As humans, the two interconnected things we can count on is that everything changes (breaks down is a more blunt way to say it, but I think “changes” encompasses good changes, too) and everyone dies. Life is figuring out how to respond to those two interconnected things, and in Sara Zarr’s 2020 young adult book, Goodbye from Nowhere, Kyle Baker is trying to do just that. He’s still in high school, thinks he’s in love, and assumes he has what is basically a normal family, both immediate and extended. Instead, he learns that everything changes, even the adults who he assumed had everything figured out, and himself.
The book opens with what feels like the typical rom-com type premise: Kyle bringing his girlfriend, Nadia, to Thanksgiving at the family farm, Nowhere, to meet his extended family who often gathers at the farm for holidays and any old reason. That goes well enough. Then, later, Kyle learns from his dad that his mother is seeing someone. The illusion Kyle has around his life immediately shatters, and with it, all good things in his life. After all, when things are crumbling around you, how dare you be happy (such a relatable feeling!). He ghosts Nadia, baseball, his friends, and of course, his mother. And he leans even more on his cousin, Emily, for support via text message and FaceTime, worrying constantly if he’s being too needy, if she’s mad at him, and if she’s only paying attention to him out of familial duty. Kyle’s inner thoughts are all inner thoughts (in different contexts) I’ve had at some point in my life, which is what made Zarr’s book such a fast, but probing read.
Worse still, Kyle volunteers at a baseball camp of sorts for younger kids, and he gets close to the kid of the man his mother is sleeping with. Awkward. But what Kyle eventually learns through this secret he’s learned from his dad, is that unlike the Baker men before him, he can have feelings and express those feelings to other people. Feelings are good and okay! And yes, he can be happy and enjoy things he used to (baseball, for example) without feeling shame. Yes, he lost his girlfriend because of his ghosting, but at least he has Emily, and speaking of, he can also enjoy his friendship to her without psychoanalyzing every response, or nonresponse, she gives.
What’s interesting about the Kyle and Emily relationship is that even though Emily bluntly states she’s not interested in dating boys or girls, I feel like it’s heavily teased throughout the book that Kyle and Emily have feelings for each other that extend beyond the familial and beyond best friend territory. It’s never acted upon, but it feels implied! Still, they were cute how they leaned on each other to navigate their respective new realities.
And Nowhere is going somewhere, which is to say, Kyle’s grandparents are selling the farm, so, that’s another thing Kyle is losing, a place that tethered him to his childhood memories and the “before time,” aka the time when he thought his family was happy.
Zarr’s book was a nice addition to the coming-of-age genre where in this case, coming-of-age means seeing your parents and your family for who they really are rather than who you think they are. While it’s not always a pretty sight and sometimes you wish you could unsee the reality, that’s life, and Kyle learns to go along with it. If you like a younger, and relatable narrative voice, I think you’ll appreciate the Kyle character and Zarr’s book.
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