Two years ago her mother Luna Lee walked out the door to buy some margarine and didn't come back. Barbara Chatton, College of Education, University of Wyoming, LaramieĬopyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. While the ending seems at once contrived and too open-ended, the novel will hold the interest of young readers who have wondered if they could make it on their own. Her realization that no one pays much attention to anyone else works all too well for most of the townspeople, but she is fortunate in her friendships with Rosella and with a gruff elderly man named Dave.
Livvy is a staunch and likable heroine who makes the very best she can of a life in shambles. Despite the too-clever title and the too-smooth-to-be-believed Raymond, this is an engaging and unusual survival story. When an old school friend, Raymond Mooney, moves back to town, his presence threatens Livvy's friendship with Rosella and, worse, threatens the fragile network of lies Livvy has created. Because she has a car, a small income, a big isolated house and a canny ability to maintain her mother's routine, Livvy has managed to avoid the dreaded fate of living with her pompous uncle and his unpleasant family. With the help of her friend, Rosella, Livvy has been able to keep her neighbors in the town of Kumquat from realizing that Luna Lee is gone. (Oct.Grade 8-12 Livvy's widowed mother wandered out of Livvy's life two years before, when Livvy was 14. An understated and deeply poignant portrayal of a troubled teen. Grant carefully builds each character and balances their interactions, avoiding the sensationalism suggested by the story line. Several painful intervals elapse before Peggy sets aside her barely voiced wish for a knight on a white horse to transform her life, and before Raina distances herself from the cruel abuses of a mother addicted to the ""white horse""-heroin. After the death (a possible suicide) of Raina's boyfriend and her belated acknowledgment of her own pregnancy, Raina reaches out to Peggy for help. Third-person accounts closely profile Raina as she and her drug-addict ""fiance"" scramble to find shelter each night Raina writes bitingly eloquent stories of her childhood for her English teacher (staying in school is desperately important, Raina knows, although she can't say why) and that teacher, Peggy Johnson, privately saddened by the infertility that destroyed her marriage, delivers ironic, self-aware monologues.
Grant (Mary Wolf Phoenix Rising) turns out another top-rank problem novel as she unfolds a homeless teen's story via a multistranded narrative.
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