Pfeffer pens a tale of star-crossed romance in her debut coming-of-age novel.
Ryan Mills is a typical 16-year-old, obsessed with sex and the prettiest girl in his class, Emily Wintraub. But Ryan is from a wealthy Hollywood family—his father is a film director—and Emily is the daughter of a stern, disapproving accountant. Ryan is hampered by privilege and parental neglect, inevitably leading to a heap of trouble—here in the form of a drug addict friend who dies in a car accident and leaves Ryan in possession of his contraband. As Ryan wrestles with his grief, he develops a sexual relationship with Emily and helps his late friend Michael’s girlfriend, Chrissie, survive a troubled pregnancy; it sounds like the plot of Cameron Crowe’s film Say Anything, which the author admits was the inspiration for this charming book. But Ryan’s path to healing—mending his relationships with his parents, Emily’s parents and Chrissie—is much more complex than the film and likely to keep readers on edge until the novel’s conclusion. Fortunately for readers seeking authentic young-adult voices in fiction, the author spent three years taking writing classes, engaging teenagers in discussion about their lives and vetting the manuscript in workshops. The result is seamless prose that glides along with beautifully realized characters in a gripping, page-turning plot. A rewarding ending caps this nearly perfect young-adult novel that manages to be simultaneously entertaining and informative about the dangers of drugs and the consequences of good and bad life choices. This lively, fresh young-adult romance is Say Anything for a new generation.
Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-1466341821
Page Count: 276
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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