Dying to Know You

About Dying to Know You

Dying to Know You is a novel by Aidan Chambers, published by Harry N. Abrams in 2012. Chambers is a Carnegie Medal–winning British author, best known for his work in young adult literature, and this novel is in many ways a meditation on what it means to know another person — and to know yourself.

Eighteen-year-old Karl is in love with Fiorella, a bookish girl who reads constantly and who has asked him to write her a letter revealing who he really is, what he thinks about, what he cares about, and what he wants. The problem is that Karl struggles with dyslexia and has always had a complicated relationship with reading and writing. Unable to put himself into words in the way Fiorella needs, he approaches her favorite author — a novelist in his sixties — and asks for help.

What begins as a practical request becomes something much larger. The author, drawn in by Karl's directness and the depth of what he is trying to express, agrees to help. The process of working through what Karl wants to say becomes a process of working through who he is. The letter becomes almost secondary to what Karl discovers about himself in trying to write it.

Two Voices, Two Generations

One of the novel's distinctive qualities is the relationship it builds between Karl and the older novelist. Their collaboration crosses the obvious divide of age and experience, and both of them are changed by it. Chambers uses this intergenerational friendship to explore questions about creativity, literacy, identity, and the different ways that people communicate — or fail to.

The novel is also a love story, in the most expansive sense. Karl's love for Fiorella drives the entire narrative, but the book is equally interested in what it means to love someone enough to try to make yourself legible to them, to work through the difficulty of translating interior experience into words someone else can hold.

Why Dying to Know You Has Been Challenged

The novel has been banned pending investigation in Escambia County Public Schools in Florida. Escambia County has reviewed a large number of titles across its library system, and Chambers's work — which deals with questions of identity, sexuality, and self-knowledge with the nuance and openness characteristic of his writing — has drawn scrutiny in this context. For readers who come to it, Dying to Know You offers something rare: a story that takes the question of self-understanding seriously and treats it as one of the most important things a young person can engage with.