Silvera, Adam
Entry updated 11 March 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1990- ) US author whose first novel, the Young Adult More Happy Than Not (2015; exp 2020), explores with considerable intricacy and depth the existential cruces faced by a young man from a conservative family in a heterosexual relationship who discovers he is gay. His medical solution to this dilemma – to submit to a Memory Edit through the Leteo Institute to excise his unacceptable passion – backfires when he discovers that he had gone through the same procedure earlier, and that it did not "cure" him. After he discovers that his short-term memory is failing, and that he is (seemingly not for the first time) developing Amnesia, he comes to some kind of terms with his plight.
The Death-Cast sequence beginning with They Both Die at the End (2017) unpacks in an Alternate World version of New York in 2017, where it is possible to predict the time of one's death (see precognition). The two teenage protagonists of the tale, informed they each will die within twenty-four hours, use apps (see Media Landscape) to expand their day together; find they are both gay and in love with one another; and then they die. The First to Die at the End (2020) is a prequel. The Infinity Cycle beginning with Infinity Son (2017) is fantasy.
The examination of Sex and gender issues throughout Silvera's work is undertaken with memorable clarity and passion. [JC]
Adam Silvera
born New York: 7 June 1990
works (selected)
series
Death-Cast
- They Both Die at the End (New York: HarperTeen, 2017) [Death-Cast: hb/Simobn Prades]
- The First to Die at the End (New York: HarperTeen/Quill Tree Books, 2020) [Death-Cast: hb/]
Infinity Cycle
- Infinity Son (New York: HarperTeen/Quill Tree Books, 2020) [Infinity Cycle: hb/Kevin Tong]
- Infinity Reaper (New York: HarperTeen/Quill Tree Books, 2021) [Infinity Cycle: hb/Kevin Tong]
- Infinity Kings (New York: HarperTeen/Quill Tree Books, 2024) [Infinity Cycle: hb/Kevin Tong]
individual titles
- More Happy Than Not (New York: Simon and Schuster/Soho Teen, 2015) [hb/JAnine Agro and Liz Casal]
- More Happy Than Not (New York: Simon and Schuster/Soho Teen, 2020) [exp of the above: hb/]
links
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