by Stephanie Grant ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2008
A distinctive coming-of-age tale.
Grant (The Passion of Alice, 1995) uses the political as a counterpoint to the personal in a novel set amidst the tumult of Boston in 1974.
The desegregation of South Boston’s public schools, the rise of Black Power and a young woman’s exploration of her sexual identity are among the weighty themes explored here. A native of Southie, tough-talking teen Ann Ahern, the book’s narrator/protagonist, is schooled in the folkways of her insular Irish-American community. She knows the kids who rioted when black students arrived in Southie’s schools, and her mother has joined other Catholic matriarchs saying rosaries in protest of busing. But ever since she was caught with her tongue in the ear of another girl, Ann has been an outsider as much as an insider. At the start of her junior year, the tensions that define her existence coalesce in a single person: Mademoiselle Eugenie, the new French teacher. A Parisian of Senegalese descent, beautiful, exotic and self-possessed, she is everything Ann is not; the teen is at least as attracted to the possibility of escape that Mademoiselle Eugenie represents as to the woman herself. Ann’s infatuation will lead her out of her claustrophobic community into both love and danger. Ultimately, Eugenie will compel Ann to pick a side, and it’s to the author’s credit that she lets her young heroine make choices that are not especially noble and not necessarily appealing. Ann is both keenly aware of the culture war being waged around her and utterly indifferent to the historical import of the events she’s witnessing—she is, after all, a teenager. Her solipsism may leave readers thinking less of Ann as a person, but it’s an essential element of her engagingly idiosyncratic voice.
A distinctive coming-of-age tale.Pub Date: March 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4165-5622-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2007
Share your opinion of this book
More by Stephanie Grant
BOOK REVIEW
by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
Share your opinion of this book
More by Harper Lee
BOOK REVIEW
by Harper Lee
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by J.D. Salinger
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.