Under Rose-Tainted Skies by Louise Gornall (review)

Following a panic attack that landed her in the hospital just before she entered high school, Norah has been housebound and homeschooled as her OCD and agoraphobia have gotten more and more debilitating. When her mother is hospitalized for a week following a car accident, Norah finds herself, out of both necessity and curiosity, sort of opening up to a supercute, superkind boy who’s just moved in next door. Luke first approaches her when she can’t retrieve a grocery order left on her front porch and, finding her both pretty and witty, misjudges some of her actions as coy flirtations at first but eventually comes to understand and accept her limitations. Norah’s sense of humor in the face of her self-aware distress is what creates empathy in the reader; she knows that her elaborate accommodations appear absurd from the outside, but her viewpoint gives her actions a tragic kind of sense. That there was no inciting incident for her anxiety also helps readers understand that this is a brain disorder rather than something she could just get over with better thought control, while the strategies she is working on suggest hope. Even though Luke occasionally makes understandable mistakes, he is compassionate and matter-of-fact in his acceptance of her no-touching rule, and both he and her mother demonstrate ways that loving someone with challenges can be calmly integrated into a mutually rewarding relationship. An author’s note reveals that this is a deeply personal story for Gornall, but she’s managed to craft her own experience into fiction that is as engrossing as it is enlightening. Along with books such as Kinsella’s Finding Audrey (BCCB 9/15), this offers readers a chance to see mental illness in a different light.