Adolescence, zits and all, described with wit and empathy.
When a teenager acquires a pen-pal and a life, highs and lows alternate as dizzily as adolescent hormone levels in this engaging Australian debut.
Elizabeth Clarry lives in Sydney with her divorced mother. Her father, remarried and moved to Canada, is currently back for a year, making her mom tense and Elizabeth uncertain. Her story, told in letters and notes, begins when the new English teacher, wanting to “rekindle the joy of the envelope,” insists the class correspond with students at a local high school. Elizabeth draws Christina Kratovac, and the two begin writing to each other. At first their letters merely reprise likes and dislikes: Elizabeth enjoys running, and her best friend is Celia; Christina has a boyfriend, Derek, and four siblings. But the correspondence takes off when Elizabeth describes how Celia, an impulsive self-dramatizer, has suddenly run away and joined a circus, and how she and handsome fellow-student Saxon Walker set off to bring her back. Unfortunately, Saxon now seems to prefer Celia. In addition to her letters from Christina, Elizabeth frequently receives notes from her mother, who works in an ad agency and leaves instructions for dinner, as well as requests for ideas, on pieces of paper stuck to the fridge or pushed under Elizabeth’s door. As Christina confides how Derek is pressuring her to “go all the way,” Elizabeth is shocked to learn that she has a half-brother living in Sydney with her father. Life looks up, though, when Christina tells Elizabeth that she’s learned her pen-pal has a secret admirer. The two girls finally meet by chance, and Elizabeth gives a party that forges new connections and reveals old ones. Before that, though, she must once more rescue Celia, who has run away with Saxon to parachute from the top of the Empire State Building.
Adolescence, zits and all, described with wit and empathy.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26923-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.
When tragedy strikes, a mother and daughter forge a new life.
Morgan felt obligated to marry her high school sweetheart, Chris, when she got pregnant with their daughter, Clara. But she secretly got along much better with Chris’ thoughtful best friend, Jonah, who was dating her sister, Jenny. Now her life as a stay-at-home parent has left her feeling empty but not ungrateful for what she has. Jonah and Jenny eventually broke up, but years later they had a one-night stand and Jenny got pregnant with their son, Elijah. Now Jonah is back in town, engaged to Jenny, and working at the local high school as Clara’s teacher. Clara dreams of being an actress and has a crush on Miller, who plans to go to film school, but her father doesn't approve. It doesn’t help that Miller already has a jealous girlfriend who stalks him via text from college. But Clara and Morgan’s home life changes radically when Chris and Jenny are killed in an accident, revealing long-buried secrets and forcing Morgan to reevaluate the life she chose when early motherhood forced her hand. Feeling betrayed by the adults in her life, Clara marches forward, acting both responsible and rebellious as she navigates her teenage years without her father and her aunt, while Jonah and Morgan's relationship evolves in the wake of the accident. Front-loaded with drama, the story leaves plenty of room for the mother and daughter to unpack their feelings and decide what’s next.
The emotions run high, the conversations run deep, and the relationships ebb and flow with grace.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-1642-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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