Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Gayle Forman's If I Stay. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
If I Stay: Introduction
A concise biography of Gayle Forman plus historical and literary context for If I Stay.
If I Stay: Plot Summary
A quick-reference summary: If I Stay on a single page.
If I Stay: Detailed Summary & Analysis
In-depth summary and analysis of every chapter of If I Stay. Visual theme-tracking, too.
If I Stay: Themes
Explanations, analysis, and visualizations of If I Stay's themes.
If I Stay: Quotes
If I Stay's important quotes, sortable by theme, character, or chapter.
If I Stay: Characters
Description, analysis, and timelines for If I Stay's characters.
If I Stay: Symbols
Explanations of If I Stay's symbols, and tracking of where they appear.
If I Stay: Theme Wheel
An interactive data visualization of If I Stay's plot and themes.
Brief Biography of Gayle Forman
Gayle Forman was born in Los Angeles, and worked as a journalist before she began writing novels. She has written for magazines such as Seventeen, Details, Jane, and Glamour. Forman enjoys traveling, and before going to college she took three years off in order to travel. She and her husband, Nick, also spent a year traveling the world, going everywhere from Tonga to Kazakhstan, a journey that Forman wrote about in her memoir You Can’t Get There From Here: A Year on the Fringes of a Shrinking World. Forman, Nick, and her daughter currently reside in Brooklyn, New York City. She is the author of eight books, including the sequel to If I Stay, called Where She Went.
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Other Books Related to If I Stay
Gayle Forman published Where She Went, a sequel to If I Stay, released on April 5, 2011. She has written several other books in the same genre of young-adult fiction, such as I Was Here, Just One Day, Just One Year, and Just One Night. Novels by other writers that share some similarities to If I Stay, in their focus on a young female protagonist trying to manage the intersection of everyday life and illness or terrible traumatic experiences, are A Fault in Our Stars by John Green and Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.
Key Facts about If I Stay
- Full Title: If I Stay
- When Written: Late 2000s
- Where Written: New York City
- When Published: 2009
- Literary Period: Contemporary Young Adult Fiction
- Genre: Young Adult Fiction
- Setting: Oregon, United States
- Climax: Adam plays Yo-Yo Ma for Mia, and Mia decides to live.
- Antagonist: There is no major antagonist in the text, besides the older head nurse who, strictly following the rules of the hospital, denies Adam and Kim entry into the ICU because they are not Mia’s relatives.
- Point of View: First Person
Extra Credit for If I Stay
Movie. In August 2014, a film version of If I Stay was released in theaters, directed by R.J. Cutler and starring Chloë Grace Moretz as Mia. The film grossed $78.9 million worldwide.
Shooting Star. _Gayle Forman’s husband once played in a band called The Redmond Shooting Stars, which is where Shooting Star, the name of Adam’s band, is taken from.
