A Long Island teenager develops a crush on her boyfriend's twin sister in this steamy tale of emergent sexuality from the author of Wannabe (1997). Cary stands out at the aptly named Babylon High School both for her carefully maintained Audrey Hepburn look, and for her hot bedmate Danny, a generous source of pot, alcohol, Ecstasy, nameless mushrooms, and extra-curricular sex. What Danny doesn't know, though, is that Cary is obsessed by his permanently stoned, bad-apple sister Wendy—no secret at all to what Cary considers the school's ``Lesbian Collective.'' Nor is it a secret to Raven, a new friend who is openly out of the closet and on the rebound. Beneath Cary's dissolute exterior beats a good—if tortured— heart that manifests itself as Rad, an imaginary companion who speaks only in song lyrics. Cary finds more substantial friends- -Raven in particular—after she seduces a drunker-than-usual Wendy (who promptly disappears) and confesses to Danny (who breaks off with her in a rage). Though the cast's adults are negligent or completely clueless, Stoehr gives her young narrator a saving sense of irony, and displays a keen appreciation for love's ambiguities and complexities. (Fiction. 14+)
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-32339-5
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
Girls will cry and boys will find love, lust, loss and longing in Alaska’s vanilla-and-cigarettes scent.
The Alaska of the title is a maddening, fascinating, vivid girl seen through the eyes of Pudge (Miles only to his parents), who meets Alaska at boarding school in Alabama.
Pudge is a skinny (“irony” says his roommate, the Colonel, of the nickname) thoughtful kid who collects and memorizes famous people’s last words. The Colonel, Takumi, Alaska and a Romanian girl named Lara are an utterly real gaggle of young persons, full of false starts, school pranks, moments of genuine exhilaration in learning and rather too many cigarettes and cheap bottles of wine. Their engine and center is Alaska, given to moodiness and crying jags but also full of spirit and energy, owner of a roomful of books she says she’s going to spend her life reading. Her center is a woeful family tragedy, and when Alaska herself is lost, her friends find their own ways out of the labyrinth, in part by pulling a last, hilarious school prank in her name. What sings and soars in this gorgeously told tale is Green’s mastery of language and the sweet, rough edges of Pudge’s voice.
Girls will cry and boys will find love, lust, loss and longing in Alaska’s vanilla-and-cigarettes scent. (Fiction. YA)Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-525-47506-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
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A dystopian world that is all too real and that has much to say about our own.
In an apocalyptic future Canada, Indigenous people have been forced to live on the run to avoid capture by the Recruiters, government military agents who kidnap Indians and confine them to facilities called “schools.”
Orphan Frenchie (Métis) is rescued from the Recruiters by Miigwans (Anishnaabe) along with a small band of other Indians from different nations, most young and each with a tragic story. Miigwans leads the group north to find others, holding on to the belief of safety in numbers. Five years later, Frenchie is now 16, and the bonded travelers have protected one another, strengthened by their loyalty and will to persevere as a people. They must stay forever on alert, just a breath away from capture by the Recruiters or by other Indians who act as their agents. Miigwans reveals that the government has been kidnapping Indians to extract their bone marrow, scientists believing that the key to restoring dreaming to white people is found within their DNA. Frenchie later learns that the truth is even more horrifying. The landscape of North America has been completely altered by climate change, rising oceans having eliminated coastlines and the Great Lakes having been destroyed by pollution and busted oil pipelines. Though the presence of the women in the story is downplayed, Miigwans is a true hero; in him Dimaline creates a character of tremendous emotional depth and tenderness, connecting readers with the complexity and compassion of Indigenous people.
A dystopian world that is all too real and that has much to say about our own. (Science fiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-77086-486-3
Page Count: 180
Publisher: DCB
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
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