The Lightness

April 20, 2020
Temple’s engrossing debut, by turns smart thriller and nuanced coming-of-age story, is set in a high-altitude spiritual retreat known as the Levitation Center, rumored to occupy the only American land where levitation is possible. Olivia Ellis is 15 when her long-unreliable Buddhist father, John, who separated from her mother several years before, disappears from her life after attending a Center retreat. The following summer, Olivia signs up for the retreat’s residential program for teenage girls, hoping to find some clues as to John’s whereabouts. When the enigmatic resident Serena, whose friends Janet and Laurel sneak out nightly to visit her private tent on the mountainside, invites Olivia to join their group and announces that they will learn to levitate, Olivia is eager to belong and to master her father’s religion. Serena plies the girls with alcohol and coaxes guidance from Luke, the Center’s seductive young gardener, who she says has levitated before. By the time Olivia begins doubting Serena’s motives for encouraging dangerous methods, such as fasting and choking, events are spiraling beyond her control. While the frequent asides on fairy tales, etymology, and various intellectual concepts can feel distracting and distancing, the lush, intelligent prose perfectly captures the narrator’s adolescent yearning. Temple’s exploration of the power young women have over each other will appeal to fans of Susan Choi and Emma Cline.

April 1, 2020

DEBUT Olivia's childhood was typical until her father became a Buddhist, which eventually caused her parents' marriage to fail. After they separate, Olivia's father disappears and her mother begins to beat her. With a stolen credit card, Olivia runs away to the Levitation Center, a Buddhist retreat, where her father had previously studied, hoping to find him or to discover where he has gone. Once there, she is drawn into a group of girls who are veterans at the center, having come for multiple summers. Group leader Serena has special privileges, as do those she "selects" as her cohort; she is obsessed with learning how to levitate. Midnight meetings, starvation diets, alcohol, and forced fainting culminate in a cliff-side experiment that cannot end well. VERDICT Temple weaves Buddhist practice, rumor, philosophy, and teenage sexual longing into a story that is both deep and compelling. Her characters are complicated and conflicted, immersed in the throes of teenage angst and hormones. Any reader of general fiction would enjoy. [See Prepub Alert, 12/2/19.]--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2020
Four teenage girls attempt to unlock the secrets of levitation in this unsettling debut from the senior editor of Literary Hub. Olivia's father left to attend a Buddhist retreat at the Levitation Center but never returned home. When Olivia flees her abusive mother in order to find out what happened to him, she spends the summer attending the center's retreat for teen girls. "They were slick-finish girls, cat-eye girls, hot blood girls," Olivia recalls. "They were girls who reveled. They were girls who liked boys and back seats, who slid things that weren't theirs into their tight pockets." But the crackling energy of three girls in particular catches Olivia's eye: commanding Serena, stoic Janet, and provocative Laurel. Under the direction of Serena, the four young women convince Luke, the center's gardener and a universal object of teenage lust, to teach them the secrets of levitation. In preparation, the girls fast on nettle tea, play dangerous fainting games, and attempt to seduce Luke. The summer wears on, and Serena pushes them each to the brink. At last, Olivia must confront the possibility that Serena's quest for control over their bodies might put them all in danger--or is that what Olivia really wants? Temple's evocative exploration of teenage girlhood, shame, and longing illuminates the double-edged desire for power and belonging. Her sentences are complex and rich, although the ominous mood of the novel occasionally overpowers the emotional payoff of its reveals. "You might as well learn this now: even the tiniest bit of power turns me instantly immoral," Olivia laments early in the novel, though it's difficult to say how much power Olivia ever wields. Still, Temple's narrative strategies of deferral invite us into a complex, psychological study of a young woman haunted by her past--and her capacity to hunger for violence and self-destruction. A dark, glittering fable about the terror of desire.

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May 15, 2020
Olivia looks back on the teenage summer she spent at a remote meditation retreat, seeking answers to her father's recent disappearance. Some people believed the high-altitude retreat to be "the only bit of land left in America where levitation was still possible," hence its nickname, the Levitation Center. Olivia knows none of the other girls at what she secretly calls her "Buddhist Boot Camp for Bad Girls," and they don't know that she's there by choice. She quickly falls under the spell of a group led by enigmatic Serena, sneaking out of her bunk at night to drink and reach new meditative heights through sound and touch. Soon Olivia is pulled into their plans to achieve the ultimate height, levitation, with the help of the sexy (or is he creepy?) gardener whom Olivia works with for her daily chore. Literary Hub editor Temple keeps readers on a string with murky suspense, foreshadowed danger, and a spine-tingling sense of seclusion. Readers will also appreciate themes of idolatry, Buddhist spirituality, and teenage girlhood in this stylish debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)