At Risk - Softcover

Hoffman, Alice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0425165299 ISBN 13: 9780425165294

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 1998

Synopsis

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Rules of Magic comes a “memorable...striking”(Village Voice) novel that vividly portrays an American family shattered by tragedy.

Ivan and Polly Farrell have two bright and talented children. Eight-year-old Charlie has his father's scientific mind. Amanda, eleven, possesses the unusual strength and determination that has made her a promising gymnast. But her strength runs out as she becomes ill—and when she is diagnosed with AIDS, her family must draw on their own strengths as they come face-to-face with their deepest fears.

“Brilliant...explosive...heart-rending.”—Chicago Tribune

“Compelling power...tenderness and perceptiveness.”—The New York Times

About this title

About the Author

Alice Hoffman is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, including The Rules of Magic, Practical Magic, The Marriage of Opposites, The Red Garden, the Oprah’s Book Club selection Here on Earth, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, and The Dovekeepers. She lives near Boston.

From Publishers Weekly

With this moving novel, Hoffman has written a story about a family attacked by tragedy, and has given it a larger relevance by confronting one of the most frightening issues of our times. The Farrells are a middle-class family living in a small New England town. Ivan Farrell is an astronomer, wife Polly a photographer, eight-year-old Charlie a budding biologist and 11-year-old Amanda a talented gymnast. Hoffman has few rivals in depicting domestic scenes: the bickering between siblings, the tension between spouses, and withal, the humor and love that holds families together. Suddenly the Farrells are singled out for grief. Amanda, who has been winning gymnastic meets despite a summer-long malaise, tests positive for AIDS, contracted some five years before when she was transfused with contaminated blood after an appendectomy. In unsensationalized detail, Hoffman depicts the effects of her illness. Too stunned, angry and anguished even to turn to each other, Polly and Ivan retreat into separate worlds. Charlie is abandoned by his best friend and shunned by his schoolmates. Amanda, an average adolescent who loves Madonna records, must come to grips with the process of dying. The hysterical reaction of some members of the community is a further blow. Hoffman's sensitive handling of this material is both matter of fact and heartbreaking. Ivan's friendship with a man he meets through the AIDS hotline, Polly's search for comfort with Amanda's pediatrician, Charlie's stoic bewilderment, Amanda's bond with a young woman who is a medium (the only evidence in this novel of Hoffman's characteristic feeling for the supernatural) are all beautifully portrayed. This will be a book that people will talk about and recommend. 100,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; first serial to Redbook; movie rights to 20th Century-Fox; BOMC main selection.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0425165299
• ISBN 13: 9780425165294
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272