Freaky Green Eyes - Softcover

Oates, Joyce Carol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0064473481 ISBN 13: 9780064473484

Publisher: HarperTeen, 2005

Synopsis

"Later, I would think of it as crossing over. From a known territory into an unknown. From a place where people know you to a place where people only think they know you."

Sometimes Franky Pierson has a hard time dealing with life. Like when her parents separate and her mother vanishes, Franky wants to believe that her mom has simply pulled a disappearing act. Yet deep within herself, a secret part of her she calls Freaky Green Eyes knows that something is terribly wrong. And only Freaky can open Franky's eyes to the truth.

About this title

About the Author

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, and has been several times nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and the New York Times bestseller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. Her most recent novel is A Book of American Martyrs. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

From Booklist

Gr. 7-10. Freaky Green Eyes is the name 15-year-old Franky gives to her stronger self, the part that has to deal with the enigma that is her parents' relationship. With a nod to the O. J. Simpson case, Oates pulls readers into a fast-paced, first-person thriller that begins when Franky's mother, an artist, begins spending alone time at her cabin. It's immediately clear that her situation isn't idyllic; Franky's father, former football hero and popular sportscaster Reid Pierson, is calling the shots as to when his wife can come and go. There's no nuance to Reid's character. He's a charming, controlling bully who rules his family; should his will be thwarted, he gets physical. When Mrs. Pierson and a male friend disappear, there's also no mystery about who's behind the abduction; the clues, if that's what they are meant to be, are awkwardly dropped. Yet what could have been a predictable plot in the hands of a less-experienced writer becomes an absorbing page-turner as Franky slowly lets herself accept the violence that has always been in her family and finds the courage to stand up to her father. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperTeen
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0064473481
• ISBN 13: 9780064473484
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368