Bedard (Painted Devil, 1994, etc.) returns again to the Canadian town of Caledon for an understated foray into magical realism. Fourteen-year-old Charles is quiet and introspective, with the deliberate fragility of not-quite-healed. In a rundown church, Charles witnesses an accident that shatters one of the ancient stained-glass windows, and discovers a homeless teenage girl bleeding in a pew, apparently a victim of amnesia. This small incident engenders his obsession with helping the strange girl find her way home. Their surreal journey through the town triggers Charles’s cascading memories of his childhood. Meanwhile, the church’s caretaker works frenetically to piece together the shards of the broken window, accompanied by memories of his own past. Although the sources of Charles’s own wounds are eventually revealed, and the girl’s mysterious origins strongly suggested, there is very little story here. Instead, there is a series of finely etched observations and lapidary musings on the nature of memories, how fragments of the past persist to make up the pattern of our individual selves. Bedard’s language is evocative and poetic, rich in metaphor and symbol. Events unfold with a dream-like logic, as the miraculous is made matter-of-fact, while ordinary objects take on outsized significance. Not for everyone, or even for most, but a small gem awaiting the special reader. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-88776-552-1
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2001
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss.
It’s 1983, and 13-year-old Indian American Reha feels caught between two worlds.
Monday through Friday, she goes to a school where she stands out for not being White but where she has a weekday best friend, Rachel, and does English projects with potential crush Pete. On the weekends, she’s with her other best friend, Sunita (Sunny for short), at gatherings hosted by her Indian community. Reha feels frustrated that her parents refuse to acknowledge her Americanness and insist on raising her with Indian values and habits. Then, on the night of the middle school dance, her mother is admitted to the hospital, and Reha’s world is split in two again: this time, between hospital and home. Suddenly she must learn not just how to be both Indian and American, but also how to live with her mother’s leukemia diagnosis. The sections dealing with Reha’s immigrant identity rely on oft-told themes about the overprotectiveness of immigrant parents and lack the nuance found in later pages. Reha’s story of her evolving relationships with her parents, however, feels layered and real, and the scenes in which Reha must grapple with the possible loss of a parent are beautifully and sensitively rendered. The sophistication of the text makes it a valuable and thought-provoking read even for those older than the protagonist.
An intimate novel that beautifully confronts grief and loss. (Verse novel. 11-15)Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-304742-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
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