Izzy: Transformation through Maturity

Izzy, Willy-Nilly by Cynthia Voigt is a YA novel about a fifteen-year-old who loses her leg in a drunk driving accident that is not her fault.

Izzy or Isobel is a pleasant, "nice" (in her own words), somewhat proper (though not prim young woman. She gets average grades and has rather ordinary friends. She is pleasant and pretty and gets along with others. 

There is more to her than even she realizes. There's little doubt she would have grown up to be a thoughtful, nice woman with commonsense and grounded insights. 

The accident doesn't alter her personality. In fact, Voigt captures a truth here--which is that grand events (for good or bad) don't fundamentally change people's temperaments, which is why people who win the lottery end up bankrupt. If one is bad with money to begin with...

Likewise, studies have shown that people who undergo terrible trauma, such as losing a leg, often revert to a baseline within a year. 

Lost leg in shark attack.

The book takes place in the first 5 months after the accident. Izzy hasn't yet gotten the cast off her other leg. And she won't get her plastic leg until the stump has fully healed. The reader is introduced to Izzy while she is still undergoing the great upheaval in her life. 

She experiences change. She sees her erstwhile friends for the rather self-centered and shallow, limited people they are. She doesn't stop being friends with them; she simply moves on. She gains new, more honest friends. She expands her skills and interests (without suddenly becoming a prodigy at something). She doesn't lose her niceness or sense of propriety but she gets more real and stronger. And the bravery that she has always had comes out when she prevents a younger woman from making the same mistake she made.   

It is skilled writing, made more so by Izzy maturing into the woman she would have become. She admits that if she could go back, she could change what happened to her--but "the richness in me; there was so much more than before." 

She still gets sad. She is still nervous about the artificial leg. She still wishes that things could be different. She doesn't suddenly become all-knowing (just as she doesn't suddenly become a prodigy at an instrument or other talent). And she doesn't suddenly become a poster-child for a CAUSE. She adapts--and as she adapts, she matures. She adapts in the here and now.