The Taking By Kimberly Derting: An Analysis

The Taking, by Kimberly Derting, is about a girl, Kyra, who “lost” five years of her life after she disappears one night and wakes up five years later having no clue that any time passed or where she was for all that time. Upon her homecoming, she is greeted by a strange man who refused to let her in leaving Kyra outside wondering, “His house? Is that what he just said? But that wasn’t right. This was my house. My house. I tried to find something in all of it to cling to, something that would clear things up. I replayed the last few minutes, when I’d burst through the front door and tried to recall what I’d seen. It was the same house I remembered. The same, but different.” (Derting 18). It was evident Kyra’s mom had been forced to move on
and even remarry as Kyra walked through an alien house, having been removed of any trace of her. “It was official. I was a guest in my own bedroom. It was still my bed and my chest of drawers and problem even the same pillows, but those were the only things that hadn't changed in the five years I’d been gone. The bedding was new and still had that stiff, fresh-from-the-bad feel..” (Derting 50). Because of this, Kyra felt isolated, alone, and unwelcome in the place where she should have been most comfortable in. The unfamiliarity of it all lead Kyra to spend much time alone in what was her fake room and with a boy named Tyler who lived across the street. Tyler was “someone who did understand me. Someone who didn't question where I’d been or how old I was now that I was back.” (Derting 180). The two create a sort of bond after he becomes her confidant who would just sit “there, listening. To me.” (Derting 153). As a result of the isolation Kyra felt, Tyler becomes an important person in Kyra’s life as she struggles in a world now foreign to her desperately seeking to find answers.