The loss of innocence can be as dramatic as the loss of a parent or the discovery that what's perceived to be truth can actually be a big fat lie, as shown in Kagen's compassionate debut, a coming-of-age thriller set in Milwaukee during the summer of 1959. Ten-year-old Sally O'Malley fears that a child predator who has already murdered two girls, Junie Piaskowski and Sara Heinemann, will target her or her little sister, Troo, next. Sally's mom is in the hospital, while her big sister, Nell, is distracted by love and her stepdad, Hall, by the bottle, so who can save her if the killer is, as she suspects, her neighbor, David Rasmussen, a popular cop who has a photo of Junie hanging in his house? Though the mystery elements are sketchy, Kagen sharply depicts the vulnerability of children of any era. Sally, "a girl who wouldn't break a promise even if her life depended on it," makes an enchanting protagonist.
And now for my Favorite Book of All Time---it is by far, above and beyond anything I've ever read, this one. This book amazed me with some hysterically funny parts, some truly chilling scary parts, some sober dramatic parts....it is every element you could want in a story, all wrapped in one! I literally could not put this down. Read it read it read it! If you read nothing else this year, make it this one. I have told everyone I "talk books" to about this novel--my mom has read it, my boss has read it, several of my coworkers have read it, and every one of them has raved as much as I did.
And on a very happy note, Lesley Kagen has a new novel coming out the end of this month, The Land of a Hundred Wonders. She is a brilliant writer--I am eagerly awaiting it!
No comments:
Post a Comment