Where She Went

"Take this sinking boat and point it home

We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You've made it now"

"Falling Slowly"
lyrics by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
performed by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova


     Where She Went is Gayle Forman's sequel to the love story, If I Stay.  In the first novel, Mia is an aspiring cellist who is involved in a horrific car crash which claims the lives of her family.  While comatose, she hovers between life and death, not sure if she wants to stay behind when it would be so easy to release herself to death.  In the end, it is her musician boyfriend, Adam, who persuades her to stay, whispering her a pledge that he will do whatever it takes to convince her to choose life.  Where She Went picks up their story three years later, and tells how their relationship unfolded from Adam's point of view.
     Adam Wilde has blazed his way into stardom and success.  His band, Shooting Star, has platinum selling albums, won Grammy Awards, and is preparing for a world wide concert tour.  Yet, Adam is miserable.  He snaps at reporters during interviews, he no longer has a rapport with his band, and he is prone to anxiety attacks.  When Mia left for Juilliard three years ago, she walked out of his life.  At first, they bridge the distance through late night cell conversations, texting, and email.  But within a few weeks, Adam notices that Mia is not answering his calls or responding to his texts and emails.  
     Adam falls to pieces during this time period.  He withdraws from the band and begins working a dead end job in a local plant.  After learning that Mia has maintained contact with her best friend, Kim, Adam dully accepts that she has cut him off completely without any explanation.  He begins writing songs and this action proves to be cathartic and productive.  Armed with new material, he meets Shooting Star and plays them the recordings.  This music becomes the backbone of their soon-to-be platinum selling album Collateral Damage.  But once they achieve success like they've never experienced before, Adam begins his downward slide.  He fights with his bandmates and needs medication to sooth his nerves.  On the eve of Shooting Star's tour, he narrates, "And the tour is sixty-seven nights.  It makes me want to grab fistfuls of my hair and yank.  And how do I tell Aldous, how do I tell any of them, that the music, the adrenaline, the love, all the things that mitigate how hard this has become, all of that's gone?  All that's left is this vortex.  And I'm right on the edge of it," (Forman, pg. 26-27).  On the edge of a nervous breakdown, Adam walks around New York City and finds himself outside Carnegie Hall.  And it is there, that he sees Mia, or rather, a poster advertising that she is playing there that night.    He buys a ticket and after the performance, an usher approaches him, requesting his presence backstage.  Mia learned that he was present and wanted to see him.  Adam describes their encounter after three years:  "The floor is spinning, the vortex is calling, and I'm itching for one of my pills, but there's no reaching for one now," (Forman, pg. 52).  Once the shock and initial awkwardness wear off, they decide to spend the night together, with Mia leading Adam on a tour of her favorite city haunts.
     Reading this book reminded me of the 1995 movie Before Sunrise and its 2004 sequel Before Sunset.  The first movie traced the chance encounter between a young American man and a young French woman on an Austrian train.  They spend the night together wandering around Vienna and getting to know each other before they have to go their separate ways the next morning.  The sequel takes place nine years later when they accidentally meet again in France, and spend the day together before the man has to catch a plane back to the United States.  Both films and book share the idea that time is limited for these couples' meetings, which forces them to hold deeply personal and revealing conversations.  At one point in the novel, Adam and Mia are walking on the Brooklyn Bridge and Mia is attempting to explain why she broke contact with him three years ago.  Mia tells Adam that she hated him because he made her stay.  "I still wake up every single morning and for a second I forget that I don't have my family anymore.  It would've been easier to die.  And I couldn't help but think that it would've been so much simpler to go with the rest of them.  But you - you asked me to stay.  You begged me to stay," (Forman, pg. 188-189).  Mia reminds Adam that when he made his promise to her, he swore he would do anything, even if it meant letting her go.  And so she stays, but she blamed him for her choice, because her decision to stay resulted in a painful reality for her.  
     In the first novel, Gayle Forman uses Adam to pull Mia back from the brink of death.  In the sequel, the roles are reversed with Mia helping Adam move away from the black hole he is plunging toward.  In reading about Gayle Forman's background, I came across an interview conducted by author Lauren Oliver.  Forman confesses that she listened to the song "Falling Slowly" continuously while writing If I Stay.  I began this reflection by posting one of the song's verses, because I feel they apply to Where She Went.  Adam is now the sinking boat and he needs Mia to help guide him back to what he once was.  He's made it in the sense that he has found her again and they can reassess their choices for the future.  Adam purposely misses his flight to London to be with Mia.  He is not being constrained by time; it is no longer an enemy.  The book ends with Adam performing at the music festival in London with Mia in attendance.  As he sings, "Won't you, won't you, won't you re-create me", he ends the novel by thinking, "This is our new vow" (Forman, pg. 260).  It is a more positive vow that ends the book than the one that is mentioned at the beginning - "Every morning I wake up and tell myself this:  It's just one day, one twenty-four hour period to get yourself through," (Forman, pg. 3).  
     For my If I Stay reflection, I mentioned that I would use the novel as a book club selection.  I could also see using Where She Went as a book club selection.  Since three is a popular number for a book series, students could keep a notebook of ideas for a third novel.  As with the first novel, it would also be fun to create a playlist to reflect the different moods of the characters at various points in time.  Finally, if it could be arranged, it would be fun to go on a walking tour of Mia's haunts, and duplicate the path Mia and Adam took in reclaiming their relationship.