“Won’t you keep my heart from breakin’ if it’s only for a very short time?”
Greenwillow Books, which is an imprint of the ubiquitous HarperCollins, brings us The Faint of Heart by Kerilynn Wilson. It’s another YA book (technically, it’s for “ages 13 up,” which means YA), so let’s see what’s happening here!
This is Wilson’s debut book, and you can kind of tell, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 
It’s just very earnest and unsubtle, which is probably why it’s a bit better suited for teens, as Wilson doesn’t want them missing the message here! I like earnestness in writing, actually, so that doesn’t bother me, but it does feel a bit like Wilson is holding something up and saying “Hey! Look at this!” a bit too often. It doesn’t ruin the book in any way, but it does make reading it the slightest bit less enjoyable. At least for me, the oldster cynic. Sigh.
June is a teen in an unnamed city who seems perfectly “normal” – she wakes up one morning in a room with all sorts of drawings taped to the walls and art supplies scattered around. She puts on a yellow sweater (which is important!) and goes down to the kitchen, leaving little paper squares with drawings on them for her parents and sister. Isn’t that nice? Her family comes down, ignores her, and her mom sweeps up the paper and throws it away without looking at it, then tells June to just eat her breakfast. Well, that’s rude. At school, June helps a girl up who fell down, but the girl brushes her off. June has a flashback, and we discover what’s going on: Not too long ago in the past, a scientist (called The Scientist in the book) figured out a way to take someone’s heart out of their body and keep it in a jar with “numbing fluid” and the person would stay alive. They would experience no feelings that upset them, but of course, they would also not experience good feelings, either. June is the only person around who has not given up her heart yet, which is why she makes little paper gifts for her parents and helps girls up when they fall down. It is, of course, why she wears a yellow sweater – everyone else in the book wears gray, drab clothing. She’s depressed, and her parents want her to have her heart removed, but she resists. She meets a boy named Max who is researching The Scientist – who seems to have disappeared – because he’s starting to feel things again despite not having a heart. Meanwhile, someone is stealing hearts from the giant building in which they are stored. Oh dear. 
June finds one of those hearts in the street and thinks she can put it in her sister’s body, because she misses her sister, and so she and Max decide to track down The Scientist and see if that can be done. It’s a quest!
Obviously, this whole thing is a big ol’ metaphor, and that’s why I don’t like it as much as I might – Wilson tells a decent story, and it’s clear she has a good sense of how to tell it and how to create interesting characters, but it’s awfully obvious, and it robs the book of any tension. I mean, the school is getting rid of art classes and adding more math and science! Oh nos! The kids are doing better in school because they don’t have any distractions, but they’re becoming more robotic! June’s sister tells her to “grow up,” which means stop being so emotional! The reason why The Scientist came up with the process is obvious, too, and therefore frustrating. I get that I might not be the target audience for this book, and that’s fine, but it seems like even teens might be a bit annoyed by the obviousness of it. The emotional and even political overtones of the book (vague “authorities” deny that thefts are taking place and they control the news, so no one believes the hearts are being stolen; June is strongly encouraged to get rid of her heart, even though she’s not being forced to yet) are things that are certainly worthy to explore, and the place of the arts in a society is always something to discuss, and the idea of hurting so badly that you don’t want to feel anything, even good things, is always an interesting proposition, but Wilson does it in a facile way, and it’s a bit frustrating. It’s also hard to believe that June is the only one in the entire city (world?) who hasn’t given up her heart. Again, I get that she needs to be in order for the story to work, but it still seems weird that everyone in the world wants to feel nothing and only one teenager resists. I, for one, can’t imagine not feeling anything. That doesn’t appeal.
Still, the story hums along, and June and Max help rescue it, because Wilson does nice work with their relationship, as they have to trust each other and work together to figure out what to do. June is the center of the story, but Max, who lost his feelings and is now regaining them, is a bit more interesting, because he’s having a hard time processing what’s happening to him. 
Both of them are good characters, and they make the story work a bit better. Wilson does a good job with the art, as she keeps everyone’s faces simple but adds just a little bit to June to make her more “involved” with the world – the other characters look more checked out than she does. She does a nice job creating a Kafka-esque world, especially when June and Max visit the Tabularium – where the hearts and the records are stored – and the Hospital, where they encounter weird bureaucratic nightmares that show what happens when you run the world with no emotion. June’s family life is tragic, but the Tabularium and the Hospital are chilling, and Wilson does a good job with them. Her colors are nice, too – June’s yellow sweater is a signifier, of course, but Wilson also uses soft tones in some places while using harsher ones in others, and while most of the book is in black and white, Wilson’s use of colors is strategic and clever.
For a first graphic novel, this is a decent achievement, and perhaps teens will like it more than I do. There’s nothing really wrong with what Wilson wants to explore, but I do wish she had done it a bit more subtly. But, as I noted, earnestness goes a long way with me, and that sense of hope that emotions can overcome the drudgery of everyday life works for me, so I did enjoy this book … just not as much as I wanted to. C’est la vie.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆
Interesting that you mentioned the ‘Kafka-esque’ quality of the setting near the end; as I was reading your review, I was just thinking that it seems like something Kafka would come up with. Too bad the story apparently doesn’t deliver in that regard. Even so, I think this is something I might like to read.