SHADOW BOXING

Ever since her mother died, 16-year-old Alice has been sleepwalking through life, locked in a cold war with her father, cutting herself to cope. For a girl who’s convinced she’s being destroyed by depression, Alice is by her own admission highly functional: She makes great grades, holds down two jobs, manages her cousin Chloe’s life and makes friends easily. Still, the loveless relationships both girls have with their social-climbing parents threaten to destroy them. Chloe seeks love by dating unworthy boys, while Alice tries to bring her mother back by saving mementos and seeking memories in the Jewish food of her childhood. When it seems the fallout from their actions can only drown them, the girls salvage themselves with the help of the friends they both make. Alice’s story alternately rushes and drags. Disruption from the pacing, however, is offset by careful detail: Alice’s obsession with her constant grubbiness, the Toronto setting, the conflict between ethnic Judaism and assimilation in Alice’s parents. Wholesome. (Fiction. 12-14)