My Beautiful Failure by Janet Ruth Young (review)

Last year (in The Opposite of Music, BCCB 4/07), Billy’s father disappeared into a debilitating and frightening depression that disrupted the family. He’s recovered now, but Billy, now a sophomore, is still wary, especially when his father throws himself into his art with a passion that looks like mania to Billy. Meanwhile, Billy has decided that his experience has prepared him to be a phone counselor at Listeners, a hotline for people in crisis. The hotline has specific rules about how to handle callers, but Billy comes to find these restrictive, especially when he gets a repeat caller named Jenney. He and Jenney develop an empathetic connection, which Billy imagines has romantic potential, but just as he misreads his father’s reinvigorated mental health, he misreads the depth of Jenney’s disturbance until it’s too late. Caught between the emotional extremes of people he cares deeply for, Billy struggles with the limits of his own power to help people; ultimately, his biggest struggle is to learn how to accept the frailty of both himself and others. The psychological suspense is taut throughout as readers see Billy’s dad’s behavior through Billy’s memories of the previous year and his fears for his father. Billy’s perspective on Jenney is more obviously skewed, but it’s no less poignant and suspenseful, as his fantasies begin to interfere with his ability to really listen to her. The emotional resonance here is complex and multifaceted, melancholy even where there’s hope and hopeful in the midst of melancholy; readers will be thinking about this one long after they close the book.