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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetic writing, with emotional honesty, February 25, 2007
Cures for Heartbreak is about how 15-year-old Mia Pearlman copes with her mother's sudden death from melanoma, and her father's subsequent hospitalization for heart problems. Which might make you think that it's a sad or depressing book. But it isn't. Cures for Heartbreak is funny and compelling, with a heady mix of the philosophical and the absurd. Sure, it's about Mia's grief, and guilt, and the hole that her mother's absence leaves in her life. But it's also about her quest to fall in love, her father's unexpected means of coping, and her sister's escape into academia. It's about finding a best friend, wearing too much makeup, and eating vast quantities of junk food. The lighter aspects of the story provide leavening for the darker subjects. Margo Rabb's writing is both eloquent and moving. She drops clever observations and brilliant turns of phrase like little gifts for the reader. But at the same time, she's not afraid to write about what really matters. You can tell, even without the explanatory afterword, that she actually experienced the emotions that she describes. There's a level of emotional honesty here that can't be faked. Here is an example that shows Mia's grief: "I couldn't stop crying. I knew it was the wrong time to cry publicly now, so late for my mother's death, so prematurely for my father's. What no one ever tells you is that people don't die all at once, but again and again in waves, before their deaths and after. ... I kept crying until my sister put her arms around me, my fallen eyelashes folded inside a crumpled tissue, and said "Come on," and took me to the cafeteria to eat." And here is a small example of Margo Rabb's poetic eloquence: "Businessmen marched up Fifth like a gray tweed parade; we strode to the bakery and gazed at the pastries rising like a hundred half-moons in the window." I think that, among other things, this book is about is how the major wounds that people sustain are passed from generation to generation. Mia's Jewish mother was a baby when she left Europe just before the Holocaust. But she (the mother) was still scarred by it, by the empty branches in her family tree, and by the impact of the genocide on her parents, who never hugged her. She in turn caused grief for Mia, and Mia's father, through her own insecurities (though she unquestionably loved her daughter). Traumatic events leave long shadows. I think that Margo Rabb is incredibly brave, to be able to share her feelings about the loss of her parents through this novel. Anyone who has ever suffered a loss will be able to relate to Mia's inappropriate laughter, bouts of tears, and attachment to everything that her mother ever touched. The magic is that the book ends with a sense of hope. So what are the cures for heartbreak? For Mia, they include shopping, eating junk food, finding a best friend, and looking for love (because "A crush removed the world, at least for a little while"). But I think that what Margo Rabb is showing here is that the real cure for heartbreak is to live your life to the fullest, even though the grief from the loss of a parent will never entirely go away. Highly recommended. A slightly longer version of this book review was originally published on my blog, Jen Robinson's Book Page, on February 25, 2007.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An honest, beautiful book for the teen aged reader, February 18, 2007
Margo Rabb's "Cures for Heartbreak" is one compelling, wise book for the teen aged reader. Ninth-grader Mia lives in Queens with her mother, father (who owns a shoe-repair shop), and older, cantankerous sister, Alex. Mia and Alex attend the Bronx High School of Science, where Alex excels as a scientific genius. One day, mom heads to the ER with a stomachache. 12 days later she's dead. Diagnosis? Melanoma with liver metathesis. Things happen in a blur as Mia finds herself shopping for a dress, with her frugal and decidedly unfeminine sister, for her mother's funeral. Mia, a confused, yet touching narrator, says: "I stared at the hem of my $119 dress and thought about the one night I'd left the hospital to go home and instead of getting on the 4 train at 33rd Street, I walked all the way to the Barnes & Noble on 54th. I kept walking and when I got there I scanned the shelves of the grief section, the Death & Dying shelves, for a book that would comfort me, that would say exactly the right thing. I'm not sure what I'd been looking for, exactly. Maybe something like What to Do When Your Mother Dies from Melanoma, Which They Thought Was a Stomachache at First. How to Cope When You're Left Alone with Your Father and Sister, Who Drive You Nuts. How to Survive a Funeral, Especially One Hosted by a Disconcertingly Happy Funeral Director and an Upwardly Mobile Rabbi Who Drives a BMW. I didn't find a book I wanted to buy. All that had made me feel better was the walk." (14-15) The beauty and authenticity of "Cures for Heartbreak" lie in the fact that there are no cures. Mia tries dressing in her mother's clothes, wearing too much makeup, fighting with her sister, reading romance novels, becoming a hypochondriac, and falling in love. The only things that work, though, are time, patience, and the real sympathy of a new friend. "Cures for Heartbreak" is best suited for readers ages 13 and up. Pick this one for Rabb's honest, beautiful writing and her brave, yet vulnerable narrator. Mia is frightened, lonely and unsure of herself, yet she picks herself up time and time again. In the end, she realizes, "if grief had a permanence, then didn't also love?" (232)
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
There is no comprehensive, sure way out of loss., June 1, 2007
No matter what issue you might be reading about in a YA book --- pregnancy, drugs, depression --- the one point that comes up time and again is this: there are no easy answers. Ever. There are viewpoints, there are arguments, but few come without hard-earned discussion and none can ever hold the final word. To put it plainly, life is never that simple. And, arguably, the most complex of these issues, a concept that is no stranger to the genre, is the most debatable in terms of how one addresses it: death. Even with the seeming inability to construct a definitive, proactive response to death, writers continue to offer meditations on how it can be approached. Some even come very, very close to what one can only suspect is the truth. In CURES FOR HEARTBREAK, Margo Rabb introduces us to 15-year-old Mia Perlman, whose mother dies 12 days after being diagnosed with melanoma. In her efforts to cope with the aftermath and learn new ways to relate to her older sister, Alex, and her father, Mia begins to reconstruct her own life through a review of her mother's past and a careful study of Mia's present life. In dealing with her grief, Mia confronts fears of her own mortality, the shifting paradigm of life with just her father, and her own forays into love (all with mixed results). What makes Mia's heartbreak hit home is the skill with which Rabb paints a complete portrait of bereavement. Where some books rely on presenting a protagonist who dwells on the loss of someone wholly wonderful, Rabb chooses to explore the more complex path to healing, one not drenched in sappy sentimentality but rather an assault of all knowledge of the person who is lost. We see not only Mia's sadness at losing a confidant and nurturer but also her less happy memories of her mother: an unconfirmed marital indiscretion, suspected hypochondria, surliness and melancholy. More importantly, Rabb concentrates not on the brooding and self-pity that can often permeate this type of novel but on an examination of death's antithesis --- love --- as it touches the lives of her father, her mother and even Mia herself. As a result, each chapter collides and colludes to offer both the familiar and the uncharted with humorous and touching detail, breaking and mending the reader's heart in turns. CURES FOR HEARTBREAK tells it like it is --- there is no comprehensive, sure way out of loss. There is only a drive to comprehend how that loss fits into our lives --- past, present and future --- and our efforts (experimental, at best) to accommodate these new rules into who we are. And as bleak as that can often seem, Rabb assures us with the authority of someone who's been there that as hopeless as the endeavor can feel, a "cure" can present itself in the most unexpected but wonderful way. --- Reviewed by Brian Farrey
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