A fiery, feminist love story young teens, particularly girls, should just devour.
Love and conventional roles for women collide in this page-ripping tale from 15th-century Venice.
The gifted Printz Honor–winning poet (Your Own, Sylvia, 2007, etc.) turns to Renaissance Italy to probe timeless questions of class, gender roles and family ties. Setting her story on the tiny island of Murano in the late 1400s, Hemphill shines a light on the world of glassmaking as crafted by the well-established Barovier family. The tale’s tension centers around Maria’s promise to honor her dying father’s wish that she marry into Venetian nobility. This responsibility should have fallen to her older sister, Giovanna, whose beauty, charm and upbringing have primed her to become a noblewoman her entire life. At age 15, Maria feels the expanse of her world beginning to shrink as her mother starts preparing her “to be bartered away.” She finds that “learning to be a lady / is like learning / to live within a shell.” Maria’s misery only increases when an alluring glassblower arrives on the scene, making her long even more to be allowed to preserve the family’s social station by exercising her talents as a glassmaker. Hemphill’s deft sense of line, engaging language and fast-paced plot combine smoothly as molten glass in this intricate family drama, in which modern self-determination eventually trumps tradition.
A fiery, feminist love story young teens, particularly girls, should just devour. (Verse novel. 11 & up)Pub Date: March 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-375-86109-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
A heavy read about the harsh realities of tragedy and their effects on those left behind.
In this companion novel to 2013’s If He Had Been With Me, three characters tell their sides of the story.
Finn’s narrative starts three days before his death. He explores the progress of his unrequited love for best friend Autumn up until the day he finally expresses his feelings. Finn’s story ends with his tragic death, which leaves his close friends devastated, unmoored, and uncertain how to go on. Jack’s section follows, offering a heartbreaking look at what it’s like to live with grief. Jack works to overcome the anger he feels toward Sylvie, the girlfriend Finn was breaking up with when he died, and Autumn, the girl he was preparing to build his life around (but whom Jack believed wasn’t good enough for Finn). But when Jack sees how Autumn’s grief matches his own, it changes their understanding of one another. Autumn’s chapters trace her life without Finn as readers follow her struggles with mental health and balancing love and loss. Those who have read the earlier book will better connect with and feel for these characters, particularly since they’ll have a more well-rounded impression of Finn. The pain and anger is well written, and the novel highlights the most troublesome aspects of young adulthood: overconfidence sprinkled with heavy insecurities, fear-fueled decisions, bad communication, and brash judgments. Characters are cued white.
A heavy read about the harsh realities of tragedy and their effects on those left behind. (author’s note, content warning) (Fiction. 14-18)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781728276229
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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