A well-told, affecting story that beautifully demonstrates the healing process.
A YA novel in verse tells the story of a girl dealing with the trauma of childhood sexual abuse with the help of a counselor and therapy group.
Meminger (Into the Wise Dark, 2012, etc.) explains in a foreword that this novel is “a fictionalized memoir” that draws on her own experience. Anjal, nicknamed “Anji,” is part of a Sikh family that left Punjab looking for a better future when she was young. (Their destination isn’t named.) When Anji is 6, she and her 3-year-old brother, Surjit, start attending day care at a Sikh temple, or gurdwara. Her parents believe that she’ll be safe “in god’s house,” but Anji is sexually abused there many times. She’s told not to make trouble, so she remains silent, but by high school, she starts to break down, due to depression and repressed anger. While writing in her journal, she discovers that “a kind of lava wants to flow / hot black ink onto the page.” A compassionate English teacher recommends that she seek counseling. At first, Anji is confused by her therapist Cathy’s questions, but the sessions help her to finally talk about her abuse. Her therapy, support group, creative projects, and political protests help her to heal, and she finally leaves home to find her own way in the world. The verse format works surprisingly well for this story; Anji’s voice is fresh, strong, and concise, and the author offers poetic images and language along the way. Some stories of abuse devote many pages to describing the abuse itself, but Meminger instead concentrates on showing how therapy works, revealing Cathy’s caring, careful questions and comments, and the support that Anji receives from other girls. Meminger also effectively shows how Cathy helps Anji to find her emotional truth: “no one really actually hurt me / like, I wasn’t violently raped or anything / some girls are // Cathy’s words are soft, / and yet here you are / with me.”
A well-told, affecting story that beautifully demonstrates the healing process.Pub Date: June 11, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-9831583-4-9
Page Count: 420
Publisher: See It Be It Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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