The Lifters by Dave Eggers (review)

Twelve-year-old Gran (short for Granite) isn’t thrilled when his family moves to the small town of Carousel. Years ago, a giant sinkhole swallowed up the factory that made the one-of-a-kind carousels that gave the town its name, and now more sinkholes are appearing, swallowing up houses and leaving a giant pit inside the middle school. Catalina Catalan, a strange girl at school, seems to know what’s going on, but every time Gran tries to talk to her, she vanishes mysteriously or insists that things he saw weren’t real—even when she takes him into a network of underground tunnels to help her try to reinforce them before another sinkhole can form. It turns out that Catalina is one of the Lifters, a secret group of (mostly) teenagers who fight a force called the Hollows, a sentient underground wind that carves out the tunnels and that is attracted to human sadness. Eggers skillfully handles the trope of the kids who save the town, with plenty of humorous adult cluelessness (one government official is convinced that the destruction is being caused by herds of moose) but an equal measure of compassion for the sadness that’s attracted the Hollows. Gran will be familiar to any kid who’s felt invisible, and his growing friendship with prickly Catalina, along with the success of their plan to restore the buried carousel in front of city hall, makes this a warm and rewarding read. Final illustrations not seen.