From Publishers Weekly
Another oddly timely book (see above) that comes on the heels of recent headlines of teen violence, Canadian author Medved's debut novel provides an eerie glimpse of a raging adolescent psyche. Fifteen-year-old Tracey Berkowitz has been riding on a bus through a blizzard for two days, searching for her younger brother and wearing only a shower curtain. From the back seat she tells her story in a layered narration that shifts from first- to third-person, when Tracey talks about herself as "It," a girl tormented by her classmates and neglected by her parents: "When It went anywhere, It went alone. When It crept against school walls, people held their breath.... Boys pulled at It. Blew their snot on It. Yelled, `It's coming." Tracey's life at her "scary monster house" is no better, her parents alternately catatonically miserable and ruthlessly cruel; they warn Tracy that she'll wind up like her mentally unstable grandmother, who apparently walked the streets in search of abusive men. In her utter isolation Tracey often escapes into a fantasy world where a gorgeous boy, Billy Speed, loves her. The flip side of her psychic dislocation is that she vividly dreams of killing her family, strangers and herself. In fragmented prose mirroring Tracey's splintered identity, Medved gradually reveals her protagonist's devastating reality (that Billy Speed raped her) as well as her sources of hope, her 10-year-old vanished brother, Sonny, who thinks he's a dog, and the distorted memory of her grandmother. Medved skillfully blends Tracey's frenzied facts and fictions into a cohesive portrait of a teenager on the verge of imploding. Tracey's frantic speech, repetitive yet evasive, sometimes appears in capital letters; other times she manages a dry, deadpan voice, like when she's talking about her psychiatrist. Rivulets of hope somehow seep through this taut, harrowing narrative as Tracey examines the steps she's taken, like her grandmother, to search for a world beyond the "monster house." (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
Naked under a tattered shower curtain, 15-year-old Tracey Berkowitz has been sitting on a bus for two days, telling her story and looking for her brother, Sonny, who thinks he’s a dog. She confesses her hopes and fantasies, as well as the grief and horror of a hardscrabble life. As time passes, Tracey’s stories begin to twist the truth and entwine it with lies, at once captivating and unsettling the reader. As an unforgettable portrait of a teenager on the verge of imploding, The Tracey Fragments has been compared to The Catcher in the Rye with a style similar to that of Go Ask Alice. Maureen Medved's first novel is a raw, moving account full of twists and turns, fear and uncertainty, trust and betrayal.
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