Sparkling dialogue and engaging characters make this Australian import a pleasure to read. Sixteen-year-old Francesca flounders when she transfers reluctantly to a previously all-boys school at the same time that her mother goes into a depression. Without her former repressive clique and her mother’s boisterous love, Francesca has to forge her own sense of herself after years of feeling safely invisible. In the process, she makes friends with unconventional girls she’d rejected at her old school, and gauche but ultimately kind boys, one of whom becomes a romantic interest. Hilarious scenes characterize the girls’ and boys’ adjustments to a co-ed school, a fully drawn setting clearly informed by the author’s experience as a teacher. Meanwhile, Francesca struggles with her mother’s depression and comes to better understand her stalwart but distressed father. Marchetta juggles her many characters deftly, infusing the teens and adults with depth and individuality. Francesca’s messy, credible array of emotions and problems will keep readers absorbed to the last, satisfying line. (Fiction. 13+)
Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-82982-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A stunning debut from a powerful new voice.
When everyone tells you who you are, how can you figure out who you want to be?
Ever since Belén’s pa left, nothing’s been the same. Her depressed ma is hardly home, and all older sister Ava does is berate Belén and accuse her of being just like their father. In danger of flunking out of high school, Belén fears Ava is right about her. With her best friend, Leti, pregnant and going through serious family problems of her own, Belén seeks solace in a questionable relationship with a college student. And when she sees her father at a restaurant with a much younger woman, but he doesn’t acknowledge her (“his eyes remain flat. Lifeless. Like he is looking at a stranger”), the tenuous hold she had on herself slips. Everyone, it seems, abandons her; will Belén also give up on herself? Despite the book’s exploration of painful subjects, Belén’s strong, tell-it-like-it-is voice and wry humor don’t court readers’ pity. The novel treats issues of misogyny, domestic violence, and racism as realities to be dealt with, not character-defining moments of transformation, and the story’s tension is rooted in the question of whether Belén and Leti will break free from cycles of generational trauma and forge their own futures. This addictively readable novel is a loving portrait of growing up Mexican American and female in Oakland.
A stunning debut from a powerful new voice. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780063287860
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2023
A sinister story about the vicious cycle of generational abuse that falters under the weight of an unwieldy plot.
A 17-year-old Nebraska girl’s desperate search for her roots takes her down a path more twisted than she could have imagined.
Margot Nielsen has lived her whole life under the thumb of her emotionally distant, manipulative mother and her strange set of rules. They have no connections to any family that Margot is aware of, but when a clue about their family history surfaces, Margot follows it. She finds the grandmother her mother never wanted her to know living on the family homestead in an economically depressed town where the Nielsen name seems to be shrouded in a cloud of suspicion that inspires trepidation among locals. Despite ominous foreshadowing, Margot still longs to find in her stoic grandmother, Vera, the love and connection that have been withheld from her. Their relationship is quickly complicated by a fire on the farm that results in the death of a girl with an uncanny physical resemblance to Margot—and whose existence her grandmother refuses to explain. Tension builds as the questions pile up, though the clues do not keep pace with the gaping concerns that readers are forced to grapple with. What could have been a tightly paced thriller suffers from pacing issues and plot holes along with thin character development and repetitive language. All major characters are white.
A sinister story about the vicious cycle of generational abuse that falters under the weight of an unwieldy plot. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: July 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-525-64562-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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