Pulse

Seventeen-year-old Jason and his girlfriend Kris spearhead a movement to save a wilderness area from being replaced by a mall.

Grade 9 Up. Cardillo tries to combine the emotional upheavals of teenage life with a message about protecting the environment. The result is a forced, slow story. High school seniors Jason and Kris are in love, and both feel "in touch" with nature. They and their friends have a favorite place to go to unwind, a pristine piece of forest called Pinehaven. When plans are announced to build a new mall on that site, Jason and Kris create a teen environmental group, Pulse, to fight city hall. They are tormented by the school punks who want to stop them just for the fun of it, and find themselves opposed by the school principal, Kris's mother, and most of the adults in town. In an unlikely and far-fetched plot setup, Jason and Kris run upstate to get away from the stress of the fight. The punks follow them, and Kris is killed when they set her car on fire. Only the hardest of hearts could ignore the constant pulling of strings. The voice of Jason, who narrates the book, is rambling and at times dull. Cardillo's characters are stereotypical and obvious?Kris is an ecology conscious "granola" who wears overalls and a thermal shirt, while the punks are combat-boot wearing toughies. The author's attempts at foreshadowing are more like reading the ending ahead of time. Although some readers may find something to relate to in this story, they will have to dig pretty deeply to find it.?Dina Sherman, The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A sludgy, overwritten tale of young lovers coming to grief after they protest a proposed mall near their upstate New York town. When Kris and Jason learn of plans to plow down Pinehaven, the closest thing to wilderness near their town, they form a group dubbed Pulse to fight the proposal. Despite the opposition of the school principal--who has political ambitions tied to the development--Pulse attracts many ardent activists and stages a tense but nonviolent demonstration. The planning board nonetheless approves the mall, and Jason and Kris head for the Adirondacks to regroup; Don Lopus, a cartoonish villain, follows them and torches their tent. Kris burns to death before Jason's eyes. These events are related in mawkish prose marked by trite conversations, tedious details, and somewhat purple passages: ``Kris gently blew out her laughter in a long, warm stream that flowed through my sweatshirt like the thin breath of a thousand bees after they'd finished eating honey. My whole body sweetened. . . .'' Heavy foreshadowing leaves the tragic climax unsurprising, and between extraneous characters and sketchy subplots, the book concludes almost before it is underway. Pinehaven is saved by the fortuitous discovery of a burial site; Lopus, Pulse, and the corrupt politicians drop abruptly from the story. Readers with an appreciation for long professions of teenage love may like this, but the superficial treatment of environmental and empowerment issues, plus the unresolved plot elements, won't win many hearts. (Fiction. 12-15) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 7^-10. Protecting the environment is a stirring cause for young adults today, and they want to read about it; but this novel about teens saving a wilderness area is close to propaganda, with a contrived plot and one-dimensional heroes, victims, and villains. When the town decides to build a shopping mall in the nature reserve, high-school senior Jason and his girlfriend, Kris, organize a protest movement. They are opposed by the powerful, corrupt business community, by Kris' mother, who wants to put her store in the mall, and by the local bullies. From the start, there is heavy foreshadowing that Kris is an angel, a goddess, a doomed savior, who will die for the cause, and the bad teens are as "rabid" as she is saintly. What will interest readers is not the story but the politics. Kris' rallying speeches are eloquent. Jason's celebration of the woods and the Adirondack Mountains affirms why we need to keep such places to preserve our humanity. Hazel Rochman