This novel really blew me away—partly because it wasn’t quite what I expected but also because it manages to walk the line between a science fiction novel and a Raymond Carver short story. Dale Sampson grows up in a small town in Southern Illinois–a brainy loner. However, in sixth grade he strikes up an unlikely friendship with Mack Tucker, popular jock, and becomes just a little bit less of a loner. He and Mack connect, in part, because Mack has an abusive father and Dale […]
Read It and Weep
I meant to read this young adult novel before I watched the movie but I caved and watched the movie first (which I liked by the way). If you’ve seen the previews for the movie starring Chloe Grace Moretz, you know the basic plot of this novel. A young woman, Mia, is involved in a car accident while driving on a snowy road in Oregon with her mom, dad, and younger brother, Teddy. At first she doesn’t realize the severity of what has happened because […]
A New Appreciation for Ezra Pound, Frankenbiting, and Gerbils
This young adult novel was a welcome relief from the dystopian futures and epic trilogies that I’ve been reading, but the issue of threes does come up. Ethan Andrezejszak is a student at a Minneapolis high school for the arts and thanks to his English teacher, he has become enamored with the tricolon, a rhetorical device that involves a list of three elements such as “I came, I saw, I conquered.” This rhetorical trinity not only represents his three best friends at school—Luke, Elizabeth, and […]
Sound and Fury?
This is the second book in yet another three-book post-apocalyptic series aimed at young adults. This novel picks up shortly after The Fifth Wave ends (so much so that I had to go back and re-read my review for the first book to remind me of the plot) and follows the journey of Cassie Sullivan and a band of young “soldiers”—Zombie, Teacup, Poundcake, Nugget, and Ringer. However, this book is as much Ringer’s story as Cassie’s as the book spends even more time telling the […]
Life of Brian
Having just finished a female coming-of-age novel set in the early 1930’s, it’s only appropriate that I read a male coming-of-age novel set in the early 1990’s. Hairstyles of the Dammed has a totally different soundtrack, but many of the themes—identity, rebellion, and sexuality are present—just in a slightly different mix. This novel focuses on a year in the life of Brian, who lives on the South Side of Chicago, goes to an all-boys Catholic school, and is love with his best friend, Gretchen, a […]
A Coming of Age Story That Makes Me Happy to Be a Gen X-er
This haunting novel made me happy to have grown up in the 1970’s and 80’s as a young woman though that time wasn’t particularly idyllic either. Disclafani tells the story of Thea Atwell, who has been sent away from her home in rural Florida due to a misdeed (that at first is unnamed and only hinted at). It’s 1930 and Thea is sent to a riding camp/school for girls in the hills of North Carolina and though she thinks it is just for the summer, […]
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