Click: One Novel Ten Authors

Click is a novel with 10 chapters, where each chapter was written by a different author. The story begins with Maggie and Jason, two siblings who are in mourning for a beloved grandfather who has recently died. He has left behind gifts for them to open. These gifts will change the course of their lives.

Click struck me as sort of a cross between a novel and a short story collection. The chapters each build upon the previous chapters to expand on the basic story, but each chapter has its own feeling and style particular to the author. Some chapters are realistic fiction, while others veer off into science fiction. Some are more character driven and some are more adventurous. Some focus on Maggie and Jason, while others tell the story of their grandfather and the people he met while on photography assignments for Time or Life Magazine.

It's a total concept novel and I was very curious about if it would work - if the stories would fit together and flow. I think for the most part it did. There were a few transitions that were a bit jolting, where I really had to stop and reread to figure out what was going on, but for the most part I was able to follow along and get lost in the story. Inevitably, there are chapters that are stronger than others, chapters that are more emotionally charged, and some that were just more interesting than others. I was always curious about where the next author would take me, who they would focus on, where the story would take place, whether or not it would contain a totally unexpected twist. The ending for me was a bit anti-climatic, but on the whole I enjoyed it.

According to the cover, all royalties from the sale of Click will benefit Amnesty International. Although there is a brief history of the organization included, I couldn't find any mention of why it was decided to donate all the proceeds to them. That would have been a nice thing to include.

Listen to an NPR story on the novel complete with readings by Linda Sue Park and Ruth Ozeki