Customer Reviews

A Map Of The Known World

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book tells the story of a young girl entering her freshman year of highschool, as the little sister of a troublemaker who died in a car accident a few months earlier. The story involves this girl's observations of the changes she sees in the people around her, mainly her parents' inability to cope with the grief losing a son brought upon them, as well as the change in the relationship beween her and her longtime best friend. She uses drawing as an escape. During the book, she also develops a friendship with her dead brother's best friend, who is also into art. Through this forbidden friendship, she finds out things she never knew about her brother and gets in touch with the changes she has gone through as well.

The story is touching, although I found the writing to be a little choppy. Occasionally it feels like we are reading diary entries, and sometimes it feels as though we are being told the story directly.

As a parent of tweens, I am always concerned about what they may read in young adult fiction. I feel that this book would be suitable for them to read as there is no foul language, drug or alcohol usage, and no sexual scenes in the book. There are just a couple references to wondering what it would be like to kiss someone, and the kissing that does take place seems to be relatively low-key lip brushing.

All in all I would feel comfortable letting my kids read this book, and I feel the story is a good one.

This is a book for young people. Please don't order this for an adult!

Despite the fact that I found myself reading a book meant for young girls, I had trouble getting and staying interested in the main character. It seems like she has overly-complex thoughts and feelings the author cannot express, which in my opinion means the book should not have been written.

The story is fine -- not remarkable, but a decent teenage story -- and holds interest for the length of this short book. But the strength of the story just does not make up for the fact that an obviously-older person failed to successfully let us inside the mind of the young main character.

This book had potential, but I wouldn't buy it for my grand-niece.

It seems like these days the "high school novel" (which is in general a genre I avoid) is full of junky clique garbage, sex, drugs, the usual. Loud, showy kids trying to make it seem like they're the center of the world. This book, by contrast, is a somber look at the life of a very well-balanced and introspective girl. The main character and her life and thoughts remind me a great deal of Genevieve Pasquier in Judith Merkle Riley's "The Oracle Glass"; Genevieve is also a well-balanced, introspective girl in a somber lifestyle (although that book is a period piece from the time of Louis XIV in France).

"A Map of the Known World" is a short book, but it took me a while to get started...about three or four days of picking it up and struggling through a few pages a day, and I almost gave up. But I ran out of other books to read, so I sat down and forced my way through, and finished it in about an hour. If it weren't so somber in tone I'd call it a beach read, but it's more like something you'd want to read after studying Poe late at night.

The tone of the book is that the main character has deep and complex feelings but does not have the verbal capability to make those feelings known through the narration. At several points in the story I had a very strong sensation that the girl was holding back her thoughts from the reader, or that her thoughts and emotions were so complex that she couldn't figure out how to articulate them. This is, in fact, the way real life is, but it made reading the book a bit awkward.

In short, I'd say it's a good library book; not a book for purchase. I probably won't reread it.

It was a beautiful premise. A family struggling in the wake of an untimely death, parents broken, a sister left neglected and forgotten and how art helps them heal. Nate Bradley was an angry teenager, given to senseless acts of vandalism and unkindness to his family. Once he was a delightful little boy, the hero of all his little sister's adventures. When Nate dies in a car accident, caused by his own reckless driving his family is torn between loving the sweet boy they lost, and mourning the opportunity to ever understand the angry boy their son had become.

His younger sister Cora is entering her first year of high school at the same school where Nate would have been starting his senior year. To the students and faculty Cora is the odd, sad little sister of a trouble-maker who died a senseless death for his irrational behavior. She is understandably self-conscious, since her peers expect her to either break into a million pieces or follow in her brother's footsteps and be a disruptive presence in the school. For escape, from school, from emotionally dead parents Cora sketches scenes from countries on her wall map, places she'd like to visit, exotic far away lands that offer a much different life for her. When Cora befriends Damien, Nate's partner in crime as well as the one that walked away from the car accident unharmed, he shows her Nate's secret- a special workshop where he and Nate made fascinating artwork out of an eclectic mix of scavenged media. The studio starts to answer many questions for Cora about who her brother had become and what he wanted from life. An unfinished work inspires Cora to use her own artistic abilities to map the places she and Nate were happiest and through the project she finds her own peace about her brother's death.

I wanted to read this book so badly! It's a wonderful concept- the healing power of art. The map of her world, the description of her sketches, the scenes from the many countries she visited in her imagination. Unfortunately I could never quite join her. The writing was overly descriptive to the point of distracting and the relationship between Damian and Cora was bizarre and unrealistic. The vocabulary and emotional expression was so over the top poetic that it felt like they were reading from a movie script. I myself have been known to abuse the comma, I'm not a writer so it's ok, but Sandell beat her story to death with really long strings of imagery in which she wanted you to feel SO much, instead you got lost wadding through all that potpourri. That's it, it's like she took a whole bunch of flowers and mushed them around on the page- if that makes any sense. I also can't even begin to understand what she was trying to convey with Damian's character. I think she meant him to come across self-conscious and shy and his relationship with Cora was meant to help them both deal with Nate's death but instead I just wonder if any second he was going to turn psycho.

Sandell creates a strong voice for her multi-talented, multi-challenged narrator, Cora. Not only has Cora's older brother died, Cora is beginning high school with typical angst and the weight of being "the dead guy's" sister. Her family is disintegrating into separate rooms and pools of tears and grief. Her best friend suddenly thinks Cora is too much of a freak to help her high school social standing.

Cora finds her salvation in her art. Both at home and in the classroom, Cora finds herself healing when she turns to art.

Her growing relationship with an older boy, Damian, and her own sense of what she is capable of make this book a good journey of growing up.

Occasionally, Cora's language does not sound like a teen, but like a writer, and the ending is somewhat sugar-coated. Nevertheless, it's fun to read a YA book without swearing and violence. Recommended for 7th grade and up, "A Map of the Known World" is more likely to attract a high school audience and parents. Some junior high readers may enjoy the lyrical prose, others, not so much.

This story of a teenage girl whose brother died in a car crash is a touching memorial to the spirits of all those who have lost a loved one far too early, and who are searching for answers that might provide relief of that type of heartache and pain.

Cora's brother Nate was a rebel -- always in trouble at school, arguing against expectations and resentful of his parents and the limits that life placed on him. After he dies in The Accident, his family disintegrates -- dad heads to the study with his gin and tonic and mom to the sewing room -- both shutting themselves away from facing further pain and unable to love and continue to raise their daughter Cora. Both are so paralyzed with grief that they do not notice as Cora begins to develop a life for herself - resentful of the rules and bonds they have insisted upon in an attempt to keep her safe -- all the while ignoring her emotional needs as they are locked in their memories and sunk deep into the quicksand of emotional pain.

Cora discovers her talents as an artist and finds that her wild and crazy brother hid a secret from them all -- he too was artistically gifted and had hidden that from everyone except for his best friend Damian.

Cora and Damian begin a fragile relationship -- a bit odd considering that she's a freshman and he's a senior in high school (the only piece that seems out of place - the author should have made Cora older to make some of the plot more believable) -- but they do have Nate and art in common and both are emotionally fragile and in need of support and motivation.

All in all a very sweet story about the redemptive power of love. A reminder that life goes on despite horrific tragedy. An achingly beautiful and hopeful story that gives credence to the hope we all have to find the meaning of life -- our purpose in it, and our way through it.

Recommend: Buy

I can't say that I didn't like this book. I did. I like Cora. I understood her and the problems she was facing and how real her reactions were to many of the situations she was experiencing.
However, I felt that many of the other characters in the story were flat and the choices that they made didn't always make sense. Cora's mother won't even let her out of the house without supervision and screams at her over every little infraction, but when she finds that her daughter forged a permission slip to go to a study abroad art program, she is remarkably calm? I understand that this was done to wrap the story up on a happier ending, but it felt false to me.
I also felt that Cora's friends were not well developed. Rachel represents a stereotype, while Helena appears only at points designed to move the plot along. Thus, Helena and Cora's relationship, in particular, feels false.
Despite that criticism, I found the parts of the book where the writing is focused specifically on what Cora is thinking and feeling were beautiful vignettes that are loaded with real human emotion. I found them incredibly compelling and I wanted more of those moments.
And that is what it boils down to, in my mind, I wanted the book to build on those very compelling moments and grip me and move me through out the entire story, but because the every aspect of the book was not addressed by the author with the same emotional authenticity and character development, I felt the book lost much of its potential power. Nevertheless, it is an interesting afternoon read.

This is a beautifully written book about sorrow, withdrawal, denial, and estrangement.

Cora's life has dramatically changed since her reckless brother died a few months ago; her father comes home, gets a drink, and goes to his den, her mother has quit cooking, they eat TV dinners, and she has a 4:00PM curfew. They never talk, never do things together.

She is starting high school in a few days and dreads it. Everyone knows her as 'that girl whose brother killed himself in a wreck'. She has completely withdrawn from everyone except her best friend, Rachel, and is spending her time in her room drawing and painting.

She is placed in an art class because of her talent. Damien, her brother's best friend who was also in the accident, shows her sculpture and paintings that her brother had done that he had kept hidden. Damien and Cora become close friends although her parents have completely shunned him.

They plan an art show and invite everyone in the school to participate. The teacher invites Cora's parents who had shown no interest in anything for months. They come and recognize their son's and Cora's and Damien's artistic talents and begin to heal. Cora has been accepted to a summer program for young artists in London, and hopes her parents let her go.

This is a young adult's book that is good reading for older adults, too!

As the book opens, we're firmly in "Speak" territory: the social climbing best friend, the disintegrating marriage of the protagonist's folks, and the art-loving, acerbic protagonist being forced to deal with not only the usual indignities of starting high school, but the entire school knowing about her tragedy. In "Speak" it was a rape; here it's the death of her older brother, Nate, who died in a car accident. Through Nate's former friend, Cora discovers that Nate had more in common with her than she realized. Both she and her family need to find ways to come to terms with their unresolved feelings about Nate and begin to heal.

Personally, I found the book to be very uneven. Some parts were vivid and moving, but some parts were clichéd and poorly written. It did capture the intensity of experience that one has at age fourteen, the way even little things become a life or death drama. The story had a lot of potential. I wanted to like it more than I actually did.

I enjoyed this book very much, and found it to be what I would imagine as true to life. I must say, however, that my 14 year old daughter did not like it, as she thought it was too "angry" and she quit reading it about mid-way through the book. Cora, who is 14, is dealing with the loss of her older brother, as she begins high school. I felt that the emotions and situations that occurred during the year following his death were realistic. Cora has her ups and downs - in fact she has many downs and a few ups - but she plays the hand she is dealt in a reasonable and mature manner. I thought her anger was justified, and not overdone. I appreciated the glimpse into Cora's life and I would recommend this to any teenage girl, making her aware that it is not a totally uplifting book, but is hopeful in its nature.