Seventeen - Hardcover

Serafin, Shan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1890862401 ISBN 13: 9781890862404

Publisher: Bancroft Press, 2005

Synopsis

The ultimatum: Show me a reason to live or I kill myself in seven days. When seventeen-year-old Sophia dares life to prove to her she should stay alive, her suffering is at its climax, her predicament at its worst, and her adolescence at its crescendo. Sophia is taking summer courses at a New York City college between her junior and senior years of high school, lured to the program by Shauna, her best friend from California. Constantly reminded of her own perceived lack of beauty and brains, haunted by pangs of worthlessness, and noticed only by her lanky friend J.P., Sophia begs life for a single decent reason to stick around. Days slip by and she continues her silent countdown until the greatest hope she can find becomes the deepest threat imaginable. As she makes her final attempt to confront life among adults, this bold adolescent and feisty storyteller shreds the hypocrisy and inequities of the adult world she yearns to inhabit.

About this title

About the Author:

Shan Serafin was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and raised in northern and southern California. During an extremely varied career, he has worked as a story developer and a dialogue sweetener for both film and television, including work for ABC-TV, Disney, BBC, Imagination Arts, HBO, and Sawai, Inc. He has written six episodes of a television documentary on adolescent issues. He has written and directed several plays, including “The Essential Bond,” which dramatizes the life of famed chemist Linus Pauling, the only person to win two unshared Nobel Prizes—one for chemistry, the other for peace. Prior to his career in writing, he taught high school English, history, and math for several years in Los Angeles. Prior to that, he served as a college admissions counselor at UCLA, his alma mater, where he obtained an undergraduate degree in English and math. He was a national leader for the teenage division of Soka Gakkai International-USA as well as editor of its national youth gazette, Seize the Day, and frequent contributor to its newspaper, World Tribune. Seventeen is his first novel, which he wrote, in part, because of a dearth of similar stories for the high school audience. He is currently working on his second, tentatively titled Conquest. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 10 Up–Sophia, who hates her life and thinks about suicide, is in New York City for the summer, taking uninteresting college classes and bemoaning the lack of a boyfriend. Her world revolves around the trials and tribulations of her statuesque roommate, Claudia, who is a model; high school buddies Shauna and her nerdy brother, JP; and dorm mates Nicole, Kim, and Libby. Claudia's boyfriend cheats on her with Shauna; naive Nichole is raped at a frat party; and JP, who once divulged his love for Sophia, develops an ill-fated crush on Claudia. Sophia meets rich, flirtatious Adam and, on their first date at an exclusive club, she is offered drugs she believes are aspirin and blacks out, waking up in his parents' apartment on the eve of her physics final. He arranges to have his father's friend fix the grade, but Sophia's conscience prevails. In an epiphany, she realizes she loves JP and races to his apartment, only to find that he has suffocated himself with a plastic bag. The tragedy seems contrived, an inevitable finish to a series of dire events and a device that allows Sophia to realize her self-absorption. There is no satisfying follow-up on the other characters and the plot is fairly shallow; but the dialogue is engaging and reluctant readers will be absorbed in the details of dorm life and the party scene.–Vicki Reutter, Cazenovia High School, NY
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About this edition

• Publisher: Bancroft Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1890862401
• ISBN 13: 9781890862404
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 268