Modernism (Kinda-Sorta), Young Adult Literature, Tragedy
Published in 2015, All the Bright Places is definitely not a Modernist work. Still, it draws heavily on writers from that era. From the epigraph to the final sentence, the author quotes Ernest Hemingway, Cesare Pavese, and especially Virginia Woolf. The Modernist perspective was to find beauty in stuff that's bleak—a feeling that the author of this book seems to share.
In another sense, the book is very much of its own time—there's Facebook stalking and a online mag that sounds like it's inspired by Rookie. And its protagonists are in high school, which is hint #1 that we're dealing with a YA novel.
But All The Bright Places is snugly under the umbrella of one more genre. Know how you finished an entire box of Kleenex during the last few chapters? Well, that's one way you can be sure that this book's a tragedy.
Another sign was that feeling of dread you felt up until Finch's body was found. From the moment we met him on that ledge, there was a certain sense of doom surrounding his character. He fought a hard battle to save his own life, but bipolar disorder and depression won in the end.