2016-10-11
Housebound with severe mental illness, a white teen fights her demons and attempts a romance with a neighbor.Seventeen-year-old Norah's high school career ended four years ago. Her illness arrived suddenly; now agoraphobia and OCD prevent her from leaving her house and direct every minute of her day and night. Her unflaggingly supportive and adoring mom home-schools her. Norah narrates her obsessive thoughts, terror, anxiety, tics, coping mechanisms, panic attacks, and losses of consciousness in a first-person voice that's vivid, tormented, sad, and funny: " ‘I'm fine. I swear.' I twirl, because nothing says I'm mentally stable quite like an impromptu pirouette"; "I wonder if I can buy a lobotomy on eBay." Her self-awareness is believably inconsistent: she knows cutting is self-injury but won't accept that skin-scratching—which she does constantly, until she bleeds—also counts. She tries to date the respectful, devoted, almost-impossibly-perfect boy next door without leaving her house or touching him. She's a "tall skinny blonde with baby-blue doe eyes," but her insecurities meld into her illness. Although Norah's voice is droll, desperate, and compelling, her illness rules her plot arc as it rules her life. Disturbingly, Gornall uses a home invasion as a catalyst for Norah's out-of-the-blue progress at the end, rendering this traumatic event as not only benign—leaving no emotional scars—but productive. Excellent prose is undercut by a highly implausible ending. (author's note) (Fiction. 14-18)

Kirkus Reviews

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