From the Publisher
Miles has spent her life in the shadow of her cousin Laura. Laura is completely over privileged--smart, gorgeous, and a student at a prep school outside of D.C. Miles is overweight, anti-social, and lives with her mom in the carriage house on her uncle's property. As far as Miles is concerned, Laura has the perfect life--until Laura commits suicide, leaving her dad and Miles lost in the wake of the event. After spiraling downward, Miles hits rock bottom and overdoses on drugs. She almost dies--just like Laura did. But with the help of her family and friends, Miles gains the strength to face her situation and accept help. This is a forceful, emotional story about finding love and cobbling together a family.
Publishers Weekly
Cohn (Gingerbread) delves into her darker side as she probes a teen's suicide and the painful repercussions for her loved ones. After her best friend and first cousin, Laura, kills herself with an overdose of prescription drugs, 17-year-old Miles is shattered: the person Miles believed would always be there for her has left without even saying goodbye. And when her flaky mother flees town to mourn with her boyfriend in London, Miles is left alone with Laura's father to endure a summer of grief at his D.C. estate. A prescription-drug addict herself, Miles must embark upon a journey of self-discovery if she is to survive. Cohn once again excels at crafting a multidimensional, in-the-moment teenage world, this time without recourse to her usual witty style. There is a bleakness to her language that superbly suits this sad, somber tale. Her work is heartbreaking, at times excruciating to read, but it rings with authenticity. In pursuing Miles's responses, she spares few details, neither the methods via which Miles and Laura procure their pills nor the actual medical causes of Laura's supposedly peaceful death. The tragedy of teen suicide has been the subject of countless novels, yet rarely has it been discussed with such gritty realism. Ages 12-up. (Mar.)
Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Children's Literature
Framed as a dark fairy tale, Cohn's latest novel begins with "Once upon a time." Once upon a time there was a beautiful blonde "princess," the cherished, late-life, adopted, only child of a wealthy gay man at the center of Washington, D.C.'s social and political life. Once upon a time this princess took her own life: "Sleeping Beauty decided to take a nap from which she would never wake up." The story of what happened next is narrated by Laura's overweight, Goth-dressed, fiercely intelligent but underachieving cousin Miles, who was raised as Laura's near-twin sister. Miles's mother is neglectful, her father is absent, her African-American, male best friend/crush has fallen in love with another girl. Facing the rest of her life without Laura, Miles is becoming ever more dependent on the prescription drugs she hordes to deal with her deepening depression, the drugs that allow her to enter and remain in "the dream." Miles's voice is a YA tour de force, painfully sardonic, both funny and bitter: "Laura is dead but I am having a good hair day;" "At least I know where to find Jim. Two lost souls with nothing to do other than grieve and smoke, who share nothing besides a dead person, are getting to be codependent regular players in Midnight in the Garden of Talking and Smoking." Once upon a time Rachel Cohn wrote a brilliant, haunting, despairing yet ultimately affirming book that deserves to join her lengthening list of YA best sellers. Reviewer: Claudia Mills, Ph.D.
School Library Journal
Gr 8 Up- Miles is wry, sarcastic, and smart, an almost-18-year-old Goth with a weight problem and a growing addiction to pharms. She and her "golden" cousin, Laura, were raised like sisters on their Georgetown estate, she in the carriage house out back with her mom, Laura in the main house with her wealthy gay father. In a first-person narrative peppered with flashbacks and essays written for school, Miles tells of Laur's suicide and a summer spent grieving. It's a story of Miles's changing perceptions of the people in her life: of Laura herself; Miles's best friend, Jamal, with whom she's falling in love; Jamal's affluent black family; Laur's grief-stricken father; and Miles's own parents (an artist mother who runs off to a boyfriend in London, and a formerly alcoholic, absentee father who shows up to watch over her). Cohn tackles a lot here: clinical depression, suicide, drug addiction, homosexuality, grief, Washington, DC 's racial and social stratifications, and the political fight for District statehood. Fans of titles such as Cohn's "Gingerbread" series and Pop Princess (2004, both S & S) will find a darker, more wrenching and poetic narrative, but may also get lost in the book's overabundance of social and political themes and wish for more insight into the relationship Miles mourns. While Cohn's characterizations occasionally teeter toward stereotype, the story's evolving relationships keep it compelling enough to propel readers through to its dramatic conclusion.-Riva Pollard, formerly at The Winsor School Library, Boston
Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Pudgy, pierced, eye-lined Miles and her beautiful, slender cousin Laura were inseparable, raised as sisters in an idyllic mansion in a posh neighborhood of Georgetown. Despite her angelic appearance, Laura's depression takes hold and she unexpectedly offs herself with a handful of pills the summer before her senior year. As a result, Miles's physical and emotional existence veers deep into drug use, self-destructive behavior and depression. Cohn's slick, upbeat, urban prose intensifies the sharply drawn characters that frame Miles's world: her smooth-talking African-American best friend and crush Jamal, Miles's goofy, rehabbed sandwich-master dad and the elusive presence of Laura, which haunts the novel's pages like a ghost. Miles's own voice is defiantly admirable, full of dark, black venom and determined convictions. She isn't all doom and gloom, though, and her vulnerabilities subtly seep through with Cohn's signature beat: disco, cigarettes, M&Ms and books. The author nails the setting too: Racial lines, socio-economics, politics, war and the sticky, sweltering heat of a summer in D.C. all fuel her descent. What results isn't just a story about overcoming sorrow, but rather one of a girl raging against the world and herself, waiting for someone to help her make sense of it all. (Fiction. YA)
(3 ratings)
loading...