From Publishers Weekly
As in Michael Cadnum's more suspenseful Zero at the Bone and Susan Beth Pfeffer's more poignant The Year Without Michael, the protagonist of this awkward contemporary drama is forced to live with the mysterious disappearance of a sibling. The 14-year-old narrator, Susan (or Sibyl, as she prefers to call herself), does what she can to escape the shadow of her older sister, Alison, who was beautiful, smart and creative. At first Susan simply states that Alison has "moved away." But references to other tensions in Susan's family hint at darker circumstances, and classroom discussions of a local serial killer tip Vande Velde's (The Rumpelstiltskin Problem) hand, even to imperceptive readers. As the novel progresses, Susan takes part in a play at the local boys' school, where she gets a chance to test out her attraction to a rebellious older teen; flashbacks shed light on family dynamics. At long last Alison is shown to have been seriously troubled, and Susan and her family, all of whom feel guilt over Alison's problems, must face the reality that they may never learn what happened to her. The revelations about Alison are too slow in coming to sustain the narrative tension; on the other hand, Susan's insights are achieved too quickly to make a lasting impression. Ages 10-14.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Gr 6-9-It seems that 14-year-old Sibyl's most pressing problem is finding an acceptable date for the freshman dance at their all-girls school. Not to worry! Best friend, Connie, cooks up a plan that gets them cast in the play at Cardinal O'Gorman High, the all-boys school nearby. Most of the novel's surface action plays out against the backdrop of their rehearsals, with the normal teen-angst problems of boys, bad hair, and bratty brothers. Under the surface, however, much more is going on in Sibyl's life. Slowly, mostly through a series of flashbacks, readers learn from Sibyl that she has a gay father who left when she was five; a five-year-old, bed-wetting half-brother who can't adjust to life (but readers don't know why he is so unstable); a mother who is obsessively overprotective; and an older sister who left home three years ago and hasn't been heard from since. Through the course of the novel, readers slowly realize that the family is in denial that Alison may have been one of the prostitutes murdered by serial killer Robert Deitz. With this slight novel, Vande Velde, who is best known for her fantasies, has dived into the realism genre headfirst. Unfortunately, the book reads as though the author went down the list and tried to include every adolescent problem she could think of for her protagonist to deal with. The result is a somewhat shallow, unsatisfying story.-Betty S. Evans, Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
