A compelling contemporary fantasy entwined in historical context that offers a positive message filled with hope.
Through an unlikely relationship, a lonely and emotionally scarred little girl discovers her own strength and a sense of freedom as she learns to shed fear and enjoy life.
Two years after the terrible car crash that killed her parents, Josie Abernathy cannot bear to leave her grandmother’s side, walk to school alone or venture with friends too far from her street. Playing baseball with a couple of boys at the nearby field is the only thing that keeps Josie happy these days, until she meets Sanana, a strange girl from another place. Sanana (rhymes with banana) is mesmerizing and intriguing, pulling Josie into a midnight adventure filled with magic, mystery and some poignant historical significance. Sanana is the ghost of a slave child who was murdered by her plantation owner’s son 150 years ago, somewhere near Josie’s modern-day Georgia home. Josie’s initial hesitation to follow Sanana on an undefined quest is quelled as the two girls quickly develop a spiritual bond. Shelton creates immediate drama and suspense with first-person narration told in Josie’s practical and rational voice as she is drawn to follow this stranger’s increasingly daring requests. She agrees to venture out at night and play baseball, jump aboard and off a moving cargo train, enter a bar in the next town at midnight and search for a Mr. McShane. It all works out for a very good reason, with an outcome that benefits both girls in their need to alleviate shared feelings of parental love and loss. Woven through the second part of the story are bits of American slave history making Sanana’s phantom appearance for Josie all the more tangible. At the same time, themes of friendship and trust interplay as both girls discover a deeper meaning to life and death.
A compelling contemporary fantasy entwined in historical context that offers a positive message filled with hope.Pub Date: Aug. 22, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-595-44431-1
Page Count: 90
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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