Synopsis
Eighteen-year-old Chris and his girlfriend Helen struggle to cope with two shocks that change their relationship and their plans for the future; the discovery that Helen is pregnant and the reappearance of Chris's mother who left the family when he was ten.Eighteen-year-old Chris struggles to deal with two shocks that have changed his life, his meeting the mother who left him and his father when he was ten and his discovery that he has gotten his girlfriend pregnant.
Reviews
Grade 7-10-- Told as a flashback, in some of the loveliest, most lyrical prose to be found in YA fiction, Helen and Chris narrate the consequences of one night's unprotected passion that changes the course of their lives forever. With teen parenthood superimposing itself upon college plans, both give voice to disbelief, confusion, and fear. Chris wants them to marry; Helen's mother wants the young woman to have an abortion. When an attempt to miscarry fails, Helen accedes to her mother's pressure. But alone at the abortion clinic, she can't go through with it, and returns home to have and keep her baby. Although Helen loves Chris, she writes, ``I'm not ready for forever. I'm not ready for him, and he's not ready for me.'' Her painful choice is to break up even though she loves him. His bitter reality is exclusion from her pregnancy and life and, by extension, the life of his unborn child. Doherty adroitly explores the intricacies of love and all its twisting complications through the lives of fully fleshed-out, believable teen and adult characters in this compelling novel. While the changing voices (Chris's perspective alternates with letters that Helen writes to ``Dear Nobody,'' her unborn child) are occasionally confusing, the book's raw emotion propels readers toward Chris's reunion with Helen at the hospital and to his first view of his daughter, who shocks him with her vulnerability and importance. His final realization is the book's heart and message--`` `I'm not ready for you, or for her. I'm not yet ready for myself.' '' --Alice Casey Smith, Chappaqua Library, NY
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Winner of England's Carnegie Medal, this complex and often unwieldy novel explores the consequences of a teenager's pregnancy-and the resultant tensions with her boyfriend. Brilliant, ambitious and university bound, Helen first attempts to induce a miscarriage and then, in a complete about-face, resolves to go through with her pregnancy and raise her child. Both characters are foreed to sort out their priorities, as the full meaning of Helen's condition dawns on them. Of course, their predicament affects not only themselves, but their families as well: as the months go by, Helen learns the real reasons for her mother's bitter anger towards the unborn child. Meanwhile, as Chris grapples with his new status as a future parent, he must also create a new relationship with his mother, who left the family years ago. Though certainly ambitious, Doherty's latest work lacks the pungent force of her White Peak Farm and Granny Was a Buffer Girl. The reader's patience will be especially tried by the book's middle section, a lengthy account of the ups and downs of Chris and Helen's post-pregnancy relationship. Still, those who persevere will be rewarded by a conclusion in which various loose ends are tied up in a surprisingly moving fashion. Ages 11-up.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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