Surfacing - Hardcover

Baskin, Nora Raleigh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0763649082 ISBN 13: 9780763649081

Publisher: Candlewick, 2013

Synopsis

A lyrical and deeply moving portrait of grief, blame, and forgiveness, and of finding the courage to confront your ghosts — one truth at a time.

As soon as she was under, Maggie heard the quiet, though every sound was amplified in her ears and in her brain...Sound, like shame, travels four times faster under the water.

Though only a sophomore, Maggie Paris is a star on the varsity swim team, but she also has an uncanny, almost magical ability to draw out people’s deepest truths, even when they don’t intend to share them. It’s reached a point where most of her classmates, all but her steadfast best friend, now avoid her, and she’s taken to giving herself away every chance she gets to an unavailable — and ungrateful — popular boy from the wrestling team, just to prove she still exists. Even Maggie’s parents, who are busy avoiding each other and the secret deep at the heart of their devastated family, seem wary of her. Is there such a thing as too much truth?

About this title

About the Author

Nora Raleigh Baskin is the acclaimed author of several novels for young readers, including All We Know of Love. About Surfacing, she says, “The traumas I have experienced in my life seem to continually surface and demand to be told, and retold, in different forms. Each time, I find myself having to face something I hadn’t understood before.” Nora Raleigh Baskin lives in New York State.

Reviews

Gr 9 Up-Maggie's sister, Leah, died when she was a child, and Maggie has never forgiven herself for not being able to save her from drowning. This event contributes to her low self-esteem, which leads her to engage in self-destructive behavior with an older boy who uses her for sex. Readers may be drawn in by the mystery surrounding Leah's death, but the shallow characterizations will put off those looking for a well-developed story. Water is used effectively as a metaphor, and Baskin is able to create a somber mood as anguish permeates the story. However, the third-person narration never allows readers to get close enough to Maggie, and Leah's interjections from beyond the grave can be jarring. Maggie's belief that she has a special power that forces others to confide in her also misses the mark in this story about grief and redemption. The sexual content is not graphic, but the lack of resolution by the novel's end is unsettling.-Carrie Shaurette, Dwight-Englewood School, Englewood, NJα(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In this uneven but expressive novel, sophomore Maggie is one of her school’s star swimmers, on the road to the state finals, but she is haunted by the drowning death of her older sister, Leah, 10 years ago. Though she has an unexplained quasi-paranormal power to compel intimate confessions from others, she is unable to express her own grief and guilt over her inability to save her sister. Distanced from others, including her bickering parents, Maggie makes punishing self-destructive choices over two boys—one of whom is using her, while the other genuinely cares—before she can brave her true feelings. This often bleak but frequently powerful novel gets it right when portraying the lingering effects of a child’s death on the family, and Baskin effectively uses a water metaphor to underscore emotional moments. Narrative interludes from ghost Leah fill in details of that fateful day but are otherwise distractingly tangential to Maggie’s story. The lack of closure at the abrupt end is perhaps frustrating but realistic. Grades 9-12. --Krista Hutley

Edition details

• Publisher: Candlewick
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0763649082
• ISBN 13: 9780763649081
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208