In a world bursting at the seams with expectations for the youth, from college to career to the ever-changing, ever-unattainable idea of “success,” the hardest thing to do is listen to yourself. Alice Oseman's Radio Silence meticulously presents these ins-and-outs of teenage life and anxieties, gifting us all with a story that, at its core, celebrates and prioritizes a quest for happiness.
Frances Janvier spends most of her time studying. Everyone knows Aled Last as that quiet boy who gets straight As. You probably think that they are going to fall in love or something. Since he is a boy and she is a girl. They don’t. They make a podcast. In a world determined to shut them up, knock them down, and set them on a cookie cutter life path, Frances and Aled struggle to find their voices over the course of one life-changing year. Will they have the courage to show everyone who they really are? Or will they be met with radio silence?
Alice Oseman was born in 1994 in Kent, England. She completed a degree in English at Durham University in 2016 and is currently a full-time writer and illustrator. Alice can usually be found staring aimlessly at computer screens, questioning the meaninglessness of existence, or doing anything and everything to avoid getting an office job.
Radio Silence is the book I needed in high school. I certainly wasn't as smart as Frances, Daniel, or Aled, but Oseman’s message about letting your life fall into place (despite all the ways school makes you feel as if everything needs to be happening at graduation) still resonates strongly with me. The casual inclusivity of varying sexualities and the lack of pressure on proclaiming labels, those alone make my heart sing. But, at the end of the day, it's Radio Silence’s focus on getting to the “better,” the “it'll be okay, we'll make it okay” that makes all the muddled emotion Oseman so perfectly writes so worth it. The scene at the end where Alex takes Frances’ hand resonated so strongly with me, I immediately began to cry.
Media often tries to top off characters' “success” arcs with them getting into the college of their dreams, winning the big game, or getting the girl. But Radio Silence instead shows the reality that not everyone gets what they thought they wanted. It doesn't sugar coat it, but it doesn't make it the end of the world either. Sometimes all it takes is a group of friends showing you they care, they're there, to help you realize that you have the power to make yourself okay again, despite all the ways you may think your life is ending.
Really, many have praised Oseman’s Heartstopper series for its optimism, for the way it makes them melancholic for a media they never had, but I've seen few celebrate the way Radio Silence says “screw what the world is screaming at you, listen to your own voice.”
You can find more about Oseman at her website, www.aliceoseman.com, where you can also buy her other books—Solitaire, Loveless, I Was Born For This, This Winter, and Nick and Charlie—as well as her best-selling graphic novel series that inspired the hit TV show of the same name, Heartstopper.
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