Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Jesse Andrews's 2012 debut is narrated by Greg Gaines, a Pittsburgh high school senior whose entire social strategy is to be vaguely friendly with every clique and genuinely close with none of them. His one real friend is Earl, a foul-mouthed kid from a tougher part of town with whom he makes terrible homemade remakes of arthouse films. That careful equilibrium collapses when Greg's mother forces him to spend time with Rachel, a classmate who has just been diagnosed with leukemia. Greg keeps insisting, in footnotes and screenplay scraps and increasingly panicked asides, that this is not that kind of book, that nobody is going to learn anything, that he is going to disappoint everyone, including the reader. Andrews uses that anti-redemption stance to write something funnier and far more honest about teenage cowardice and the limits of friendship than the standard sick-girl novel allows.
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Greg has spent high school being inoffensive enough to get along with everyone. His mother makes him hang out with Rachel, a classmate diagnosed with leukemia. He and his friend Earl decide to make her a movie.
Yes. A 2015 film adaptation directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and starring Thomas Mann, RJ Cyler, and Olivia Cooke was released. The film won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
Yes. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is YA, suitable for readers 14 and up. The voice is irreverent and meta, with frequent author asides. It is more darkly comic than typical sick-lit YA.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was written by Jesse Andrews, published in 2012 by SXQ.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is 304 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a standalone novel by Jesse Andrews, not part of a series.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
