New York : Greenwillow Books, 2008, c2005.
1st HarperTeen ed.
282 p. ; 19 cm.
Tony V runs a jackhammer on City V - just one of the five major cities on a planet colonized by humans long before his birth. He is working on clearing the city for reconstruction following a war that devastated it. While working Tony discovers the diary of a girl his age who was in that war.
L.J. Adlington's novel is creative and clever - the citizens of this world have gills, water is at a premium, there are hints of corporatist totalitarianism and ethnic cleansing - but somehow I just found it not very compelling. The author of the diary was a young, rich, shallow "it girl" until the civil war started that destroyed her privileged life. A lot of the novel is the supposed text of this diary, which for me is just too much of the mundane ramblings of this imagined material girl. The really compelling content of the unraveling of her life and society doesn't come about until the last part of the novel.
The novel does offer a good starting point for discussing and thinking about civil conflict based on haves and have-nots and on manufactured ethnic conflict.
I read this book due to the glowing teen review of it in VOYA, but I have to agree with Tasha Saecker, of School Library Journal who writes, "The true horrors of what is happening are muted until the end of the book, taking away much of its power. The concept is interesting and the world of Tony V is well rendered, but in the end, the novel disappoints." Exactly.
No comments:
Post a Comment