This novel is beautifully crafted, true to the two central points of view in ways that allow readers to imagine how life and death at sixteen and seventeen might look different than at any other period of development. The various subplots--betrayal by boyfriends, tension with parents, younger siblings, and teachers--add complexity without diverting attention from the nuanced portrait of intimate friendship forced to a depth that couldn't have been anticipated.

Each narrative voice is distinct; each maintains its own quality of honesty, its own peculiar mix of humor, anger, resilience, and passion for life, which for both girls is expressed most directly in their shared passion--dance. The motif of dance, culminating in their last duet performance, provides a symbolic frame that serves subtly to remind the reader of the wordless movements of the spirit through the crises of the body into the mystery of death.

The oncologist comes off rather badly--competent but somewhat unsympathetic. Sam's mother is a problematic figure, going through her own post-divorce confusions. Sickness occurs in a world where people's capacities to sympathize are modified by competing pressures. But love carves its winding channels through complicated lives and converges on the dying girl in ways that remind us, as Virginia Woolf put it, that "love has a thousand faces," not all of them gentle, tender, or wise.