New England boarding-school junior Frances Leventhal endangers herself when she looks into her brother Daniel’s suicide. As freshmen, Frances and Daniel received scholarships to Pettengill thanks to Unity, a charitable organization started by a recent alum. Daniel and other scholarship students volunteer for Unity, but Frances never wanted to. Shocked when Daniel dies of a heroin overdose, Frances realizes she didn’t really know him and, in remorse, starts working for Unity. But the organization’s lackluster food pantry, its arrogant leader, and strange conversations she overhears make Frances increasingly suspicious. She doesn’t know whom to tell; her father, an unsuccessful writer, is emotionally distant, and her mother has returned to her native Japan to join a Buddhist monastery. Finally, Frances trusts a grounds worker who is slightly mentally retarded but steady and thoughtful. Meanwhile, Frances, who struggles with her Jewish/Japanese heritage and appearance, expresses her confusion and anger through art, which provides one of the themes: “If you think you already know what you’re looking at, you might not see what’s really there.” Frances recognizes that she has been blind about herself and her brother, whose true personality emerges subtly through her memories of him. Although the confirmation of Frances’s suspicions falls a bit flat, the story’s twists keep the reader guessing from beginning to end. Werlin (Locked Inside, 2000, etc.) has once again excelled in combining a skillfully wrought plot with fully developed characters and rich themes. (Fiction. 12+)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-8037-2605-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.
A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.
Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.
Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.
A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.
Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.
An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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