Alice Hoffman is at her magical best in a new novel about loss and healing.
Hoffman's latest fable for teens begins with an apocalyptic scene that mirrors the events of 9111: a girl watches as her city across the river explodes into smoke and fire, and people leap from buildings. Green, named for her uncanny gardening talent, is 15 years old, and, in the tragedy, she loses her beloved family. Faced with grief and an anarchic world, Green finds solace in the brittle numbness of daily tasks and in the pain of the tattoos t@.aL- she b-@gir.,.- to dr--v,, or. herself. Slowly, she connects with survivors, especially a mysterious boy, who helps her replant her garden and feel joy again. Hoffman's lush prose and moody, magic realism will easily draw readers into the harsh, ash-covered world that follows the explosion, as well as the sunny world that precedes it, when "bees would drink the sweat from ... skin, and never once sting." Green's brave competence and the hope she finds in romance will appeal to many teens, particularly those with gothic tastes.---Booklist, April 15th, 2003Beautifully written prose fills this first-person narrative of a teen whose world is turned around in an instant. This is both a survival story and an homage to the need to cherish life's every moment. Moody, introspective Green, 15, stays at home while her parents and younger sister travel to the city to sell their produce. Her disappointment at being left behind causes her to be cold and not say good-bye. Then the city is engulfed in flames, and ashes hover in the atmosphere for a long time. Green is left with her guilt for her sullen behavior and the solitude of her ruined garden. Hoffman has created a multilayered, believable protagonist. Readers suffer along with her and share her fears as she tries to pick up the pieces of her life. The contrast between her original faith in the promise of the future and her later acknowledgment of the tentative nature of reality is vividly and eloquently portrayed. This is not an easy read, and though it is an absorbing tale, it will most likely appeal to more sophisticated readers. A powerfully written and thought-provoking selection--School Library Journal, March 2003, starred review.The subject of Hoffman's second fairy-tale novel for children is considerably darker than that of the first, the light mermaid fantasy Aquamarine, but it does fill the pages of a novel more successfully. From her idyllic village home, Green watches as the city across the river is suddenly blown to bits--the city where her beloved family has gone to sell the vegetables they grow. As ash and embers fly across the river, nearly blinding Green and covering everything in soot, she begins her transformation. Sewing thorns to her clothes and nails to her boots, Green tries to create a shield against grief, against all feeling. She covers her body in black tattoos and takes the name Ash. Her journey, we know, will be to rediscover the life (or Green) inside her armor. The tragic events are softened by the distance and magic of once-upon-a-time. A weak girl whom Ash cannot save seems to have "drifted into the fire [and] turned into smoke." A badly burned boy appears at Ash's door like the wounded animals before him; as he regenerates her forsaken garden, her black tattoos become green--and so, of course, does she. Though Hoffman has not yet brought the playful magic of her adult writing to her work for younger readers, her fairy-tale prose lends moments of lyricism to Green's sympathetic story of rebirth.--Horn Book, March 2003In lean, hypnotic prose, Hoffman (Indigo) constructs a post-apocalyptic fairy tale leavened with hope. "I was a moody, dark weed," confides Green, a shy 15-year-old with a talent for gardening who narrates the novel. Angry at being left behind one day when her parents and younger sister go to the city to sell the family's produce, Green has "too much pride to say good-bye." She comes to regret her decision when a cataclysmic fire destroys the city-and her family. In an all-too-frighteningly familiar scene, Hoffman describes bystanders who "could see people jumping from the buildings, like silver birds, like bright diamonds." Green walls herself off from emotion. She renames herself Ash, crafts a sort of armor from her father's old leather jacket and nail-studded boots, sews thorns onto her clothes and tattoos her body. "Blood and ink. Darkness where before there had been patience, black where there'd once been green." But she begins to heal all the same: she leaves food for a desperate classmate for whom she had once felt only envy, and takes in a stray dog, a wounded hawk and a mysterious boy her age who keeps his face covered and does not speak. The author builds the narrative like a poem, meticulously choosing metaphors that reverberate throughout the novel. The "diamonds," the lives lost, become reborn in the person of the mute boy whom Green calls Diamond; sparrows knit Green a fishing net from her own hair, with which to catch supper when her food runs out. The birth of spring coincides with the rebuilding of the city-and Green's reawakening ("I could feel something green growing inside me. Green as summer in my bones"). In lesser hands, the layers of dense, lush description-apple trees "as fruitless as fence posts"; "mourning doves the color of tears
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might have overwhelmed the dreamy, first-person narrative. But Hoffman creates a careful balance, crafting an achingly lovely backdrop to the transfiguration of a compelling character whose very self becomes a metaphor for renewal.--Publishers Weekly, January 6, 2003-starred review In oblique response to the events of 9/11, Hoffman (Indigo, 2002, etc.) crafts this otherworldly tale of an orphan giving and receiving help in the wake of a massive disaster. Describing herself as a "moody, dark weed," with an affinity for growing things, Green covers herself in darkness and thorns after watching a huge fire in the nearby town rob her of parents, and of her wild, golden little sister. Nearly blinded by falling cinders, she changes her name to Ash, cuts her hair, sews rose thorns onto her clothing, and tattoos herself all over with inky vines, briars, ravens, and bats. At first leaving her house only to find food or add stones to the cairns she's building for her family, she gradually finds herself caring for injured animals, an aged neighbor, and another orphan, a burned, silent young painter she dubs Diamond. Ultimately, time's a healer, as tears wash the ashes from her eyes, her dreams lighten, and her tattoos green up just as her devastated garden does. A suggestion that the fire was set by people who "had been living among us, pretending to be good neighbors," adds an additional, and thought provoking connection to historical events-but even readers who don't make that connection on their own will be moved by the powerful imagery in Green's spare, haunting narrative. Hoffman's other "crossover" novels have been criticized as heavy-handed; here she shows a more delicate touch.--Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 2003