New York : Chicken House, [2013], c2010.
299 p. ; 21 cm.
This 2011 Printz Honor book started out strong for me - a teenager meets a slightly older, attractive guy in a Bangkok airport, flirts with him, gets drugged, hustled off, and drugged some more, finally waking up his captive in a totally isolated homestead in the barren Australian outback.
I liked the beginning of Stolen, as the victim, Gemma, terrified that her abductor is eventually going to assault and murder her, begins assessing her odds of resisting, escaping, etc., and tries to deal with the extreme loneliness and fear that gnaws at her. In addition to being young and vulnerable, she is thousands of miles away from family and friends and surroundings of her hometown of London, and in an intensely isolated and unforgiving environment.
For me the weakness of this novel is that it wants to be both a thriller/survival tale and also a love story - as the victim comes to deeply care for and admire her captor. I just don't think the transition works. The shift in the main character's attitude toward her kidnapper is fairly abrupt. Around about 2/3s of the way through the book - right after her keeper saves her from dying of exposure in the desert sun during an attempted escape, she suddenly starts being easy with him. Waking him from a wildly screaming dream he's having about being taken himself as a child into foster care - Gemma suddenly starts chatting with him about the stars, and is entranced with his glorious painting project that fills one of the outbuildings he has constructed. The novel then rapidly unwinds and concludes with an ending that has Gemma getting back to her family ( I don't want to give too much away).
I couldn't help thinking how it would have been fascinating if this were actually two novels. One, a story of survival with an abductor who Gemma has to figure out in order to outwit and outsmart - and maybe doesn't triumph. I picture the other novel being a romance between a Gemmalike character and a quirky, artistic, iron-willed man who she runs away with - only to find herself increasingly cut off and isolated, yet also coming to admire and love his wild determination... Instead, I felt a bit like I was reading a Harlequinesque seduction fantasy where the handsome, misunderstood, dark stranger really does sweep the heroine off her feet (and into a trunk and into a rustic prison in the outback...oooh, soooo romantic - not.)
Clearly I'm in the minority in not thinking this was an absolutely fantastic novel - after all it was a Printz honor book, and a short glance at reviews on Goodreads will reveal how well-loved Stolen is (including this rave review by YA author, Maggie Stiefvater
No comments:
Post a Comment