Here and Never. This item is unavailable.Here and Never

Alice is forced to stay with an uncle she hardly knows - but why? And who is the strange boy she meets at the local church? Gradually in flashbacks, through diary entries, Alice's mysterious story is relived. The author's previous books include "Last Laugh", "Black November" and "Troublemaker".

Grade 9-12-- Alice, 17, hasn't seen her Uncle Max in 15 years and now she's going to stay with him for some mysterious reason. She doesn't understand her own moodiness and is angered by secretive phone calls between Max and her mother. Alternating with the third-person story of Alice's visit with Max are first-person flashbacks that are later shown to be passages from Alice's diary recounting her love affair with a disturbed boy named Christian. Suspense grows when Alice meets a strange, nameless boy from the village who appears at odd moments only to vanish again. In a dramatic climax, Max rescues Alice from a fall off a cliff, the spectre of Christian disappears, and Alice's memory returns. She recalls that Christian's despair had driven him to suicide; that he had convinced Alice to join him, but that she had been saved from the fall, had seen Christian die alone, and had then repressed the entire trauma. The story is satisfyingly suspenseful, with evidence dribbled out at a skillful pace. It's a fast read with an encouraging ending, and although the style is sometimes stilted and detatched, the book is generally effective and the conflicts between Alice, her mother, and Max comfortably explained and resolved. --Ellen Ramsay, Amphitheater High Sch . , Tucson, AZ
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