Girls will cry and boys will find love, lust, loss and longing in Alaska’s vanilla-and-cigarettes scent.
The Alaska of the title is a maddening, fascinating, vivid girl seen through the eyes of Pudge (Miles only to his parents), who meets Alaska at boarding school in Alabama.
Pudge is a skinny (“irony” says his roommate, the Colonel, of the nickname) thoughtful kid who collects and memorizes famous people’s last words. The Colonel, Takumi, Alaska and a Romanian girl named Lara are an utterly real gaggle of young persons, full of false starts, school pranks, moments of genuine exhilaration in learning and rather too many cigarettes and cheap bottles of wine. Their engine and center is Alaska, given to moodiness and crying jags but also full of spirit and energy, owner of a roomful of books she says she’s going to spend her life reading. Her center is a woeful family tragedy, and when Alaska herself is lost, her friends find their own ways out of the labyrinth, in part by pulling a last, hilarious school prank in her name. What sings and soars in this gorgeously told tale is Green’s mastery of language and the sweet, rough edges of Pudge’s voice.
Girls will cry and boys will find love, lust, loss and longing in Alaska’s vanilla-and-cigarettes scent. (Fiction. YA)Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-525-47506-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
A beautiful, emotionally charged novel.
Friendship evolves into a fiery, complex first love for two teen girls.
This nonlinear novel in verse begins at the end, as a queer Black couple stand on opposite sides of a bridge, their relationship crumbling. The first and last poems—both titled “After the Fire”—are the only times the story is told from the point of view of the partner, a girl only ever referred to as “you.” The unnamed narrator begins by alternating between the history of their tumultuous relationship and the day things begin to unravel, when the pair set fire to a dumpster in their high school’s parking lot. In addition to exploring queerness—the narrator is attracted to other girls, her partner is bisexual—Woodfolk also writes about how girls, especially Black girls, learn that what other people think about how they look can put them in danger. The two met at a coffee shop and soon became friends, partners in trouble, and each other’s everything. Through the economical and expressive poems, readers are pulled into the narrator’s deep, shifting emotions as her feelings for her friend change. The rich language describing the way the two love each other is magnificent: “we added up to a little too much. // You loved me more than I knew. / I loved you more than you could take.” Fire is a symbol throughout, and the final flames aptly represent the passion and volatility of this relationship.
A beautiful, emotionally charged novel. (Verse novel. 14-18)Pub Date: April 5, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-358-65535-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Versify/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2022
An interesting premise unevenly executed.
Eighteen-year-old Venus Stoneheart is a witcher with a pain-filled past and an uncertain future.
In an alternate version of the greater Washington, D.C., metro area, Venus’ mother, the formidable Clarissa Stoneheart, used to be the Love Witcher. She broke her pledge to only brew love potions, lost her magic as a consequence, and then turned her attention to teaching Venus, the new Love Witcher, “her 3-B philosophy…Get your bag, brew, and bounce.” When Clarissa is murdered, Venus is tested to her limits as she fights external forces by using her calling (her magical ability to brew) for political gain while also struggling to quiet the deviation (or trauma-inflicted corruption of her calling) that infects her. The deviation, which she calls It, can give Venus access to immense power, but she’s still haunted, in more ways than she realizes, by the first time it was uncaged, when she was 15. The buildup to action takes some time, and the plot can be confusing to follow, given the digressions to explain the worldbuilding. Characters are alternately centered, pushed to the periphery, and then brought into focus again, seemingly in service of filling plot gaps but without necessarily moving the story forward. Patient readers will eventually encounter unexpected twists and turns that provide an exciting and satisfying ending. Recipes for potions readers can brew themselves deepen the pull into this witchery world.
An interesting premise unevenly executed. (content warning, author’s note, glossary) (Fantasy. 15-18)Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781728251950
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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