Book Review: No and me - D. de Vigan

“All my life I've felt on the outside wherever I am - out of the picture, the conversation, at a distance, as though I were the only one able to hear the sounds or words that other's can't, and deaf to the words that they hear. As if I'm outside the frame, on the other side of a huge, invisible window.” 

A really touching and profound novel about two girls, one homeless and one very clever and lonely.
Two very different realities but one commonality: the companionship, the "being in it together" that both girls are looking for.
Lou tries very hard to "save" No, to give her a home, a family, a sense of "normality", but it cannot last forever, No has been burnt too many times to survive this kind of "normality" and before it ruines her, she ruins it and escape.
Highly recommend it, a novel that touches your heart.

Overall rating:  8,5    Plot: 8,5   Writing style: 8   Cover:  8

Title: No and me (original title No et moi)

Author: Delphine de Vigan
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 256
Publication year: 2007

The Plot:

Lou Bertignac has an IQ of 160 and a good friend in class rebel Lucas. At home her father puts a brave face on things but cries in secret in the bathroom, while her mother rarely speaks and hardly ever leaves the house. To escape this desolate world, Lou goes often to Gare d'Austerlitz to see the big emotions in the smiles and tears of arrival and departure. But there she also sees the homeless, meets a girl called No, only a few years older than herself, and decides to make homelessness the topic of her class presentation. Bit by bit, Lou and No become friends until, the project over, No disappears. Heartbroken, Lou asks her parents the unaskable question and her parents say: Yes, No can come to live with them. So Lou goes down into the underworld of Paris's street people to bring her friend up to the light of a home and family life, she thinks.

The Author:
Delphine de Vigan is an award-winning French novelist. She has published several novels for adults. Her breakthrough work was the book No et moi (No and Me) that was awarded the Prix des Libraires (The Booksellers' Prize) in France in 2008. 
In 2011, she published a novel Rien ne s'oppose a la nuit (Nothing holds back the night) that is dealing with a family coping with their mother's bipolar disorder. In her native France, the novel brought her a set of awards, including the prix du roman Fnac (the prize given by the Fnac bookstores) and the prix Renaudot des lycéens.