Long Way Down Jason Reynolds Vk

[Floriana Grundy]

LongWay Down is a young adult novel in verse by Jason Reynolds, published October 24, 2017, by Atheneum Books. The book was longlisted for the National Book Award[1] and was named a Printz Honor Book, Coretta Scott King Honor Book, and Newbery Medal Honor Book,[2] alongside other awards and positive reviews.

Reynolds held the idea for Long Way Down for years before finally writing it. In 2003 when Reynolds was 19, he learned that a friend had been murdered.[3] Speaking of the moment, he said he and his friends felt "an anger, a pain, like a cancer metastasizing by the second, spreading around [them] and through [them]. [They] knew his death had changed [them] chemically, and that [they] could do, perhaps, what [they] never knew [they] could do before. Kill."[3] Reynolds continued,

William Holloman is ready to exact vengeance on the person who murdered his older brother, Shawn. As Will rides the elevator down from his eighth-floor apartment, a new person, who is dead, gets on on each floor and tells a story about their lives, all connected to three rules of the neighborhood:[4]

The book received starred reviews from Booklist,[7] Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books,[8] Horn Book,[9] Kirkus,[5] Publishers Weekly,[10] and School Library Journal,[11] as well as positive reviews from Shelf Awareness.[12]

Kirkus,[5] Publishers Weekly,[13] the New York Public Library,[14] the Chicago Public Library,[15] Entertainment Weekly,[16] Vulture,[17] Paste,[18] Buzzfeed,[19] Horn Book,[20] and School Library Journal[21] named Long Way Down one of the best young adult books of the year. The Washington Post included it in their list of "50 Notable Works of Fiction 2017."[22]

In a quest for vengeance, Will steps onto an elevator with a gun, on his way down to find the man that he thinks is responsible for his brother's death. However, as Will tries to make the long trip down, the elevator keeps stopping floor-by-floor, forcing Will to confront the ghosts of his past, and question whether this mission for revenge is really something he wants to do.

This week on the MashReads Podcast, we caught up with Reynolds to chat about about the novel. Join us in the episode above as we chat about writing about gun violence, seeing yourself in literature, and Long Way Down.

I am a consummate metaphor addict. In this book, because I chose to write it in verse, the natural inclination is to layer it. You can create all kinds of symbolism and metaphors that poetry and verse leans towards. So I wanted it to mimic what it feels like to be angry. What it feels like to be traumatized and pained. What it feels like is claustrophobia. It feels like is tightness and coldness, steel, jagged movements and vertigo. All the things that an elevator brings is what it feels like to be that angry.

The elevator makes unexpected stops at each floor along the way; stops that serve as chapter/section changes within the overall novel. At each floor, another person enters the elevator. These people each have advice, stories, and/or legacies for Will to comprehend. The question is, however, is Will too hyped up to assimilate them?

Over the course of Long Way Down there are turns of phrase that will resonate far beyond the pages of the book. Like all poets, Reynolds is careful with the words he chooses, with the sounds they make, and the meanings they convey. Long Way Down can be read in just a few hours, but the beauty and power of these words will have readers slowing down to savor them and turning back to experience them multiple times.

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An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestseller Jason Reynolds's fiercely stunning novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds--the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he's going to murder the guy who killed his brother.A cannon. A strap.

A piece. A biscuit.

A burner. A heater.

A chopper. A gat.

A hammer

A tool

for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That's what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That's where Will's now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother's gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he's after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that's when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn's gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn't know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck's in the elevator? Just as Will's trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck's cigarette. Will doesn't know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END...if WILL gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.

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