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FATHER'S ARCANE DAUGHTER

Layers of mystery. . . Who is the woman behind the desk who is drawing out Winston Carmichael's memories of this family saga? Who, really, is the thirty-odd-year-old woman who shows up one day in 1952 claiming to be half-sister Caroline kidnapped seventeen years before? Why is Dad so ready to accept her story and reinstate her as heir to her mother's fortune? But questions of identity become moot as the new Caroline helps Winston escape from the psychological prison of the Carmichaels' Pittsburgh mansion, and as she studies Special Education in order to find a way to free Heidi, the ten-year-old "gollywog" sister whose handicap has been exacerbated but never acknowledged by her society mother. In the process of investigating Caroline's real past, the now grownup children present us, simultaneously, with an impostor and a saint. Pittsburgh coffee shops, department stores, and neighborhoods are fondly documented while the Carmichaels assume an air of benign enigma that is, truly, arcane. Docile readers may be able to get inside the emotional fog that surrounds them—indeed, to believe that money played no part in Caroline's motives. For them, there will be a certain hermetic appeal; otherwise this is a mark-time exercise in a minor key.

Pub Date: Aug. 18, 1976

ISBN: 068982680X

Page Count: 132

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1976

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INDIVISIBLE

An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away.

A Mexican American boy takes on heavy responsibilities when his family is torn apart.

Mateo’s life is turned upside down the day U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents show up unsuccessfully seeking his Pa at his New York City bodega. The Garcias live in fear until the day both parents are picked up; his Pa is taken to jail and his Ma to a detention center. The adults around Mateo offer support to him and his 7-year-old sister, Sophie, however, he knows he is now responsible for caring for her and the bodega as well as trying to survive junior year—that is, if he wants to fulfill his dream to enter the drama program at the Tisch School of the Arts and become an actor. Mateo’s relationships with his friends Kimmie and Adam (a potential love interest) also suffer repercussions as he keeps his situation a secret. Kimmie is half Korean (her other half is unspecified) and Adam is Italian American; Mateo feels disconnected from them, less American, and with worries they can’t understand. He talks himself out of choosing a safer course of action, a decision that deepens the story. Mateo’s self-awareness and inner monologue at times make him seem older than 16, and, with significant turmoil in the main plot, some side elements feel underdeveloped. Aleman’s narrative joins the ranks of heart-wrenching stories of migrant families who have been separated.

An ode to the children of migrants who have been taken away. (Fiction. 14-18)

Pub Date: May 4, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-7595-5605-8

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Feb. 22, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021

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WE WERE LIARS

From the We Were Liars series

Riveting, brutal and beautifully told.

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A devastating tale of greed and secrets springs from the summer that tore Cady’s life apart.

Cady Sinclair’s family uses its inherited wealth to ensure that each successive generation is blond, beautiful and powerful. Reunited each summer by the family patriarch on his private island, his three adult daughters and various grandchildren lead charmed, fairy-tale lives (an idea reinforced by the periodic inclusions of Cady’s reworkings of fairy tales to tell the Sinclair family story). But this is no sanitized, modern Disney fairy tale; this is Cinderella with her stepsisters’ slashed heels in bloody glass slippers. Cady’s fairy-tale retellings are dark, as is the personal tragedy that has led to her examination of the skeletons in the Sinclair castle’s closets; its rent turns out to be extracted in personal sacrifices. Brilliantly, Lockhart resists simply crucifying the Sinclairs, which might make the family’s foreshadowed tragedy predictable or even satisfying. Instead, she humanizes them (and their painful contradictions) by including nostalgic images that showcase the love shared among Cady, her two cousins closest in age, and Gat, the Heathcliff-esque figure she has always loved. Though increasingly disenchanted with the Sinclair legacy of self-absorption, the four believe family redemption is possible—if they have the courage to act. Their sincere hopes and foolish naïveté make the teens’ desperate, grand gesture all that much more tragic.

Riveting, brutal and beautifully told. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Pub Date: May 13, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-385-74126-2

Page Count: 240

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: March 16, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014

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