From Publishers Weekly
"I think it's like walking barefoot in a room full of broken glass, when someone you love goes away," notes the bereaved young narrator of Johnson's (Heaven) penetrating novel set in a seaside town on Cape Cod. Mike (short for Michaela) initially tells readers, simply and rather enigmatically, that "one day my brother, Red, just disappeared from us forever." Yet as Mike, a middle-schooler, weaves scattered recollections of time spent with her sibling into an affecting account of how she, her parents and Red's closest friends, Mona and Mark, are dealing with their pain, she slowly brings the particulars of the tragedy into focus: only in the conclusion do readers learn of Mike, Mona and Mark's private burden of guilt. As Mike and Mona had cheered them on, Mark had struck a deal to give Red his car if Red swam from shore to a buoy and back but Red disappeared under the water in the attempt. Mike finds solace in intermittent visions of her brother and memories that emerge from the silence with which she often surrounds herself: "I've been listening again to things not spoken. I've been quiet the last few days 'cause I'm waiting to hear." While the elegiac pace and impressionistic prose may challenge many readers, those mourning a loss are likely to find Mike's incisive observations familiar and comforting. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 5-8 Mike, 12, describes what her life on Cape Cod has been like since her older brother disappeared while swimming in the ocean three months earlier. She still sees Red leaning against the shed and in her dreams. She isolates herself from others who are also grieving, especially Red's best friend, Mark, and his girlfriend, Mona, who were there with her when he drowned. In the fall, Mike begins interacting with her friends again and sees her brother less. She finally tells her aunt about the pact that Mark and Red had made: if Red swam out to a buoy and back, Mark would give him his car. Mona had encouraged him and Mike herself had been hopeful he would win the bet. With the secret told, Red walks out of her dreams. The strength of this story is the accurate portrayal of the surreal nature of grief laden with guilt that the three young people are experiencing. Short chapters include scenes that alternate from before and after the drowning, and piecing them together and making sense of them will be a challenge to some readers. Potentially therapeutic, this is not as lucid as similar titles such as Marion Dane Bauer's On My Honor (Clarion, 1986), Eve Bunting's Blackwater (HarperCollins, 1999), and Paul Fleischman's Whirligig (Holt, 1998). -Jean Gaffney, Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library, Miamisburg, OH
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
