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‘Fracture’ by Megan Miranda and ‘Irises’ by Francisco X. Stork

Book Review | Young Adult Books

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

January 22, 2012|By Meredith Goldstein and By Ugo Ciracì

Every high school has ghosts who serve as cautionary tales, the students who die too young after doing something dangerous, like drinking and driving or diving into quarries.

In Megan Miranda’s gripping debut “Fracture,’’ the kid who makes the stupid mistake lives, just barely, to tell the tale. The quick-witted and pragmatic Delaney, who, against her better judgment, walks across a not-quite-frozen lake in Maine only to fall beneath the ice, does, technically, die - but only for about 11 minutes.

“A lot can happen in eleven minutes,’’ Delaney tells us matter-of-factly after she wakes up in a hospital in front of frantic parents, puzzled doctors, and her guilt-ridden best friend, Decker, who feels responsible for the accident. “Decker,’’ she explains, “can run two miles easily in eleven minutes. I once wrote an English essay in ten. No lie. And God knows Carson Levine can talk a girl out of her clothes in half that time.’’

The mystery at the heart of Miranda’s “Fracture’’ - a coming-of-age story that doubles as a medical mystery in the vein of an episode of “House’’ - is that, based on her brain scans, Delaney should be a vegetable. And yet she survives with her wit intact and spends the novel reconnecting with friends as she remains as focused as ever on becoming valedictorian. Meanwhile, her family and school buddies watch her with wonder and fear, convinced that her brain will short-circuit at any minute.

Delaney becomes even more of a medical phenomenon when she discovers that her injuries may have left her with supernatural powers. Eerie questions continue to pile up after she meets a mysterious young man: Who is this ghost of a boy? How does he know that Delaney has cheated death?

Miranda, who was a scientist and high school teacher before she wrote “Fracture,’’ delivers a satisfactory medical suspense story, but her novel is at its best when it focuses on her characters as they stumble through passive-aggressive conversations, repress their desires, and attempt, privately, to cope with their new understanding of mortality. Delaney’s friends and family know that they’ve been given a second chance with her, but for much of the book they do very little to seize the moment.