What Happened to Lani Garver

By Carol Plum-Ucci, award-winning author of The Body of Christopher Creed.

8.5 to 9 stars out of ten. It was quite good.

The story is told from the eyes of a post-leukemia patient and cheerleader Claire McKenzie, who missed most of junior high due to chemotherapy and therefore is considered by her friends ‘naïve.’ She lives on a small town on Hackett Island off the coast of Philadelphia where people are conservative, judgmental, and combative towards anybody who was different. Claire had personal problems including her divorced parents of an alcoholic mother and emotionally distant father as well as a post-traumatic stress induced eating disorder, but was getting by generally happily. However her seemingly peaceful life is disrupted when a new kid arrives at her high school. His name was Lani Garver.
In the prologue of the story it is made clear that Lani Garver was helplessly drowned at sea by five teenage boys while Claire watched. The rest of the book jumps back to several days prior, when Lani first came into Claire’s life, and chronologically follows through the events from Claire’s eyes that lead to the violent climax and the epilogue afterwards.
Lani Garver was a target of humiliation from start because of his appearance. He was tall, broad-shouldered and flat-chested for a girl but his features were too soft for a boy’s. His voice was in-between what would be considered female and male, and his actions, hairstyle, speech and clothing resembled a mixture of both genders. It is assumed that he is a boy for he stated “I’m not a girl,” but he never said “I am a guy.” The residents of Hackett immediately saw his effeminate features “freaky,” associated it with homosexuality and then perversion.
While people drew away from Lani, Claire neared him with great interest. She found him to be unusually mature for his age. Lani loved to read, had great knowledge in philosophy and psychology, was surprisingly intelligent, was overly kind and had a sense of humor. Lani helped Claire go to a doctor and fight her eating disorder. He also brought Claire to meet many people in Philadelphia who also had life-threatening problems and she came to accept who she was as well as talk about her hopes and fears. Claire truly felt like she had found a great friend.
Claire tried to first figure out what Lani was. She first decided he was just an effeminate male, but after hearing the Philadelphia doctor’s belief about “floating angels,” people-shaped angels who come down for the unfortunate and usually die, Claire decided it was a lot more pleasant to believe that than the mundane truth. She never asked Lani again what she was, for she just loved his company, and it felt better to believe in the supernatural. However, Claire’s actions (going out to Philadelphia and meeting “crazy” people, befriending the “perverted” new kid, et cetera) were mistaken by the people of Hackett as “crazed,” and all of Claire’s former friends left her. Even her mother betrayed Claire, believing Claire’s ex-friend’s words that Claire had gone insane and wanted to leave her mother for her father. Lani’s mother also betrayed him when she believed that he was homosexual and that he hated her. Lani gave up explaining, knowing that he couldn’t change what people believed they saw or heard and they did not realize that their memories are edited unconsciously to protect themselves from truths they did not want to hear.
Thing began to head towards Lani’s death when a masculine, popular, show-off guy of Hackett named Tony Clementi tried to molest Lani, and then decides he should be killed.......

It was very insightful of human thought and behavior. The book truly expressed how terrifying the human mind can be, especially when fear masked with hatred is added, and how easily people can betray, become cruel or deceive themselves, while knowing completely what is wrong and right. It also expresses how people behave when conformity is valued, and people begin believing things just because everybody else does. It is not “following the crowd,” like most people put it. The book shows that people actually believe it and do not know that they are influenced by the people around them. Claire was probably an unusual exception for she was not part of that crowd yet, still new to life having missed out junior high school, and in a immature mindset at first.
The book made me feel a little careful about what I am seeing or hearing, and wonder how much of that is really accurate. I wondered how much unintentional lies are mixed with speech.
The book was very emotion-provoking. The end still seemed unjust and was very frustrating for me knowing it is fiction, because the book seemed so true, and it was very reasonable that things like the given happen many times around the world. The murderers blamed each other and claimed themselves innocent, calling Lani’s death an accident Lani brought onto themselves, and I could not believe how cruel self-protection can become, knowing it happens all the time. It is the same with how Claire’s mother tries to guilt her daughter into loving her and blame thing to her husband. It is the same how Claire’s friends completely believe they did what was right “talking sense into” Claire.
The characterization was beautiful. Lani was such a friendly, unique, intelligent individual that his death saddened me and made me hope that he really was a floating angel, as Claire described. He was realistic yet too great a person to be true. It may only seem like that because it was only a span of a few days Claire and Lani met before he died. Claire had her own strengths and faults, for she stood by Lani all the time, but couldn’t help attempting to convince her friends the truth and ending up spilling things she didn’t need to making the situation worse. Claire's former friends, Claire’s parents, Lani’s mother and everybody else never seemed completely evil, but human, having a kind, admirable side. It made the story even more frightening and frustrating.
This book was about the potential of the good and bad in humans, how people always live in “smoke and mirrors,” what it means to be immature or mature, what true suffering is and how it translates into growth, and what it means to believe.

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