None
The summer before Jaime is to leave Phoenix for Bryn Mawr, she decides to earn college money by working two waitress jobs: mornings at a greasy spoon and nights at an upscale hotel restaurant. Her mother has a broken heart; her father is in jail awaiting his trial for embezzlement. She knows that college will deliver her into “the future,” but across her well-laid plans waltzes Buddy, a good-looking, good-for-nothing drifter who immediately begins a long and ardent campaign of seduction. Jaime gets over her initial distaste for him; she is both fascinated by him and by her reaction to him. Her life divides into three shifts—two waitressing, and one, late at night with Buddy, steeling herself against his doubtful charms. When she gives him his comeuppance instead of her virginity, the scene is more slapstick in tone than any preceding it; that’s surprising, given how deliberately Mosier underplays most of the details of Jaime’s life. Perplexing are pieces of high-gloss writing amid ordinary freshman angst and the sketchiness of the details surrounding Jaime’s father, which makes his troubles matter less to readers; compelling and astutely observed are Jaime’s feelings for Buddy, which range from roiling to distant and clinical. (Fiction. 13-15)
None NonePub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-89035-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
Paulsen recalls personal experiences that he incorporated into Hatchet (1987) and its three sequels, from savage attacks by moose and mosquitoes to watching helplessly as a heart-attack victim dies. As usual, his real adventures are every bit as vivid and hair-raising as those in his fiction, and he relates them with relish—discoursing on “The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition,” for instance: “Something that you would never consider eating, something completely repulsive and ugly and disgusting, something so gross it would make you vomit just looking at it, becomes absolutely delicious if you’re starving.” Specific examples follow, to prove that he knows whereof he writes. The author adds incidents from his Iditarod races, describes how he made, then learned to hunt with, bow and arrow, then closes with methods of cooking outdoors sans pots or pans. It’s a patchwork, but an entertaining one, and as likely to win him new fans as to answer questions from his old ones. (Autobiography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-385-32650-5
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
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