Anarchic slapstick laced with timely truths make this wry, occasionally raunchy debut a standout.
After her last-ditch effort to avoid fat camp (by going on a fad diet that promises weight loss with each act of forgiveness) fails spectacularly, Bee—angry, assertive, irreverent—faces eight weeks’ forced exile among the weight-obsessed, far from TJ.
Bee, 16, is almost sure that amateur magician TJ loves her. Trying the Forgiveness Diet was his idea; if it works, she can skip fat camp and watch him audition for American Envy. The diet is everywhere—even her sister’s obnoxious boyfriend knows about it. Still smarting from the time her estranged father pretended not to recognize her, Bee’s not in a forgiving mood. And there’s plenty to hate about Camp Utopia: California’s foggy coastal climate; the cellphone confiscation policy; weekly, humiliatingly public weigh-ins; motivational speakers. (Satirical targets range from mainstream to countercultural.) Marking a new low, Bee gains weight in the camp’s weight-loss competition, jeopardizing her team’s chances of winning and infuriating the captain. It’s not all bad—her loyal and equally rebellious roommates, Liliana and Tabitha, support her. Though she’s outraged at camp conformity, the cultural obsession with physical appearance, the witless narcissism hiding behind the drive for self-improvement, Bee’s hardest on herself. That passionate anger brings her dad back into her life, a letter from the Forgiveness Diet’s originator and attention from Liliana’s attractive brother.
Anarchic slapstick laced with timely truths make this wry, occasionally raunchy debut a standout. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: July 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-940192-31-4
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
Blackwood goes from Elizabethan England (Shakespeare Stealer, not reviewed, 1998) to a Depression-Era Ozarks setting for this poker-faced tale of a self-reliant but naive teenager. Although he and his mother are dirt poor and he doesn’t remember his father, Thad is an optimist; he has a girl, a loyal bluetick hound, and a good if risky source of income, selling corn liquor for Dayman, a sour, one-armed recluse with a hidden still. He begins to get a glimmer of other lives and possibilities when Harlan James comes to town, claiming to be a land scout for tobacco growers. Harlan is well-dressed, a free spender, and free with his time, too; he allows Thad to use his fancy tackle to land a huge catfish, teaches him how to use a rifle, and even loans him clothes for a date. Blackwood knits characters together with threads of “moonshine”—not liquor, but a steady diet of stories, jokes, yarns, and outright lies’so that the story becomes a study in layers and varieties of honesty. Thad’s feeling of betrayal is sharp but brief when he finds out that Harlan is a revenue agent, stalking Dayman’s still, which literally explodes in his face. Blackwood drops plenty of hints that both Harlan and Dayman are more than they seem, so alert readers are always ahead of Thad, which adds drama; the twin revelations that Dayman is Thad’s father and that Harlan’s friendliness wasn’t all moonshine close this backwoods bildungsroman on a high note. (Fiction. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-7614-5056-4
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
The sudden death of her twin leaves a teenager struggling with grief and her fragile sense of self in this absorbing, inwardly focused import from Sweden, part fiction, part memoir. So close are the sisters that after Cilla is killed by a motorist Tina can still hear her voice, still see her just by looking in a mirror, still hold conversations; she even finds herself taking on some of Cilla’s character traits, seeking an inner balance that she has lost. Able to describe her experiences only by switching back and forth between third person and first, Tina observes the different ways those around her grieve, and finds temporary solace in many places: reading and writing poetry, performing on stage, playing her violin, trying a brief but intense fling at summer camp, even talking to a perceptive psychologist—but unlike many such stories, there is never any sense here that the authors are running through a catalog of coping strategies, or offering trite platitudes. A year later, Tina discovers that, in forming new friendships and moving on in life, she has passed the worst of her pain, and found ways to distance herself from Cilla without losing her completely. In a smooth, natural-sounding translation, this is a thoughtful, complex reminiscence. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: March 23, 1999
ISBN: 91-29-63935-2
Page Count: 247
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
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