As she turns 12, Cora finds it increasingly hard to believe that her father, who returned to Greece before she was born, has never communicated with her. Suddenly, reading portents in the ramblings of the street people she and her best friend Charley like to interview, she's sure he's coming. Haunted by dreams in which her hopes are translated into variations on the myth of Europa; disturbed by finding her mother's letters to her father, plus one from him to Cora about which she was never told; discovering that Charley, whom she has always believed to be a straightforward fount of interesting facts, is also deeply distressed by the loss of his father (who died of a brain tumor)- -Cora's image of her father is already being transformed before he turns up in the book's last pages to complete the transformation with a disappointing reality. The events are sparse in this carefully structured, beautifully written story, but Cora's inner life is fascinating, rich with interconnected leitmotifs—jump-rope rhymes, angels and madmen, science and magic, ideas within ideas (such as the clairvoyant ``Lady Moon'' born with ``three veils''). It's a story that, like Paterson's Park's Quest (1988), makes a mother's pain at being abandoned comprehensible without losing focus on its effect on her child; meanwhile, Geringer creates a protagonist of integrity who is assimilating difficult facts about her past while becoming more sensitively attuned to her mother and closest friend. An unusually fine first novel. (Fiction. 10-14)
Pub Date: Sept. 30, 1991
ISBN: 0-06-023849-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a...
Han’s leisurely paced, somewhat somber narrative revisits several beach-house summers in flashback through the eyes of now 15-year-old Isabel, known to all as Belly.
Belly measures her growing self by these summers and by her lifelong relationship with the older boys, her brother and her mother’s best friend’s two sons. Belly’s dawning awareness of her sexuality and that of the boys is a strong theme, as is the sense of summer as a separate and reflective time and place: Readers get glimpses of kisses on the beach, her best friend’s flirtations during one summer’s visit, a first date. In the background the two mothers renew their friendship each year, and Lauren, Belly’s mother, provides support for her friend—if not, unfortunately, for the children—in Susannah’s losing battle with breast cancer. Besides the mostly off-stage issue of a parent’s severe illness there’s not much here to challenge most readers—driving, beer-drinking, divorce, a moment of surprise at the mothers smoking medicinal pot together.
The wish-fulfilling title and sun-washed, catalog-beautiful teens on the cover will be enticing for girls looking for a diversion. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4169-6823-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point.
After Hitler appoints Bruno’s father commandant of Auschwitz, Bruno (nine) is unhappy with his new surroundings compared to the luxury of his home in Berlin.
The literal-minded Bruno, with amazingly little political and social awareness, never gains comprehension of the prisoners (all in “striped pajamas”) or the malignant nature of the death camp. He overcomes loneliness and isolation only when he discovers another boy, Shmuel, on the other side of the camp’s fence. For months, the two meet, becoming secret best friends even though they can never play together. Although Bruno’s family corrects him, he childishly calls the camp “Out-With” and the Fuhrer “Fury.” As a literary device, it could be said to be credibly rooted in Bruno’s consistent, guileless characterization, though it’s difficult to believe in reality. The tragic story’s point of view is unique: the corrosive effect of brutality on Nazi family life as seen through the eyes of a naïf. Some will believe that the fable form, in which the illogical may serve the objective of moral instruction, succeeds in Boyne’s narrative; others will believe it was the wrong choice.
Certain to provoke controversy and difficult to see as a book for children, who could easily miss the painful point. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-75106-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: David Fickling/Random
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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