An oh-so-slight flight of fancy.
Famous paintings, fantasy and wish-fulfillment romance blend in contemporary Paris.
French teen Julien feels merely adequate, but his privileges and abilities are improbably golden. As his mother runs the Musée d’Orsay and wants to bribe the art-loving Julien into getting better grades, this 17-year-old has unrestricted access to the world-famous museum, even after hours. Despite the present-day setting (iPods; texting), museum security is presented as (as Julien explains) “a myth,” with no electronic or technological surveillance to inhibit his night roaming. He’s first to see when a “peach falls out of a Cézanne” and a girl “dance[s] her way right out of a Degas.” He perceives Renoirs inexplicably losing their color before anyone else does. Soon, at the Louvre, paintings are flooding and burning themselves. From a long-lost Renoir springs a girl to share heady romance with Julien. She’s Clio, an Eternal Muse. Julien’s sure special, from his authority over the Louvre’s assistant curator to his unique status as human muse, the only human an Eternal Muse has ever loved and the only being who can fix the fading Renoirs. To readers unbothered by preposterous premises, implausible explanations and some overblown prose (“She was a revolution and she staged a coup d’état in my heart”), Whitney offers Muse dust, delightful sartorial quirks and the ghost of Renoir.
An oh-so-slight flight of fancy. (author’s note) (Fantasy/romance. 12 & up)Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61963-133-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression.
After surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn't sure she can endure without cutting herself.
Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself; her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out; her best friend, Ellis, is nearly brain dead after cutting too deeply; and she's gone through unspeakable experiences living on the street. After spending time in treatment with other young women like her—who cut, burn, poke, and otherwise hurt themselves—Charlie is released and takes a bus from the Twin Cities to Tucson to be closer to Mikey, a boy she "like-likes" but who had pined for Ellis instead. But things don't go as planned in the Arizona desert, because sweet Mikey just wants to be friends. Feeling rejected, Charlie, an artist, is drawn into a destructive new relationship with her sexy older co-worker, a "semifamous" local musician who's obviously a junkie alcoholic. Through intense, diarylike chapters chronicling Charlie's journey, the author captures the brutal and heartbreaking way "girls who write their pain on their bodies" scar and mar themselves, either succumbing or surviving. Like most issue books, this is not an easy read, but it's poignant and transcendent as Charlie breaks more and more before piecing herself back together.
This grittily provocative debut explores the horrors of self-harm and the healing power of artistic expression. (author’s note) (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-93471-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
A fast-paced dip into the possibility of a world without human emotions.
A teenage girl refuses a medical procedure to remove her heart and her emotions.
June lives in a future in which a reclusive Scientist has pioneered a procedure to remove hearts, thus eliminating all “sadness, anxiety, and anger.” The downside is that it numbs pleasurable feelings, too. Most people around June have had the procedure done; for young people, in part because doing so helps them become more focused and successful. Before long, June is the only one among her peers who still has her heart. When her parents decide it’s time for her to have the procedure so she can become more focused in school, June hatches a plan to pretend to go through with it. She also investigates a way to restore her beloved sister’s heart, joining forces with Max, a classmate who’s also researching the Scientist because he has started to feel again despite having had his heart removed. The pair’s journey is somewhat rushed and improbable, as is the resolution they achieve. However, the story’s message feels relevant and relatable to teens, and the artwork effectively sets the scene, with bursts of color popping throughout an otherwise black-and-white landscape, reflecting the monochromatic, heartless reality of June’s world. There are no ethnic or cultural markers in the text; June has paper-white skin and dark hair, and Max has dark skin and curly black hair.
A fast-paced dip into the possibility of a world without human emotions. (Graphic speculative fiction. 12-18)Pub Date: June 13, 2023
ISBN: 9780063116214
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
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