Imagine a small boarding school for “fragile” teens in rural Vermont and within that school an exclusive English class to which only 4 or 5 students are handpicked to join. With this Meg Wolitzer makes her debut in YA fiction. Having read and loved The Interestings, her last adult novel, I knew I had to give Belzhar a try. The school is The Wooden Barn and Jamaica (known as ... Read More...
How to Build a Girl
I want to be a self-made woman. I want to conjure myself out of every sparkling, fast-moving thing I can see. I want to be the creator of me. I’m gonna begat myself. Caitlin Moran’s How to Build a Girl is the hell-bent lovechild of Angela’s Ashes and Almost Famous—overlarge, impoverished family with a drunken non-working father and a teen daughter with a love of music and ... Read More...
Dear Lucy: A Novel
This wonderful work of magical realism was one of my favorite debuts for 2013. It was just released in paperback this week so if you missed it the first time around here's my review. “There are words that I am looking for and when I find those words I will know that they were the words I was looking for, to tell people about the shapes of things inside ... Read More...
Casebook: A Novel
From the time he is nine years old Miles Adler-Rich is a snoop. Not just a hanging around snoop, a hiding walkie-talkies and wiring-an-extension-into-the-family’s-phone-line snoop. Initially, he just wants to know if his parents are going to relent and let him watch Survivor but when his efforts to know all fail and they announce they’re getting divorced, it becomes ... Read More...
The Death of Bees
There are times when what is needed is a story so utterly foreign that it plucks us out of our own world and drops us into one for which our background leaves us completely unprepared. I found this with Lisa O’Donnell’s debut novel The Death of Bees: A Novel. Set in Glasgow, it encompasses the world of Marnie and Nelly, two teens left on their own when their parents die. Well, ... Read More...
Dare Me: A Novel
Written with all the hip-popping, hyper-hormonal intensity of teenage girls, Dare Me takes everything you’ve ever thought about cheerleaders and magnifies it tenfold. A group of girls, part of the most exclusive club in high school, basking in the spray tan glow of their fame, find they’ve just been ‘playing’ at cheerleading when a new, taut, ruthless coach takes over and ... Read More...
