Switch

Description

A brilliant and surreal novel about isolation and human connection, from award-winning author A. S. King. A surreal and timely novel about isolation and human connection from Michael L. Printz Award-winner A.S. King. Time has stopped. It's been June 23, 2020 for nearly a year. Frantic adults demand teenagers focus on finding practical solutions to the crisis. Sixteen-year-old javelin-throwing prodigy Tru Becker lives in a house with a switch that no one ever touches, a switch her father guards every day by nailing it into hundreds of larger and larger boxes. Somehow, from box seven, Tru has to deal with her troubled brother in box eleven. And in her science class at school she's supposed to come up with a solution to the world's problems in her science class. But why was her sister sent away, and will her mother ever return? Will anyone ever feel emotions properly again? Tru has a crowbar, and one way or another, she's going to see what happens when she flips the switch. Written with the same heart, nuance and depth as A.S. King's other prize-winning YA books, Switch is about re-setting, finding ways to deal with past trauma, to trust and to care- To understand anything is to understand energy / anger / love.

A.S. King is the author of many acclaimed novels and has won the Michael L. Printz Award in 2020 for Dig, a Michael L. Printz Honor in 2011 for Please Ignore Vera Dietz, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2012 for Ask the Passengers, The Amelia Walden Award, The Carolyn Field Award, and one time she won e50 on a scratch card. The New York Times called her 'one of the best YA writers working today'. King lives in Pennsylvania.

'One of the best YA writers working today.' -- John Green 'Anyone who thinks YA books can't also be great literature needs to read this author.' -- Irish Times 'King understands and writes teen anxieties like no other, resulting in difficult, resonant, compelling characters and stories.' -- Kirkus 'Maybe there are writers more adept than King at capturing the outrageous and outraged voice of teenagers, but it's difficult to think of one.' -- New York Times 'A.S. King shows a deep understanding of teen anxieties and writes with streetwise humour, tenderness and originality...Hers is a magical style that dances off the page.' -- Otago Daily Times 'Switch is mind-bending, life-affirming and brilliant. Nobody maps the wilderness of growing up like A. S. King.' * Vikki Wakefield * 'As Switch explores the spectrum between isolation and connection, it becomes an unsettling but emotionally resonant novel for our own unsettling times.' * BookPage *