From Plummer (The Unlikely Romance of Kate Bjorkman, 1995, etc.), an unusually complex tale of teenage pregnancy, in which the prospects for a happy ending are tempered by the difficulty of the available choices. Hannah Ziebarth, 15 and pregnant, lives in Salt Lake City, where her Mormon bishop was her deceased father’s best friend. The bishop looks after the family, but remotely, and doesn’t see that Hannah’s gentle mother hasn’t left the house since her husband died, hasn’t made a phone call, hasn’t even made a sandwich. Hannah, beset with her loss and her mother’s withdrawal, as well as overwhelmed by the myriad household tasks that have come with that withdrawal, falls for the smooth moves of Milo, who is rich, handsome, and popular. When she tells him she’s pregnant he hits her; never really stable, Hannah spirals out of control and wakes up in a hospital for troubled teens. Hannah’s perspective as she makes her voyage through therapy—and through pregnancy—alternates with commentary from her best friend, Trilby, and Milo’s put-upon younger brother, Roman, who is especially amusing in his take on his parents’ hero-worship of their oldest son. While the plot is wrapped up a bit too neatly, Hannah is a rich and rewarding presence; her aching losses nearly throb on the page. Plummer is not afraid to say that it is possible to overcome life’s demons, but it’s hard; that people can change, but not all do; that giving up a baby hurts. Sobering and definitely a page-turner. (Fiction. 13-15)
Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-32511-8
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
Namioka (Den of the White Fox, 1997, etc.) offers readers a glimpse of the ritual of foot-binding, and a surprising heroine whose life is determined by her rejection of that ritual. Ailin is spirited—her family thinks uncontrollable—even at age five, in her family’s compound in China in 1911, she doesn’t want to have her feet bound, especially after Second Sister shows Ailin her own bound feet and tells her how much it hurts. Ailin can see already how bound feet will restrict her movements, and prevent her from running and playing. Her father takes the revolutionary step of permitting her to leave her feet alone, even though the family of Ailin’s betrothed then breaks off the engagement. Ailin goes to the missionary school and learns English; when her father dies and her uncle cuts off funds for tuition, she leaves her family to become a nanny for an American missionary couple’s children. She learns all the daily household chores that were done by servants in her own home, and finds herself, painfully, cut off from her own culture and separate from the Americans. At 16, she decides to go with the missionaries when they return to San Francisco, where she meets and marries another Chinese immigrant who starts his own restaurant. The metaphor of things bound and unbound is a ribbon winding through this vivid narrative; the story moves swiftly, while Ailin is a brave and engaging heroine whose difficult choices reflect her time and her gender. (Fiction. 9-14)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-385-32666-1
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1999
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