A guilt-ridden teen relives her great-grandmother’s past in a creepy psychological thriller that eventually buckles beneath thematic overload. When her best friend ends up in a coma, 15-year-old Anna is paralyzed by guilt at encouraging Jessica to drink and drive. Worse, her beloved great-grandmother Mimi dies soon after. In search of a fresh start, Anna’s mother moves her daughters into Mimi’s old house, where Anna’s guilt, grief, and sense of dislocation are compounded by a series of vivid dreams—some delightful, some terrifying—in which she seems to become Mimi herself in her scandalous youth. Anna’s self-obsessed wallowing is realistically portrayed, but also a bit tiresome; her dreams of the entrancing young Mimi and the desperate joie de vivre of her hedonistic pals are far more agreeable. Duble spins a number of intriguing threads in her debut: Anna’s present inability to face Jessica’s family, her troubled relationship with her mother, a mysterious old caretaker, the dangers of drinking, and the healing powers of music and art. Mimi’s past features an assortment of dysfunctional families, an amnesia victim, a pair of tragic romances, and a near-death experience on a railroad bridge. Unfortunately, none of them has a chance to receive satisfactory development before the author starts off on another. By the time she drags in the pseudo-science of “genetic memories” to explain away Anna’s dreams, any willing suspension of disbelief has been shattered. In the end, it’s all just too much. (author’s note) (Fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-23637-6
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Philomel
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
Beautiful and important.
When Death tells a story, you pay attention.
Liesel Meminger is a young girl growing up outside of Munich in Nazi Germany, and Death tells her story as “an attempt—a flying jump of an attempt—to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it.” When her foster father helps her learn to read and she discovers the power of words, Liesel begins stealing books from Nazi book burnings and the mayor’s wife’s library. As she becomes a better reader, she becomes a writer, writing a book about her life in such a miserable time. Liesel’s experiences move Death to say, “I am haunted by humans.” How could the human race be “so ugly and so glorious” at the same time? This big, expansive novel is a leisurely working out of fate, of seemingly chance encounters and events that ultimately touch, like dominoes as they collide. The writing is elegant, philosophical and moving. Even at its length, it’s a work to read slowly and savor.
Beautiful and important. (Fiction. 12+)Pub Date: March 14, 2006
ISBN: 0-375-83100-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter.
After a Nigerian British girl goes off to an exclusive boarding school that seems to prey on less-privileged students, she discovers there might be some truth behind an urban legend.
Ife Adebola joins the Urban Achievers scholarship program at pricey, high-pressure Nithercott School, arriving shortly after a student called Leon mysteriously disappeared. Gossip says he’s a victim of the glowing-eyed Changing Man who targets the lonely, leaving them changed. Ife doesn’t believe in the myth, but amid the stresses of Nithercott’s competitive, privileged, majority-white environment, where she is constantly reminded of her state school background, she does miss her friends and family. When Malika, a fellow Black scholarship student, disappears and then returns, acting strangely devoid of personality, Ife worries the Changing Man is real—and that she’s next. Ife joins forces with classmate Bijal and Benny, Leon’s younger brother, to uncover the truth about who the Changing Man is and what he wants. Culminating in a detailed, gory, and extended climactic battle, this verbose thriller tempts readers with a nefarious mystery involving racial and class-based violence but never quite lives up to its potential and peters out thematically by its explosive finale. However, this debut offers highly visually evocative and eerie descriptions of characters and events and will appeal to fans of creature horror, social commentary, and dark academia.
A descriptive and atmospheric paranormal social thriller that could be a bit tighter. (Thriller. 14-18)Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2023
ISBN: 9781250868138
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
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