In a debut novel lit by animated, engaging characters, a spirited teenager navigates her way through a bitter custody fight. Mac's wish is to have her old, settled life back; instead, she is tossed back and forth between her passive father and obsessive, career-driven mother. Meanwhile, she spills her feelings to readers, her therapist, and to Henrietta Porter LePage Middleton, a huge-hearted, seventysomething, court-appointed guardian with whom readers will, as Mac does, instantly fall in love. Self- possessed for 13, Mac sees her parents and their expensive lawyers using her as a game piece, so she ``hires'' a lawyer of her own: Drayton Guerard, a rumpled, savvy male counterpart to Henrietta with a streak of idealism. With Henrietta's death, Drayton steps in decisively, arranging with the court to have Mac stay put while her parents learn to shuttle back and forth on alternate weeks. Readers will find this turnabout fitting and take heart from the reminder that they have rights, too. Robinson sketches characters and relationships with wonderful deftness, delivering Mac's thoughts in a calm but not distant tone; the story is set in Charleston and evokes that town's unhurried grace. (Fiction. 12-15)
Pub Date: April 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-395-72772-3
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
In this Australian import, Marchetta gets the voice of teenage angst just right in a hormone saturated coming-of-age story. Josephine Alibrandi, 17 and of Italian descent, is torn between her traditional upbringing, embodied by both her immigrant grandmother and her overprotective mother, and the norms of teenage society. A scholarship student at an esteemed Catholic girls’ school, she struggles with feelings of inferiority not only because she’s poorer than the other students and an “ethnic,” but because her mother never married. These feelings are intensified when her father, whom she’s just met, enters and gradually becomes part of her life. As Josephine struggles to weave the disparate strands of her character into a cohesive tapestry of self, she discovers some unsavory family secrets, falls in love for the first time, copes with a friend’s suicide, and goes from being a follower to a leader. Although somewhat repetitive and overlong, this is a tender, convincing portrayal of a girl’s bumpy ride through late adolescence. Some of the Australian expressions may be unfamiliar to US readers, but the emotions translate perfectly. (Fiction. 13-15)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-531-30142-7
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Orchard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Revisiting characters from The Cook’s Family (1998), Yep again explores personal and cultural conflicts arising between the generations in a Chinese-American family. Suddenly saddled with caring for four younger siblings after a wealthy businessman hires her widowed mother as a governess—or amah—for his daughter, Stephanie, Amy Chin is forced to miss several ballet rehearsals for Cinderella, to listen to glowing accounts of Stephanie’s sophistication, and to accept expensive clothing and other gifts from her. While gaining new insight into how Cinderella’s stepsisters must have felt, Amy’s understandable resentment is compounded by the news that Stephanie will be moving in while her father is away on a trip. Yep builds that feeling to fever pitch, then dispels it by casting Stephanie as a lonely child hurt by one parent’s death and the other’s neglect; becoming friends, Stephanie and Amy clear the air and mend some fences with their well-meaning parents in a climactic face-off. The characters, most of them familiar from previous appearances, are distinct if not particularly complex, the San Francisco setting is vividly drawn, and the issues are laid out in plain terms and tidily resolved. It’s formulaic, but not entirely superficial. (Fiction. 10-13)
Pub Date: June 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-399-23040-8
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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