It’s not enough that brilliant and beautiful Allegra “Legs” Hanover is infatuated with handsome, elusive, and seemingly unattainable oddball classmate and surfer Andros Bliss, but her long-time admirer and would-be boyfriend, nerdy Derman Bloom, has just slept with Legs’s best friend, Angie. Or has he? No one is really sure, and Time Zone High’s legendary Rules of Virginity aren’t much help. Slightly worse than her unrequited love and this recent betrayal is pending global calamity: A huge asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, expected to hit and destroy the world within hours. Legs wants to make the best of whatever time she has left, but Andros, enigmatic as ever and a surfer to the bone, is more interested in the last big wave the collision will cause. Strasser (who last visited this setting in Girl Gives Birth to Own Prom Date, 1996, etc.) has taken a serious notion—how to function in the face of disaster—and fashioned a riotously funny tale. In the face of recent end-of-the-world films, this novel looks almost masterful, with some weird and wonderful characters, side-splitting dialogue, suspense, and way more attitude than any old asteroid can diminish. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-689-81113-6
Page Count: 169
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
From Thomas (Slave Day, p. 306, etc.), an attempt to draw a cross-section of humanity from a group of high-school students performing community service. In the first chapter, as part of a college course, Randall is assigned to follow up on nine high-school seniors who had to do community service projects to graduate, by interviewing them and the participants in their projects. He's a skeptic after his own experience on the receiving end of someone else's community-service project a decade earlier. The next nine chapters are more like short stories, each one a self-contained first-person account by one of the nine seniors: Some perform their service with honor, some with cynicism. Thomas covers a lot of territory and demands that readers keep track of several characters and activities; each narrator establishes himself or herself, describes the mission, learns a lesson, or hits a defining moment, then checks out, without a reappearance of Randall for perspective or hindsight—which leaves the book's premise, and readers, dangling. It's a promising work—it just doesn't feel finished. (Fiction. 12-14)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-689-80958-1
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997
From Conford (The Frog Princess of Pelham, p. 638, etc.), a mediocre collection of stories about dating. Characterization is paper-thin in most stories: Amy and her boyfriend Batso, whose distinguishing characteristics are that they are devoted to each other; the unfortunately designated ``Princess Di,'' who uses up boys ``like Kleenex''; and Linda, who is a fraud and a liar. ``The Gift of the Mangy,'' attempting to echo O. Henry, features two shallow kids who make sacrifices (she clips her nails, he gets a haircut) before trading gifts (a manicure kit for her, a hairdryer for him); in ``Have a Heart,'' Linda creates fraudulent charities and raffles before getting her comeuppance. When some girls decide to boost Robert's confidence in ``Metamorphosis,'' he becomes unbearably suave and licentious; for B.J., making a wish for a date in ``Two Coins in a Fountain'' is more complicated than she can predict. Conford's glibness comes through in observations that don't always match their teenage protagonists' sensibilities—``his build was slim to none''—but the real trouble is the book's stubborn lack of substance. Each piece is more of a one-joke concept than a fully rendered story, and doesn't even qualify as brain candy. (Short stories. 12-14)
Pub Date: Jan. 31, 1998
ISBN: 0-06-025414-9
Page Count: 141
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
bookshelf
