This briefest of novels might have been more satisfying as a robust short story.
An open-ended meditation on loneliness and connection, told in crisscrossing email threads.
Whale-obsessed ninth-grader James sends a hopeful email to Darren, the classroom volunteer he remembers from his eighth-grade social-skills class. Darren, a broken-hearted would-be documentarian making a pittance as a production assistant on a junky sitcom, writes back. Deeply concerned about the welfare of a particular whale, Salt, James also starts writing to Peter, a cetologist tracking humpback whales at the Greater New England Whale Conservancy. Peter, worried about his long-lost sister’s well-being, does his best to help. Everyone—unbeknown to everyone else—is reaching out for an authentic connection. It’s a worthy, sincere theme, and co-authors Sommer and Tilghman pull off a number of genuinely affecting and funny moments, but these are not enough to overcome the thinness of the narrative and structural conceits. Too many of the email exchanges are overburdened with exposition that doesn’t make sense in context, and other conversations just don’t feel genuine. Readers will root for James, but his characterization relies heavily on clichés about people on the autistic spectrum, while the handling of Darren's post-breakup stalking of his ex-girlfriend is entirely too breezy. The huge number of narrative threads—many left untied—reflect the ongoing-ness of real life, but readers are left feeling like they just viewed a PG-mashup of Garden State and Crash.
This briefest of novels might have been more satisfying as a robust short story. (Epistolary novel. 12-15)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4677-7917-3
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Carolrhoda Lab
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli.
For two teenagers, a small town’s annual cautionary ritual becomes both a life- and a death-changing experience.
On the second Wednesday in June, every eighth grader in Amber Springs, Pennsylvania, gets a black shirt, the name and picture of a teen killed the previous year through reckless behavior—and the silent treatment from everyone in town. Like many of his classmates, shy, self-conscious Robbie “Worm” Tarnauer has been looking forward to Dead Wed as a day for cutting loose rather than sober reflection…until he finds himself talking to a strange girl or, as she would have it, “spectral maiden,” only he can see or touch. Becca Finch is as surprised and confused as Worm, only remembering losing control of her car on an icy slope that past Christmas Eve. But being (or having been, anyway) a more outgoing sort, she sees their encounter as a sign that she’s got a mission. What follows, in a long conversational ramble through town and beyond, is a day at once ordinary yet rich in discovery and self-discovery—not just for Worm, but for Becca too, with a climactic twist that leaves both ready, or readier, for whatever may come next. Spinelli shines at setting a tongue-in-cheek tone for a tale with serious underpinnings, and as in Stargirl (2000), readers will be swept into the relationship that develops between this adolescent odd couple. Characters follow a White default.
Characters to love, quips to snort at, insights to ponder: typical Spinelli. (Fiction. 12-15)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-30667-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2021
Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside.
From Sudan to Maine, in free verse.
It's 1999 in Juba, and the second Sudanese civil war is in full swing. Viola is a Bari girl, and she lives every day in fear of the government soldiers occupying her town. In brief free-verse chapters, Viola makes Juba real: the dusty soil, the memories of sweetened condensed milk, the afternoons Viola spends braiding her cousin's hair. But there is more to Juba than family and hunger; there are the soldiers, and the danger, and the horrifying interactions with soldiers that Viola doesn't describe but only lets the reader infer. As soon as possible, Viola's mother takes the family to Cairo and then to Portland, Maine—but they won't all make it. First one and then another family member is brought down by the devastating war and famine. After such a journey, the culture shock in Portland is unsurprisingly overwhelming. "Portland to New York: 234 miles, / New York to Cairo: 5,621 miles, / Cairo to Juba: 1,730 miles." Viola tries to become an American girl, with some help from her Sudanese friends, a nice American boy and the requisite excellent teacher. But her mother, like the rest of the Sudanese elders, wants to run her home as if she were back in Juba, and the inevitable conflict is heartbreaking.
Refreshing and moving: avoids easy answers and saviors from the outside. (historical note) (Fiction. 13-15)Pub Date: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-7614-6267-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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