The Blue Mirror [Paperback]

Kathe Koja (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2, 2006

Sixteen-year-old Maggy’s life consists of trying to be invisible at school, taking care of her alcoholic mother, and spending all the time she can at the Blue Mirror, a downtown café. There, with a cappuccino and her sketchbook, she creates a world she calls "The Blue Mirror." But everything changes when she meets Cole, a charismatic runaway. Maggy is intrigued by Cole and the girls who follow him, childlike Jouly and strange Marianne. When Cole says that he loves her, Maggy comes alive. As they become more involved and Maggy looks at him with all her heart, she sees something far more dangerous than she may be capable of handling. . . .

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The demon lover is an ancient theme with eternal appeal for young women, and Kathe Koja uses it to powerful effect in The Blue Mirror. Layered over the background of a contemporary and gritty street scene is the achingly poignant voice of sixteen-year-old Maggy, a loner and artist in love with a beautiful and mysterious boy named Cole. Maggy's greatest happiness is to sit for hours in the window booth of The Blue Mirror, nursing a cappuccino grande and capturing the life passing by in her sketchbook. At home she is an unwilling caretaker for her drunken mother, and her only comfort is her cat Paz--that is until Cole looks at her with those "incredibly deep and dark" eyes. The sweetness of his words and his vast need draw her in, and soon she spends almost all her days (and nights) wandering the cold streets with him, sleeping in his arms in a frigid open-air gazebo, and ignoring the other two women who trail him (childlike Jouly and angry Marianne). Not until Cole meets Paz (who greets him with terrified screeches and yowls), not until Marianne shows bruises and scrapes (from a "fall"), not until Jouly becomes a staring empty shell, and not until Maggy finally draws a true portrait of Cole, is she able to recognize the howling emptiness behind his pose of love. Koja's The Blue Mirror is an exquisite novel with just the slightest tinge of the supernatural. (Ages 14 and up) --Patty Campbell --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up--Maggy, a gifted artist, keeps a sketchbook called "The Blue Mirror" that shares its name with the coffeehouse where she regularly nurses a cappuccino for hours and draws what she sees. Tourists, bicycle cops, and especially the homeless kids or "skwatters" are her regular subjects. The 16-year-old crosses this metaphorical mirror (just like Alice in Through the Looking Glass) when she meets an attractive skwatter who takes a keen interest in her. Staring into the deep dark eyes of Cole, Mags forgets about her disastrous home life and feels as if she has finally met someone who understands her. She soon learns, however, that Cole is no Prince Charming, and she must find the strength to escape from his clutches. What makes this novel distinct is the stream-of-consciousness prose style that creates the illusion of everything happening at once, with Mags seamlessly slipping into and out of her mundane world and into "The Blue Mirror" with Cole. While her mother tends toward the stereotypical drunk who takes up space on the couch, and the secondary characters are a bit sketchy, Mags is a plucky protagonist, and readers will appreciate the ingenuity she musters to address her problems. Fans of Carol Plum-Ucci's What Happened to Lani Garver (Harcourt, 2002) and outsider themes will appreciate the gritty urban scenes and rhythmic language that give the book an almost surreal ambience.--Kelly Czarnecki, Bloomington Public Library, IL
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Speak (November 2, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142406937
• ISBN-13: 978-0142406939
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,263,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the Blue Mirror, June 14, 2005

By 

Metalgnome "Kathleen" (hmmm?) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Blue Mirror (Hardcover)

This is the wonderful story of Maggy, an with a alchoholic mother and a talent, a talent for art. She spends most of her time at the Blue Mirror a local café where she draws the world around her. But then she meets Cole a runaway and his friends Jouly and Marianne. She is intrigued by them and soon spends all of her time with the beautiful Cole. But soon things change and she finds things out about Cole things that are worrisome and change her initial outlook on Cole. But in the process she earns an unsuspecting friend.

This story is wonderfully dark. The characters are magnificently drawn (especially Cole). If you love stories that show not only the darker side of human nature and are just overall dark (but good) you will love this story.

*this book took me two hours to read it is realy easy and poetically written

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat cluttered but amazing story, June 28, 2005

By 

Riley Rush - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Blue Mirror (Hardcover)

The Blue Mirror is a story I find captivating because it isn't a gushy love story where everyone is peachy and they live happily ever after. Yet it isn't shallow, not at all a book that would make you want to scream at the main character. In fact, Maggy is created like a true teenager, with the same thoughts and feelings.

The 'poetic' language makes the book have a strange feeling I've never seen in a book before. It's wonderful, but sometimes the sentences go on forever and are hard to understand. The book is fairly short, but it stops at the right moment.

I would rate this book Mature for language and sexual content, but it's realistic.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book, October 31, 2004

By 

Liz "A Teenager" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Blue Mirror (Hardcover)

I really liked this book. I thought it was really good. I liked how it showed that not all guys are nice and that if a guy is cute you shouldn't immedietly fall for him. This book has a good moral, it shows that girls should stay strong at all times and not get pushed around just because they are teenage girls.