Showing posts with label stead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stead. Show all posts

Friday, January 8, 2010

when you reach me, by rebecca stead

Miranda lives in New York City in 1978. She has a best friend who's pulling away from her, a sometimes job in a dubious sandwich shop, an extreme devotion to A Wrinkle in Time, and a mystery to solve.

When You Reach Me was the first book I read when vacation started last summer. I'd been hoarding it all spring like a nuggety little reward for surviving the year, and I stayed up late to finish it one night during the first week of break. When I was growing up, I also had an extreme devotion to A Wrinkle in Time (still do); this book is a pleasurable little love letter to that classic and a beautiful and complex piece of young adult science fiction in its own right. Miranda is genuine and likeable - full of faults and lessons and yearnings; each of the other characters is just as fully human and real, and their failings and strengths unspool into the fabric of a perfect plot. Enchanting and satisfying. Go read it. Now.