by Forsyth Harmon ; illustrated by Forsyth Harmon ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 2, 2021
A novel that captures the emotional intensity, confusion, and quickness of adolescence.
It’s the summer of 1999: Kate Moss and Katie Holmes grace magazine covers as Ali, a Long Island teenager, encounters Justine, a checkout girl at the local Stop & Shop who’s almost as tall and thin as a cover girl herself.
Drawn to Justine's real-life glamour, Ali gets a job at the supermarket, and she and Justine become fast friends, or so she thinks. Justine goes from showing Ali the ropes at the store to roping her into risky adolescent behavior, from shoplifting and trespassing to restricting calories and purging. Ali is thrilled to oblige. When they’re not working, she and Justine share intimate moments of female friendship—putting on makeup, sunbathing, and getting drunk. Justine, her boyfriend, Chris, and his friend Ryan live in a posher neighborhood and attend a fancier high school than Ali, but she’s welcomed into their clique for as long as she’s willing to worship Justine’s ways. This is Harmon’s debut novel, and she also provides illustrations; she's done an impeccable job re-creating a very particular moment in time, exploring what it felt like to be a teenage girl when the beauty ideal for women grew to maddening heights. Though there was no social media, the expectations for how women should look were no less ubiquitous than they are now. Harmon’s words and illustrations together show how pervasive and seductive these images were, especially for still-developing minds. While the novel is short on resolution, it’s a propulsive depiction of what a summer in the New York suburbs felt like before iPhones and what a crush can drive someone to do. “Justine took my hand and threaded our fingers together,” Ali says. “I smiled sideways, feeling a weird, tense pleasure, my attention stretched taut between Ryan and Justine like a jump rope being pulled from either side.” Being a teenager is rife with tension, and Harmon confronts the subtle and not-so-subtle violence of coming-of-age.
A novel that captures the emotional intensity, confusion, and quickness of adolescence.Pub Date: March 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-951142-33-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Tin House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021
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by Barbara Kingsolver ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
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New York Times Bestseller
Pulitzer Prize Winner
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
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SEEN & HEARD
by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 18, 2022
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
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New York Times Bestseller
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
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SEEN & HEARD
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