An engrossing, entertaining psychological family drama centered on the important, often overlooked relationship between a...
A troubled teenage girl and her grandmother bond through their book club as each faces a personal struggle.
Seventeen-year-old Megan is at it again: She cuts herself in order to be admitted to her favorite psychiatric unit. For her grandparents, Addie and Henry, it’s a familiar scenario that they would prefer Megan’s parents handle: “This time, Henry and I just want to be grandparents. Frankly, all of this has worn us out, and we just don’t have the energy any more to try to figure out what is real, what has been blown out of proportion, and what are just flat-out lies.” But Megan’s parents both decide they can’t handle Megan—her mother’s leaving town on a “spiritual journey” and her remarried father’s wife is having a baby—which leaves the difficult teenager with no one but her grandparents. The first few weeks of her hospital stay feature “four restraints, six seclusions, ten voluntary walks to the quiet room, two altercations with another patient in the dayroom, and two self-harm episodes,” attention-seeking behaviors typical of borderline personality disorder. This time, though, something seems different for Megan. She gains insight into her behavior, and she starts taking responsibility for her actions. She genuinely connects with Addie through their shared love of reading, and Megan successfully organizes a book club for the psychiatric unit. When Addie receives a sobering diagnosis, Megan finds that for once, she can be there for someone else. Debut author Hennessy knows her subject well; readers familiar with psych wards, their patients, doctors, nurses, techs and the forms of therapy employed there—good and bad—will find that every page rings true, down to the motivational posters written in glitter pen. The book club meetings make palpable the excitement of young people learning to unfurl a novel. More than that, Hennessy has created well-rounded, memorable characters who express themselves with intelligence and humor. Addie is especially down-to-earth and likable; in making an end-of-life decision, she tells her doctor, “Do all that you can do for the young, Scott; their dance card is wide open. Us? Our cards are pretty full, and I want to go out waltzing not crawling.” Megan’s recovery, though a little swift, is believable, and Hennessy successfully gets inside her head to show her somewhat-unhinged thought processes. By the end of the book, readers will find much to admire in a character who had seemed to be hopelessly self-centered.
An engrossing, entertaining psychological family drama centered on the important, often overlooked relationship between a grandmother and granddaughter.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 254
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.
A novel tells the story of two spirited girls who set out to save a lame foal in 1952.
Mary, age 12, lacks muscle control of her legs and must use a wheelchair. Her life is constantly interrupted by trips with her widower father to assorted doctors, all of whom have failed to help her. Mary tolerates the treatments, hoping to one day walk unassisted, but her true passion involves horses. Possessing a library filled with horse books, she loves watching and drawing the animals at a neighboring farm. She longs to own one herself. But her father, overprotective due to her disability and his own lingering grief over Mary’s dead mother, makes her keep her distance. Mary befriends Laura, the emotionally neglected daughter of the wealthy neighboring farm owners, and the two share secret buggy rides. Both girls are attracted to Illusion, a beautiful red bay filly on the farm. Mary learns that Illusion is to be put down by a veterinarian because of a lame leg. Horrified, she decides to talk to the barn manager about the horse (“Isn’t it okay for her to live even if she’s not perfect? I think she deserves a chance”). Soon, Mary and Laura attempt to raise money to save Illusion. At the same time, Mary begins to gain control of her legs thanks to water therapy and secret therapeutic riding with Laura. There is indeed a great deal of poignancy in a story of a girl with a disability fighting to defend the intrinsic value of a lame animal. But this book, the first installment of the Dream Horse Adventure Series, would be twice as touching if Mary interacted with Illusion more. In the tale’s opening, she watches the foal from afar, but she actually spends very little time with the filly she tries so hard to protect. This turns out to be a strange development given the degree to which the narrative relies on her devotion. Count (Selah’s Sweet Dream, 2015) draws Mary and Laura in broad but believable strokes, defined mainly by their unrelenting pluckiness in the face of adversity. While the work tackles disability, death, and grief, Mary’s and Laura’s environments are so idyllic and their optimism and perseverance so remarkable that the story retains an aura of uncomplicated gentleness throughout.
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hastings Creations Group
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
