I started reading Sarina Bowman’s The Year We Fell Down, about a college freshman with a spinal cord injury , and when this first-person narrator meets her roommate for the first time, she says . . .

“. . . a little specter of hope had alighted on my shoulder. And this feathered, winged thing had been buzzing around for weeks, whispering encouragements in my ear. . . . Now, facing [my roommate] in the flesh for the first time, my little hope fairy did a cartwheel on my shoulder.”

She has a little Hope Fairy. I rolled my eyes. (Yes, I am a bitch.)

But as the story progressed, the Hope Fairy became less twee, showing up nineteen times in the course of the book to help the narrator undercut the anguish of her situation, and I started to pay attention to what Bowen was doing with her. Continue reading →