It's hard to make a narrator funny, insightful and realistic all at the same time. Garret Freymann-Weyr does that with most of his characters in My Heartbeat. Both the story and the characters are believable: Ellen, 14, loves her older brother math-whiz Link, and has always loved his best friend and cinema critic James. After wondering aloud if they are more than just friends, Ellen pulls out questions of identity in all three of them.
The author creates characters that are just normal enough to relate to (watching movies and running together) but not normal enough to be boring (going to hospital dining halls to write and sketch about the strangers). Ellen also talks about her summer reading of Age of Innocence, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights for some fun tie-ins to those plots.
For an absorbing and meaningful read, I highly recommend My Heartbeat!
For more (older) books this one shares a list with, check out http://www.asu.edu/clas/english/englished/yalit/engedya02honorlist.htm
~Cara
1 comment:
GREAT BOOK.
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