"Tuck Everlasting" by Natalie Babbitt

For best results, listen to |"Who Wants To Live Forever"| while reading this.

Tuck Everlasting is a poignant book about how it's not really a good idea to |live forever| in a fallen world. (Granted nothing I can find says the author was a Christian, so it's possible the point is actually just it's-not-a-good-idea-to-|live-forever| period, but I stuck "in a fallen world" on there because, y'know, |Heaven|.)

There's a character in this, "the man in the yellow suit," (he's never actually named, but he's always called the man in the yellow suit because he wears a garish yellow suit) who's pretty much the quintessential |"evil businessman who wants to take over the magic and sell it and RUIN EVERYTHING BECAUSE HE'S A JERK"|, and I thought he was going to be |the main conflict of the book|. And while he does set off the |actual main conflict, he does so when one of the immortal people kills him by accident|. Which is actually a pretty novel way of dealing with such a character; they're skilled at making audiences be like "for pete's sake just stop messing with things and get out of the plot," but |almost nobody ever takes them out of the plot|.

You could also say this is a book about |the Fountain of Youth|, but it's really not; presumably |an actual Fountain of Youth would just rewind your age to a greater or lesser degree|. Whereas the |immortality-granting spring| in this is actually more like |a Fountain of Putting Your Life On Pause Forever|.

This review is part of my first completed quest.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for discussing death and suchlike.

4 stars.

(Endnote: |Anybody else remember when I used to do| potato soup |jokes on heavily redacted posts?|)