An engaging if somewhat flat teenage narrative of an apparent abduction and a dissolving friendship.
A novel of youth and not-quite-innocence set in 1980s California, where teenage loyalties are tested by the disappearance of one girl and the growing suspicion, on the part of her best friend, that an elaborate deception may have been perpetrated.
Thirteen-year-old Eulabee, “a very good student with a sinister side,” and her best friend, Maria Fabiola, a precocious beauty, are as lucky as any California girls can be. Living in the wealthy enclave of Sea Cliff with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge (though Eulabee’s family is not rich), they attend the exclusive Spragg School for Girls and are renowned for their daring ability to scale the local cliffs and to read the treacherous ocean tides. They also know “where the boys live” in their neighborhood, though the danger at the heart of the novel resides elsewhere. “Separately we are good girls,” Eulabee explains, “together...we are trouble.” Innocent trouble, that is, of the teenage variety involving drugs (negligible), alcohol (purveyed by bad boys), and lying to parents and teachers. The first shadow to fall on this breezy narrative is that of a parked car noticed by the girls one morning on their way to school. The driver asks them the time, they answer and walk on, but Maria Fabiola insists, “He was touching himself…and he said he’s going to find us later!” Eulabee, who says she didn’t see this happen, is branded a traitor at school (and later a “slut” for being mauled at a party). Then Maria Fabiola goes missing. Two more apparent disappearances follow, one all too real. The narrative darkens, and Eulabee’s impulse to uncover the truth behind the initial event both increases her isolation and, ironically, intensifies the tabloid drama. “The newspapers called what happened the Sea Cliff Seizures, and the name stuck,” she reflects decades later when a chance meeting in 2019 sheds new light on the distant affair. That final chapter, in its compressed elegance and psychological subtlety, also hints at the novel that might have been.
An engaging if somewhat flat teenage narrative of an apparent abduction and a dissolving friendship.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-293623-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2020
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.
Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.
It’s not necessary to have read Dickens’ famous novel to appreciate Kingsolver’s absorbing tale, but those who have will savor the tough-minded changes she rings on his Victorian sentimentality while affirming his stinging critique of a heartless society. Our soon-to-be orphaned narrator’s mother is a substance-abusing teenage single mom who checks out via OD on his 11th birthday, and Demon’s cynical, wised-up voice is light-years removed from David Copperfield’s earnest tone. Yet readers also see the yearning for love and wells of compassion hidden beneath his self-protective exterior. Like pretty much everyone else in Lee County, Virginia, hollowed out economically by the coal and tobacco industries, he sees himself as someone with no prospects and little worth. One of Kingsolver’s major themes, hit a little too insistently, is the contempt felt by participants in the modern capitalist economy for those rooted in older ways of life. More nuanced and emotionally engaging is Demon’s fierce attachment to his home ground, a place where he is known and supported, tested to the breaking point as the opiate epidemic engulfs it. Kingsolver’s ferocious indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, angrily stated by a local girl who has become a nurse, is in the best Dickensian tradition, and Demon gives a harrowing account of his descent into addiction with his beloved Dori (as naïve as Dickens’ Dora in her own screwed-up way). Does knowledge offer a way out of this sinkhole? A committed teacher tries to enlighten Demon’s seventh grade class about how the resource-rich countryside was pillaged and abandoned, but Kingsolver doesn’t air-brush his students’ dismissal of this history or the prejudice encountered by this African American outsider and his White wife. She is an art teacher who guides Demon toward self-expression, just as his friend Tommy provokes his dawning understanding of how their world has been shaped by outside forces and what he might be able to do about it.
An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-325-1922
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.
The sequel to It Ends With Us (2016) shows the aftermath of domestic violence through the eyes of a single mother.
Lily Bloom is still running a flower shop; her abusive ex-husband, Ryle Kincaid, is still a surgeon. But now they’re co-parenting a daughter, Emerson, who's almost a year old. Lily won’t send Emerson to her father’s house overnight until she’s old enough to talk—“So she can tell me if something happens”—but she doesn’t want to fight for full custody lest it become an expensive legal drama or, worse, a physical fight. When Lily runs into Atlas Corrigan, a childhood friend who also came from an abusive family, she hopes their friendship can blossom into love. (For new readers, their history unfolds in heartfelt diary entries that Lily addresses to Finding Nemo star Ellen DeGeneres as she considers how Atlas was a calming presence during her turbulent childhood.) Atlas, who is single and running a restaurant, feels the same way. But even though she’s divorced, Lily isn’t exactly free. Behind Ryle’s veneer of civility are his jealousy and resentment. Lily has to plan her dates carefully to avoid a confrontation. Meanwhile, Atlas’ mother returns with shocking news. In between, Lily and Atlas steal away for romantic moments that are even sweeter for their authenticity as Lily struggles with child care, breastfeeding, and running a business while trying to find time for herself.
Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-668-00122-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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