Sixteen is a pivotal age, stranded between childhood and adulthood. At sixteen life ranges from ecstasy to despair and the cause of the emotion can be trivial or momentous. I remember wanting to be taken seriously, to be treated more as an adult than a child. To be free to make my own decisions for the course of my life. But of course, along with the freedom of decision, comes responsibility and consequences for those choices.

In Katherine Marple’s novel, Okay, the sixteen-year-old unnamed female protagonist makes choices which swiftly alter the course of her life, and takes her best friend, and protector, London with her. After setting up the pair as best friends, living in the same neighborhood, in the same style homes, the differences are revealed. London has a loving, supportive family to come home to, while the protagonist fears her alcoholic, abusive father. Coming home late from a graduation party with London, the protagonist attempts to sneak into the house avoiding her father’s wrath, unsuccessfully. When he has beaten and choked her, and threatened her with more abuse and potential rape, the protagonist runs to her best friend to enlist his help.

“Please,” I begged. “Let’s go now.”
He solemnly nodded his head, stroked my hair, and whispered, “Okay.”

Having convinced London to abandon his loving home, his college career, and essentially his future to run away with her, the protagonist wastes no time in making bad decision after bad decision along the way. Drugs, alcohol, and sex with relative strangers, and all the while London is there to pick up the pieces. The protagonist is on a roller coaster of emotion from the freedom of living a life she has never known before to the despair over some of the choices she has made.

Marple presents a strong, clear point of view with her unnamed protagonist, and while I found the pacing to be a little quick, lacking in emotional depth with the heavy topics the book covers, the voice is unwavering and draws the reader along. For the bulk of the book, the lack of a name for the main character was not an issue, but a few times felt a bit gimmicky. The narrator herself explains the lack of name.

My name isn’t important. What is important is helping someone hope for a better view, at the end of his pain. That is the purpose of my story; to help someone heal.

Originally reviewed for the LL Book Review