THE REEL LIFE OF ZARA KEGG

In Barkley’s YA novel, a teenage girl reckons with loss.

Sixteen-year-old Zara (high school junior, machine-fixer-upper, coffee fanatic) is the sole projectionist at the Palace, an old-time movie theater. She still feels like an outsider in the tourist town of Carolina Beach five years after moving there with her mom and famous sportswriter father. Her mother’s subsequent death from cancer and her father’s retreat behind a wall of unexpressed emotions have left Zara grieving the loss of both parents. Does everyone you love “just slip away,” she wonders, “no matter how hard you hold on to them? Is that what the future is?” The only future Zara sees is “myself still, always, in the booth at the Palace, showing movies in the dark.” Alone in her projection booth, the introspective Zara changes reels by hand, continually rewatching low-budget horror and SF movies and doing “the whole Zen-Loner thing. Lots of self-talk. Silence. Contemplation in the plywood booth,” fueled by a regimen of push-ups and coffee. Outside, “fragments of summer fun blow around in scraps—plastic cups, old Boardwalk Fries buckets flattened and dirty.” Inside, summer patrons (“oldsters, drinkers, vacationers, and hipsters”) have given way to locals and a boy her age named Zachary who pops uninvited into her booth. Zachary, who is loving, soulful, goofy, and sad, lives in a fairground trailer with his grandfather, a former carnival strongman; the boy harbors a secret, and a disturbing action and a lie leave Zara struggling to understand Zachary and herself. Barkley explores the ways in which human connections can complicate and profoundly change our lives with deep sensitivity. Self-sufficient, spiky, and deeply observant, Zara is the unforgettable heart of this richly textured novel. Over a few eventful months, in a memorable setting of eccentricities with a tinge of real-world darkness, Zara’s journey beyond the limits of her grief and frustration is deftly conveyed through the resonant evolution of her internal dialogue as she learns to let go and let love in.

A moving and authentic portrait of a memorable, complex teen.