Wasteland

Teenage Lex and his sister, Marina, have been close since early childhood, always there for each other. But when their love intensifies during a sexual encounter one night, both are racked with guilt. Lex kills himself; Marina tries to carry on with the support of a friend who loves her and knows that her brother did, too. There have been several recent YA books about incest, but what distinguishes this small poetic novel is its quiet. There's no sexual violence, no abuse. In the siblings' short, alternating monologues to each other, the word you is an endearment as each teen remembers growing up with a beloved sibling who was mother, father, friend, and child. The young people remember the small physical facts of their childhood together, the tenderness of Marina's baby hand clasped around Lex's finger; the laughter, then darkness. A plot surprise at the end seems patched on, and a long quote from T. S. Eliot's "Wasteland" may be beyond many readers. It's Block's simple, beautiful words that reveal the loving connection--and then the fragments.