I saw this book at the library and thought it looked interesting. Its a YA book about a 10 year old girl Jennifer and her family living in a small town in Australia.
Jennys sister Beth dies and she tells about her life leading up to her death . She talks about her family; her Nanna who she is not allowed to see, her mothers stress and frustrations with dealing with Beth and her rebellion, her younger sister Danielle and her "back brace", how she and her friend Angela find clues to what happened to her "singing voice".
She also includes stories about her neighbors on her street. It was an interesting read with no real "bang" at the end but still entertaining.
Suggested for grades 8-12.
From Amazon:
From Booklist *Starred Review* Set in a small Australian town in the early 1980s, this shining debut novel charts a young girl’s grief after the death of her older sister. Months before Beth’s fatal fall, 10-year-old Jennifer’s beautiful singing voice disappears. When and why it “got stuck” forms a central mystery that unifies Jennifer’s narrative, which loops fluidly between past and present. Each clue leads back to events from the tumultuous year before Beth died, and Jennifer’s search for her voice becomes a larger search for how her beloved sister was lost and what it means to leave childhood behind. In this sensitive, original story, Foxlee explores familiar elements: the warmth and suffocation of living in “Nowheresville”; the chasm of misunderstanding between parents and adolescent children. Jennifer loves the comfort and solidity of facts, and she collects information like currency, but her observations are also poetic and washed with magic realism. Not all the plot’s tangents are well integrated, but the story works as memory does, with skips, gaps, and sudden, piercing moments that are as illogical and illuminating as a dream. With heart-stopping accuracy and sly symbolism, Foxlee captures the small ways that humans reveal themselves, the mysterious intensity of female adolescence, and the surreal quiet of a grieving house, which slowly and with astonishing resilience fills again with sound a
nd music. Grades 8-12. --Gillian EngbergI would give this one a 7 on a scale of 1-10
About the author:
Karen Foxlee was born in Mount Isa, Queensland, in 1971. She has worked most of her adult life as a registered nurse. She has a Bachelor of Arts Degree with a major in creative writing. She lives in Gympie.
by Karen Foxlee
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