This is a minor quibble with a story that imagines so clearly for American readers the travails of all-too-many Latin...
A 12-year-old girl bears witness to the Dominican Revolution of 1961 in a powerful first-person narrative.
The story opens as Anita’s cousins (the Garcia girls of Alvarez’s 1991 adult debut, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents), hurriedly pack to leave the country. This signals the end of childhood innocence for Anita. In short succession, her family finds the secret police parked in their driveway; the American consul moves in next door; and her older sister Lucinda is packed off to join her cousins in New York after she attracts the unwelcome attention of El Jefe Trujillo, the country’s dictator. Anita’s family, it seems, is intimately involved with the political resistance to Trujillo, and she, perforce, is drawn into the emotional maelstrom. The present-tense narrative lends the story a gripping immediacy, as Anita moves from the healthy, self-absorbed naïveté of early adolescence to a prematurely aged understanding of the world’s brutality. Her entree into puberty goes hand in hand with her entree into this adult world of terror: “I don’t want to be a señorita now that I know what El Jefe does to señoritas.” According to an author’s note, Alvarez (How Tía Lola Came to Visit Stay, 2001, etc.) drew upon the experiences of family members who stayed behind in the Dominican Republic during this period of political upheaval, crafting a story that, in its matter-of-fact detailing of the increasingly surreal world surrounding Anita, feels almost realer than life. The power of the narrative is weakened somewhat by the insertion of Anita’s diary entries as she and her mother take shelter in the Italian Embassy after her father’s arrest. The first-person, present-tense construction of the diary entries are not different enough from the main narrative to make them come alive as such; instead, the artifice draws attention to itself, creating a distraction.
This is a minor quibble with a story that imagines so clearly for American readers the travails of all-too-many Latin nations then and now. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-81544-9
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
“On the basis of their own words” Dudevszky wrote first-person accounts of the sad ordeals of several teenagers who are unable to reside with their families. There are reasons—often a list of reasons—the teenagers no longer live at home, and none of them are good. Marco’s father molested his sisters, Brenda’s parents were addicted to alcohol and drugs, Manuela’s father beat her, and Leyla had to escape from Iran for political reasons. The message that trumpets through is how desperately these youngsters, most living in foster or group homes in the Netherlands, need attention and affection. Jerry, a youth home resident, says, “I don’t get homesick at all. I don’t see my parents that much. They don’t come on my birthday. Well, so they don’t. I’m not going to lose sleep over it.” Maarten, 16, who was moved six times in four years, says, “I often felt lonely. Every time you go to another place you’re all on your own again.” Although the book is worthy, the tone is understandably depressing, and after a while the individual stories lose their bite. Readers who have the pertinacity to get through it will root for Asena and her “number-one wish,” which is “to become happy.” (Nonfiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1999
ISBN: 1-886910-40-5
Page Count: 125
Publisher: Lemniscaat/Boyds Mills
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
A twisty, eccentric novel of Machiavellian intrigue unravels slightly in the resolution, but fans of the author’s previous works (Pictures in the Dark, 1996, etc.) are unlikely to mind. When Ashley begins to get threatening letters and phone calls from a mysterious stalker, she goes to a local fixer for help, only to find that she’s only a pawn in his own machinations. She has always lived a duel life: by day, she’s “every mother’s dream daughter,” faithfully attending school, then rushing home to do a myriad of household chores and care for her ailing mother; by night, she’s a secret graffiti artist, scaling walls and roofs to “tag” surfaces with her spray-painted nom de plume. Her daring midnight adventures eventually catch the attention of Eddie Beale, a legendary tough with a zero tolerance for boredom and a coterie of colorful followers. Eddie “looks after” his friends, but demands slavish obedience in return. Ashley is flattered until she discovers that Eddie is using her in an elaborate scheme to get back at an innocent but uncooperative merchant. The premise is intriguing; Cross, using a variety of narrative voices and circus metaphors, spins the web so tautly that it’s a bit disconcerting when Ashley destroys Eddie’s universe so decisively. The page-turning plot will keep readers involved, though, despite a few undeveloped characters and the weak finish. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1999
ISBN: 0-8234-1512-0
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1999
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