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CIRCLE WITHIN A CIRCLE by Monte Killingsworth

CIRCLE WITHIN A CIRCLE

by Monte Killingsworth

Pub Date: March 1st, 1994
ISBN: 0-689-50598-1
Publisher: McElderry

The author of Eli's Songs (1991) offers another, but unfortuntely much more contrived, tale of effective individual resistance to despoilers of nature. Running away from his latest foster home, Chris, 14, is picked up by Chopper, a Chinook of mythic dimensions—a NASA ecologist, scarred inside and out by experiences in Vietnam and subject to visions—who's driving a souped-up VW bus to a sacred beach where developers are preparing to put up a resort. After attending a perfunctory hearing, Chopper and Chris head into the hills, where they sabotage the project by breaking open a conveniently placed old dam and flooding the beach. In Eli's Songs, the author at least acknowledged (though he certainly didn't buy) the arguments for economic development, thus giving his conflict some complexity; here, he doesn't even try: builders, officials, and locals are all faceless, virtually silent Bad Guys who will stop at nothing. The plot zigzags confusingly through flashbacks, while Chris—more observer than actor—is barely fleshed out in a perfunctory subplot. Compared to Lipsyte's The Chief (1993), this seems simplistic and overwrought. (Fiction. 10-13)