From Publishers Weekly
Rich-kid glamour mixes uneasily with tragedy in this well-intentioned but faintly smug second novel by Moynahan (Parting Is All We Know of Heaven). Alice McGuire's picture-perfect world crumbles after the bones of her missing best friend, Matthew Swan, are discovered in a shallow grave in Mexico. Devastated, the Millstone Country Day senior struggles with her romantic dreams of what might have been and the impact of her devastating loss-"I could feel Matt's dying in every inch of me, skimming across the surface of my skin, soaking into my pores when I stood under the shower.... Grief is fifty times harder than AP Calculus." For a while, the self-absorbed Alice has trouble empathizing with others mourning the well-liked student, including the frankly lesbian Ms. Hardwood, a perceptive teacher; Catherine, Matt's recovering alcoholic mom, who once had a fling with Alice's dad; Matt's eccentric sisters (one is perpetually stoned, not unlike Hallie, the heroin addict Matt went to Mexico with); Julia, Alice's overachieving Martha Stewart-type mother; and the lonely Sigrid, Alice's talented friend who composes an opera inspired by the long-ago murder of her beloved babysitter. Alice's salvation is her senior project participation in Literacy Behind Bars, a prison creative writing program, where Frank, the man who killed Sigrid's babysitter, is one of her "students." Frank and the other inmates adore Alice, and they spill their guts in perceptive prose, teaching Alice, Sigrid and their Millstone classmates about the redemptive power of forgiveness. Moynahan's smooth, playful prose is engaging, but her characters' emotional turmoil has a glib, rehearsed quality. As Alice puts it early on, "We were spoiled rotten and didn't have a clue." Despite all that follows, the feel-good ending underscores the reader's sense that little has changed.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Moynahan's moving novel examines grief and the loss of innocence through the eyes of Alice, who has lost her best friend and soul mate, Matthew. Matthew went off to Mexico, intending to break up with his needy girlfriend and come back home to be with Alice. But he never returned, and a year later, his bones are discovered in a mass grave. Alice, a senior in high school, has been feeling the loss, the absence of Matthew, every day since he went missing. She decides her senior project is going to be teaching a class at the local prison. There, she finds a small class full of angry but loyal men, including Frank, a man who murdered the baby-sitter of Sigrid, a girl Alice has recently befriended. Alice doesn't know how to tell Sigrid she's been teaching Frank, especially as the murder of her baby-sitter haunts Sigrid much the same way Matthew's murder haunts Alice. Moynahan has a gift for capturing the youthful voice of her narrator, and she tells her story with evocative, beautiful prose.
Kristine HuntleyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
