Still Life With Tornado
King, A.S. (2016). Still life with tornado. NY: Dutton Books. Sarah is not going to school after the art club wrecks her art work. She has always loved art, but she can't draw anymore. She is told that she could be expelled if she does not return to school. Sarah won't tell anyone what happened to the headpiece that she made for the art show or that she saw a student kissing the art teacher. Meanwhile, her parents do not communicate and she is having flashbacks to a trip to Mexico that was so bad it caused her brother Bruce to leave home six years ago and never return. Sarah is having a mental episode because she is seeing herself as a ten, twenty-three, and forty year old Sarah. She has been following a homeless man named Earl, eating out of trash cans, and changed her name to Umbrella. When Sarah gets to her breaking point, she calls her brother, and he comes to visit. He tells her of the physical and emotional abuse that their dad caused him and their mother. Finally, Sarah's mom decides to get a divorce so healing can start to take place. I found this book confusing. I thought that Sarah was having multiple personalities, but I couldn't understand why other people could see them. This is an award winning book, but it is not one that I would recommend. It seemed to me that Sarah should have been hospitalized if this was happening to her. I think society has to be very careful when talking about mental illness, plus it was just too hard to follow. Students dealing with dysfunctional and/or abusive families might find comfort when reading about themselves in a book like this.
A.S. King's Book Trailer:
No comments:
Post a Comment