The slow but near-total destruction of a bright and talented teenage girl is clinically anatomized in this British import. When Anna Goldsmith, bright and talented, moves from London to the north of England, she is at first embraced by Hayley, the most popular girl in school, and then pushed away in slow, subtle, and absolutely vicious increments. The story opens with Anna’s suicide attempt; to bring the reader in on what led to this, Mayfield (A Time to Be Born, not reviewed, etc.) tells Anna’s story by presenting three parallel narratives. Melanie, a schoolmate and friend, relates the course of Anna’s relationship with Hayley from her arrival some two years before the story opens, when they were 13. Melanie, essentially decent, provides an insider’s look at both Anna’s slow disintegration and the insidious attraction of Hayley’s favor—to which Melanie is in no way immune. Even as Melanie reveals the observer’s viewpoint, Anna’s mother Frances sits in the hospital with her comatose daughter, reflecting on how little she herself had observed of Anna’s decline into desperation. To try to understand, she reads Anna’s diary, the written entries counterpointed by Frances’s own memories of the events recorded. This slow backward and forward unfolding of Anna’s increasing depression is remarkably effective. Most successful is Melanie’s account; that she knowingly allows her genuine friendship with Anna to be undermined by Hayley for the sake of popularity will strike chords of recognition with teen readers, most of whom have a Hayley somewhere in their own lives. Justice for Hayley is less important than Melanie’s and Frances’s realizations of their own failures to nurture Anna; in the end, the story represents a bleakly compelling cautionary tale for teens and their adults. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-7868-0870-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
It’s 1949, and 13-year-old Francine Green lives in “the land of ‘Sit down, Francine’ and ‘Be quiet, Francine’ ” at All Saints School for Girls in Los Angeles. When she meets Sophie Bowman and her father, she’s encouraged to think about issues in the news: the atomic bomb, peace, communism and blacklisting. This is not a story about the McCarthy era so much as one about how one girl—who has been trained to be quiet and obedient by her school, family, church and culture—learns to speak up for herself. Cushman offers a fine sense of the times with such cultural references as President Truman, Hopalong Cassidy, Montgomery Clift, Lucky Strike, “duck and cover” and the Iron Curtain. The dialogue is sharp, carrying a good part of this story of friends and foes, guilt and courage—a story that ought to send readers off to find out more about McCarthy, his witch-hunt and the First Amendment. Though not a happily-ever-after tale, it dramatizes how one person can stand up to unfairness, be it in front of Senate hearings or in the classroom. (author’s note) (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2006
ISBN: 0-618-50455-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Clarion Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
Illegal immigrant sisters learn a lot about themselves when their family faces deportation in this compelling contemporary drama. Immigrants from Bangladesh, Nadira, her older sister Aisha and their parents live in New York City with expired visas. Fourteen-year-old Nadira describes herself as “the slow-wit second-born” who follows Aisha, the family star who’s on track for class valedictorian and a top-rate college. Everything changes when post-9/11 government crack-downs on Muslim immigrants push the family to seek asylum in Canada where they are turned away at the border and their father is arrested by U.S. immigration. The sisters return to New York living in constant fear of detection and trying to pretend everything is normal. As months pass, Aisha falls apart while Nadira uses her head in “a right way” to save her father and her family. Nadira’s need for acceptance by her family neatly parallels the family’s desire for acceptance in their adopted country. A perceptive peek into the lives of foreigners on the fringe. (endnote) (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-4169-0351-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Ginee Seo/Atheneum
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2005
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