UNDINE

A rather lovely if unresolved coming-of-age story with a jolt of magic. Undine is 16 and her best friend, Trout, is one of the boys next door. Her mother says her father is dead, and she, Undine and Undine’s small brother Jasper form a tight triad. Undine has feelings she doesn’t understand—a pull toward the sea, memories and nightmares, even a voice she hears in her head—that complicate all the usual teen emotional outrage. One time in desperation she discovers she can create an actual storm and Trout sees it; later, she almost seduces Trout’s older brother using the sea-born power she can scarcely define. When she finds that the voice in her head is her father, Prospero Marine, who is definitely not dead, she confronts him out of longing and a desperate desire to know. The language is vivid and rich, full of references to The Tempest in an Australian setting, but neither the romance nor the magic quite becomes whole in the end. (Fiction. YA)