<i>The Year of the Beasts</i> (review)
2012; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 65; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/bcc.2012.0486
ISSN1558-6766
Autores Tópico(s)Themes in Literature Analysis
ResumoReviewed by: The Year of the Beasts Claire Gross Castellucci, Cecil . The Year of the Beasts; illus. by Nate Powell. Roaring Brook, 2012. [192p]. ISBN 978-1-59643-686-2 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 7-10. The summer that Tessa is fifteen and her sister Lulu is thirteen, a wedge comes between them for the first time. Tessa is all shyness and awkward angles, while Lulu, the pretty one, comes into her own and starts dating the boy Tessa had been crushing on. Tessa retreats into a secret summer romance with Jasper, the reclusive, ostracized boy next door, but her feelings for him are a confusing muddle of attraction, fascination, and embarrassment. The detached, mysterious prose narrative of the sisters' emotional unmooring is intercut with graphic-novel-style interludes featuring a teenage Medusa who attends high school in a community where many teens have been transformed into mythical creatures, and all fear her power to turn them to stone. The authors gradually reveal the graphic world to be a narrative manifestation of Tessa's dissociative reaction when tragedy invades the summer. The telling is innovative, balancing magic and reality in a way that is amplified by the use of dual narratives and the haunting imagery shared between them. Unfortunately, the story itself feels rather sketched, with Tessa's grieving process in particular strangely abbreviated and the short chapters recounting events but not always conveying the emotional weight of each scene; the characters outside of Tessa, even Lulu, are flat, inviting little reader investment. Nevertheless, the metaphor of a girl-turned-monster struggling to find a way back to humanity is powerful, giving a mythical dimension to Tessa's feelings of alienation and, later, crushing guilt, and readers may find the puzzle of fitting the two parallel tales together to be satisfying. Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
Referência(s)