Without Merit

In this surprisingly serious look at the experience and consequences of untreated mental illness, Merit Voss’s eccentric family amplifies her typical teenage angst as she tries to shield herself with dismissive, defensive humor. Her bubbly twin sister, Honor, keeps falling in love with terminally ill boys. Her reclusive mother has not left the basement for years, and her preening stepmother (her mom’s former oncology nurse) lives upstairs. The recent appearance of Sagan, a perfect example of a dreamy stranger, in the household awakens strong jealousy in Merit when she assumes he is Honor’s boyfriend. Merit keeps repeating how much the town hates her family, but her depressive slide into dropping out of school does not allow any proof of social rejection. Finally fed up with her family’s willful ignorance of her problems, she drunkenly pens a letter that exposes secrets, including an explanation for her chilly relationship with ambitious, chipper older brother Utah. When her suicide attempt is foiled, the whole family has to learn to cope with these revelations. The romantic thread between Merit and Sagan is flimsy but stays intact through to the end. Hoover relies a bit too much on pat conversations to resolve resentments, but her characters are lively and her honest approach to difficult issues makes this contemporary novel more solid than its fluffy feel suggests. (Oct.)