Verfügbar:*
Bibliothek | Materialtyp | Regalnummer | Anzahl untergeordneter Datensätze | Regalstandort | Status | Item Holds |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Suche... Branch | Juvenile Book | YA FICTION ABELO, J SAY | 1 | Juvenile Fiction | Suche... Unknown | Suche... Unavailable |
Suche... South | Book | J ABELOVE | 1 | Juvenile Fiction | Suche... Unknown | Suche... Unavailable |
Bound With These Titles
Bestellt.
Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung
More than anything, Mindy longs to be told the truth. From the doctors, from her father. Mom isn't going to get better, she isn't going to leave the white room in the hospital ever again, isn't going to come home to fill the candy bowl with its magical stash of M & M's. But it's the silence, the avoidance and denial, that hurts Mindy the most. The year is 1961 -- clearly evoked in the music and movies (there is a powerful scene involving Spartacus). Mindy's father has absented himself emotionally from her adolescence, after stating, in his absolute way, that she will date no one who's not Jewish. Facing the death of her mother from a brain tumor, Mindy feels like an orphan, and, like her mother, excluded from life -- until friends get her laughing again, until she can see her mother and their relationship squarely and lovingly. This is a book that, though dark at its center, casts light on all sides, with extraordinary tenderness.
Rezensionen (5)
Publisher's Weekly-Rezension
After leading readers on a captivating journey to the Amazon in Go and Come Back, Abelove sets her second novel closer to home. In a series of journal entries beginning November 4, 1961, and ending just over a month later, 16-year-old Mindy describes the process of losing her mother to brain cancer. Abelove lifts Mindy's feelings of isolation and grief to a metaphoric level in the novel, making it a story about leaving childhood behind. With eloquence and a touch of bittersweet irony, Abelove points out the inadequacy of words in times of great emotion. "When I was little, I thought that people died when they used up all their words," Mindy begins. Finding no refuge in a home from which she now feels estranged, Mindy seeks out her longtime friend, Gail, and a new friend, Bobby. They offer no easy answers, but instead empathy, love, even laughter. As Mindy grieves the rift that had developed between her and her mother even before the diagnosis ("My phase, [Mom] called it. Being a teenager, Bobby calls it"), Abelove exposes the protagonist's anger and sadness with a myriad of seamlessly interwoven memories and observations. Perhaps most wrenching is the string of recurring rhetorical questions Mindy poses to her motherÄquestions that must go unanswered. Most adolescents regret things they say or do to their mothers; the difference for Mindy is that she never gets the chance to rectify them. A stirring, psychologically truthful novel. Ages 11-up. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book-Rezension
(Young Adult) In a departure from her remarkable first novel, the author of Go and Come Back (rev. 5/98) has written a more conventional story about a lonely heroine coming to terms with her mother's impending death. Although the book is set in the 1960s during Mindy's senior year in high school, events seem to take place in a kind of gray and timeless purgatory as Mindy follows the downward spiral of her mother's illness, a brain tumor. A visit to the hospital after her mother's clearly unsuccessful operation so unnerves Mindy that she never returns, compounding her sense of loneliness and remorse. Her isolation is palpable. Her father, an unloving and unlovable figure, leaves her alone in their house every night when he visits the hospital. He disdains ""pissy tears"" and refuses to speak directly of her mother's imminent death, referring only to ""what they'll do after."" Meaningful human connections are scant: her best friend Gail is a loyal confidante; she begins a promising relationship with a boy; she has a candid conversation with a neighbor. Since the ending is a foregone conclusion, the static narrative centers on Mindy's development within this narrow framework. We read to see whether Mindy can break through the wall of silence and denial that her father has constructed-with her tacit participation. And while there are a few encouraging signs, this sad family seems ultimately to be caught in a freeze frame with little likelihood of breaking out. n.v. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist-Rezension
Gr. 7^-12. "When I was little, I thought people died when they used up all their words," begins Abelove's poetic novel about a high-school senior whose mother is dying of a brain tumor. Mindy, whose father refuses to call her anything but her preschool nickname, Neenie, has always seen her mother as the emcee of the family, the one who smoothes things over with Father and sets the stage for him to speak. And speak he does--sometimes in excruciating detail and always with firm opinions--as, for example, when he tells Mindy that if she ever dates a non-Jewish boy, he will sit shivah for her as if she were dead. He does not, however, communicate anything of importance: he offers no guidance to help Mindy select a college, nor does he ever explain about her mother's illness. As the month (November 1961) moves on, Mindy comes to realize the many subtle ways, the ways other than words, she and her mother communicated, and she begins finding other people to turn to for support. Abelove draws this melancholy but ultimately hopeful story with delicacy of word and feeling and creates three powerful, memorable characters in the members of the family. Though in sharp contrast to Go and Come Back, a 1988 Booklist Editors' Choice, and the author's first novel, this proves once again that Abelove can write books that are not only very complex but also vibrant and infused with tenderness. --Susan Dove Lempke
School Library Journal-Rezension
Gr 8 Up-This brief but powerful novel relates Mindy's thoughts and feelings during the very painful month preceding her mother's death. Through journal entries, narration, and flashbacks, the 16-year-old relates the course of her mother's illness from the numbing diagnosis of "brain tumor" to her eventual demise. Her father refuses to talk about his wife's illness or explain just how bleak the outlook is. Mindy is overcome with grief when she finally goes to the hospital and finds an empty, silent shell of a person in a stark white room instead of the mother she knows and loves. Luckily, Mindy has two good friends. Her best friend, Gail, is understanding, wise, and always available with unconditional love and support. Bobby, new to her school, provides the perfect diversion with his humor and affection. With their help, Mindy will get through this difficult time and move beyond to college and new relationships. Funny family stories and slices of life from the early '60s make this serious book a bit lighter and easier to digest. A beautifully written and tender portrayal of one young woman coming to grips with loss.-Barbara Auerbach, School Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus-Rezension
Abelove moves from the exotic rain forest of her debut, Go and Come Back (1998), to more familiar suburban territory for this anguish-ridden tale of a teenager whose mother is terminally ill. As her mother lies in the hospital after the removal of a brain tumor, Mindy reflects on past conflicts and camaraderie, questions never asked, and should-haves, all amid a welter of anger, regret, guilt, and tears. Her distant father is little help, offering only vague platitudes (and one ultimatum about who she can date), calling her by a baby name she discarded long ago, assuring her that whatever comes she's tough, like him. In a heartrending climactic scene, Mindy goes alone to visit her mother, and is deeply shocked to find her conscious but unaware, utterly gone inside. Abelove lightens the story (and allows the anthropologist's perspective from the previous book to peek through) by opening the final chapter with a set piece on the parade of mourners bearing covered dishes; three friends, who sometimes sound like mouthpieces, offer comfort and wisdom. It's clear that Mindy will be all right, but it's also clear that this novel lacks the virtuosity of Abelove's first outing. (Fiction. 11-15)