By the Shore [School & Library Binding]

Galaxy Craze (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2000

Published to great international acclaim, Galaxy Craze's best-selling debut, By the Shore, launched a young actress into literary fame. In clear and sparkling prose, her novel evokes a fragile, bittersweet world of youth on the cusp of adulthood and "captures perfectly the hopes and hurts of childhood" (The New York Times Book Review). Twelve-year-old May lives in a less than thriving oceanfront bed-and-breakfast run by her single mother. Her life is filled with the frustrations and promise of youth, complicated by a loving if distracted young mother who strives to care for her two children without forfeiting fun and passion. May puts her faith in the things that elude her - her absent father, the London city life left behind, the acceptance of the popular girls who have boyfriends -- and wonders if her life will ever change. When a kindly writer and his glamorous editor come to lodge in the weeks before Christmas, opportunities are in the air. But then May's playboy father, estranged from the family for years, drops in and threatens to freeze the delicate new possibilities stirring in all their lives.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Twelve is a dreadful age for almost any girl, with its nonstop insecurity and humiliation. But May, the heroine of Galaxy Craze's By the Shore, seems to suffer considerably more than her share of unhappiness. Ignored by the popular clique at school, dressed by her mother in retro-hippie fashions that are anything but cool, she's a virtual poster child for preteen angst. And if adolescence weren't enough of a burden, May must also contend with a big dose of familial angst. Her mother, Lucy, runs a none-too-successful guesthouse on the English coast. Young and single, she spends more time gossiping and party hopping than tending to May and her brother Eden. And this distracted maternal style has, alas, exposed our heroine to machinations of grown-up life, which she tracks with fascination and horror. Her single remaining pocket of naiveté involves her estranged father, whose return she eagerly anticipates--even after an unassuming writer begins to pay court to her swinging mom. But this dream, too, is crushed when the genuine item shows up: "This is what happens to hope: it gets smaller and smaller." By the Shore does contain some of the typical properties of a coming-of-age drama. But Craze, a first-time novelist and actress, writes with acute insight and sympathy, and she understands one of the great consolations of adolescence: that even the tiniest kernel of hope can be enough to generate almost boundless happiness. --Brangien Davis --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In the first-person voice of a 12-year-old English girl, British actress (David Lynch's Nadja; Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives) and debut author Craze fashions a spare, beautifully evocative tale of love and the youthful need for belonging. May, her six-year-old half brother, Eden, and their unconventional but loving single mother, Lucy, have moved out of London to turn an old girls' school on the coast into a bed-and-breakfast. Accustomed to Lucy's erratic behavior and the shenanigans of her mother's drug-culture friends, May craves merely to be regarded as "a girl from a safe home," to fit in with the other girls at school. As the Christmas holidays approach, only one boarder comes to stay, a mysterious writer named Rufus, aided by his pretty, hip publishing assistant and sometime lover, Patricia. In light, deft strokes, Craze delineates the delicate balance of need and hurt in the lives of her characters. May quietly and subversively wounds her mother while trying to keep her father's influence alive; Lucy's fragile emotional state results in often clumsy maternal care; Rufus makes halting attempts to reach out for intimacy. Through a series of tender epiphanies, the budding romance between Rufus and Lucy is skillfully juxtaposed with May's incipient awareness of the adult world of sex and desire. Before May even realizes that her rou? father has arrived, she notices a familiar odor in the house: "I have secretly searched for it in other people's houses, locking the bathroom door, smelling all the soaps and things in bottles." While the plot is so simple as to be predictable, Craze's seemingly effortless touch renders it remarkable and moving.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• School & Library Binding
• Publisher: San Val (May 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0613287789
• ISBN-13: 978-0613287784
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,709,723 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I enjoyed and recommend this book., July 24, 2003

By 

Daddy "Daddy" (NY, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: By the Shore (Hardcover)

First - I was a bit surprised to find that By the Shore is currently rated at only three stars, as I enjoyed it so much and contemplated giving it a 5 star rating again, four years after my first reading. Then I took a look at the 1 star ratings and saw that a group of mean children (or jealous unpublished non-authors) had conducted a "one star" smear campaign against Ms. Craze. Don't let this sway you from reading By the Shore. The book is moving and thought provoking. Its strength is in its subtleties. I found myself reflecting on my childhood as I read, and was drawn back to memories that had escaped me for years. I look forward to this new author's next effort.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars alluring and understated, September 9, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: By the Shore (Paperback)

Usually, I'm turned off by writing that calls any -any!- attention to itself, so I was surprised to find myself admiring Craze's understated and evocative prose, even as I was drawn into her plot. No car chases or Jackie-Collins-style love affairs, which accounts for the sour grapes reviews upthread, just the slow process by which a girl, essentially on her own, begins to understand the complications of hope and family and life.

That summation sounds pat, but there is nothing pat about this book. A small masterpiece.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Will bring you back to your childhood !, February 4, 2000

By 

BOOKWORM - See all my reviews

This review is from: By the Shore (Hardcover)

This book was wonderful ! The reader gets to know and feel for each of the characters, especially the narrator, May. She is a twelve year old girl, learning the lessons in life that we all learn growing up...Lessons about love, life, trust and friendship...Every chapter filled me with emotion, smiles, giggles and sometimes a lump in the throat...It was very quick reading and I didnt want it to end ! I Definately recommend this book to anyone with a soft spot for children...Galaxy wrote this book with great detail and with wonderful insight on what is seen through the eyes of a twelve year old girl...