Playing With Fire [Hardcover]

Kathleen Karr (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 10 and up | Grade Level: 5 and up

A highly spirited mystery

Burdened by her uncanny ability to see people's auras, Greer is happy to leave overcrowded New York City, where her mother, Madame Camille, earns a meager living as a fortune-teller, to summer at a mansion on Long Island. There Madame Camille conducts séances with Greer's help -- under the watchful, unscrupulous eye of Drake Morley, her mother's latest male "friend." All along, Greer suspects that Drake wants to make a charlatan out of her fey mother. What's more, she senses something horrible about the man's past. And when she unwittingly starts conjuring up actual spirits, things quickly reveal themselves to be far more dangerous than she expected.

Inspired by the 1920s craze for spiritualism, Playing with Fire is the heartfelt story of a strong girl who refuses to sacrifice her future, and learns to accept herself and her family.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in the Roaring Twenties, when spiritualism was all the rage, this novel starring a fortune teller's daughter has some spine-tingling moments, but readers may be disappointed by the slow-moving plot and hazy explanations of unusual events. The story begins when Greer's mother, Madame Camille, is hired to perform a series of seances for a wealthy widower. Greer is excited at the prospect of spending the summer in Mr. Caldecott's stately mansion overlooking Long Island Sound; however, she does not look forward to sharing the house with her mother's conniving manager, Drake Morley, who wants Greer to help him spice up Madame Camille's act with some cheap gimmicks ("You're going to turn my mother into a fraud. A cheap charlatan!" the heroine says). While Morley clearly plays the role of the villain, other characters remain enigmatic, if not inconsistent. Madame Camille's relationships with her daughter and her implied string of suitors and/or managers remain sketchily drawn. Mr. Caldecott comes across as an unconvincing mix of wisdom and gullibility. Greer, herself, is also somewhat ambiguous; although gifted with the ability to "see" people's auras, she acts surprisingly down-to-earth, relying on logic rather than instinct to outwit the despicable Mr. Morley. Karr's fans may do better sticking with her earlier novels, such as The Great Turkey Walk and Man of the Family. Ages 10-up.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Gr 5-8-A fast-paced tale set in 1924. Madame Camille is clairvoyant, and her 14-year-old daughter, Greer, sees auras. Camille, mesmerized by the magician and charlatan Drake Morley, the latest in a series of "uncles," moves with her daughter to the Long Island estate of a wealthy and lonely widower, Amos Caldecott, who longs to make contact with his late wife. Greer makes friends with Leo and Peg Rafferty, the cook's teenaged children, and with them she learns to swim and sail. Unfortunately, her happiness in these typical adolescent pursuits is overshadowed by Drake's stagecraft manipulations of her mother's s‚ances and Greer's buried memories of carnival life. The teen's powers as a medium turn out to be far stronger than anyone anticipated, and in the midst of a hurricane, she summons evil powers that reveal terrible secrets about the carnival and Drake Morley. Greer, Leo, and Peg are appealing characters who, with humor and grace, confront adult situations and develop into independent young adults; the adult characters, however, are less multidimensional. The story is marred by contrived plotting that includes a failed murder attempt, a comic-opera rescue by Mr. Rafferty, and the nervous breakdown and subsequent madness of Drake Morley. The action is neatly wrapped up when the kindly "Uncle" Amos offers Camille and Greer a new home.-Patricia B. McGee, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 10 and up
  
• Hardcover: 185 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR); 1st edition (March 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374234531
• ISBN-13: 978-0374234539
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,423,736 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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