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Summary
Summary
Seventeen-year-old best friends Samantha and Juliana tell their stories in alternating chapters after Juliana is diagnosed with cancer.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7-10A personal look at how terminal illness affects the lives of best friends and those around them. Juliana (Jules) and Samantha (Sam) have been dance partners since they were nine years old. The summer before their senior year holds promises of good times and hard work at the studio. Then Jules is diagnosed with diffuse histiocytic lymphoma and needs massive doses of chemotherapy immediately. Despite everyone trying to act ``normal,'' Jules faces greater and more difficult choices each day. And Sam becomes increasingly confused as to how to live her own life and stay true to her dying best friend. Each girl, in turn, narrates a chapter, and family and friends' reactions to the crisis are genuinely portrayed. The impact of illness is accurately balanced with the rising crescendo of impending death. This novel compares favorably with Cynthia Grant's Phoenix Rising (Atheneum, 1989), Alden Carter's Sheila's Dying (Putnam, 1987; o.p.), and Lurlene McDaniel's series, ``One Last Wish'' (Bantam). While the ending is not upbeat, the closeness that the two teenagers feel and their bonding that transcends the body when death occurs come through clearly. A good choice.Jana R. Fine, Clearwater Public Library System, FL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Few YA dramas deal with the issue of terminal illness as intimately as this gripping first novel, which alternates between the points of view of Juliana, at 16 a gifted dancer, and her ``one-and-only'' best friend, Samantha. The girls' initial concerns about boyfriends and dance class seem trivial after Jules is diagnosed with histiocytic lymphoma, a deadly form of cancer. Through graphic depictions of what followsendless sessions of chemotherapy, emergency runs to the hospital and Jules's periodic escapes into a dream statereaders will feel the young victim's weariness as she fights against the body which has betrayed her. They will also experience Sammie's complex responses as she watches her friend embark on a ``solo journey'' toward death. The dissipation of Jules's hopes, her growing acceptance of the inevitable, and the reactions of peers and family members are hauntingly true to life; they camouflage the less credible episodes (Jules's brilliant performance in a dance concert during the last weeks of her life). Although the subject matter may be too intense for some, others will come away from this book with a deeper respect for mortality. Ages 12-up. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
Like the main characters in Cadnum's suspenseful Breaking the Fall (Viking), Anna has constructed an elaborate game that lets her flirt with danger. She browses through department stores and goes through the motions of a practiced shoplifter, carefully catching the attention of security guards and baiting them into believing that she has stolen - only to enjoy the feeling of power when they accuse her and find that she has not actually taken anything. It is a shock to Anna to find that one day she really does steal something, a scarf she does not even remember seeing - the first sign that she is losing control of the game and her life. Anna's behavior becomes increasingly self-destructive. After finding that she has stolen from her best friend's family, Anna runs away. She drives hundreds of miles to her brother's house, only to find that she has not left her problems behind. She steals his savings and begins a high-speed car ride through the desert that ends in an accident. Though Anna is unhurt, the near-disaster shakes her, allowing her finally to admit to herself and others the suppressed feelings that caused her breakdown. The novel ends as Anna reconnects with her parents and her best friend and begins to regain control over her life. Cadnum's telling is tense and clipped. His short, often abrupt sentences convey Anna's confusion and her disconnection from her life. Like Anna, the reader is held at an emotional distance from events; Anna is as surprised as the reader to find that she has stolen things. Cadnum creates a complex portrait of a young woman whose adolescent love affair with danger goes out of control. m.v.k. H Priscilla Galloway Truly Grim Tales g Eight famous traditional folktales are retold from a startlingly oblique and mind-bending point of view. The reader is often far into the tale before the identity of the original tale is apparent. The protagonist may sometimes be the villain of the tale, or a minor figure. New interpretations of familiar material may turn the tale into a tragedy or a farce, and villains may be heroes - or at least portrayed as human beings. One of the most ingenious of the stories is a retelling of "Jack and the Beanstalk" from the point of view of the ogre's wife. The tale gives a plausible explanation for why the ogress protects Jack from her husband, and the meaning behind the ogre's well-known chant of "Fee, fi, fo, fum." The tales are quite sophisticated - Cinderella's prince has a foot fetish - and their cleverness and the rather sardonic, even foreboding, tone may give older readers a new view of folktales. A fascinating short-story collection. a.a.f. DavidaÿWills Hurwin A Time for Dancing Samantha and Juliana have been best friends through most of their lives, brought together by their love of dance. They perform in the same troupe, spend all their free time together, and truly understand each other - Julie describes them as "two parts of the same being." So they are both devastated when, in the summer before their senior year in high school, the increasingly unbearable pain in Julie's hip is diagnosed as advanced cancer. As Julie gets sicker and undergoes aggressive chemotherapy, the relationship between the friends changes dramatically. Julie must ultimately face up to it, while Sam is able to hide by cultivating new friendships and ignoring Julie. They become estranged as they let the cancer dominate their relationship, but finally, just before Julie's death, they come together to reclaim their friendship. Hurwin tells the story through alternating chapters of first-person narration by Sam and Julie, both of whom are likable, fully drawn characters who immediately engage the reader. An emotional and deeply moving novel - Hurwin's first - that could easily have resorted to melodrama but never does. m.v.k. Angela Johnson Humming Whispers This brief, atmospheric novel explores the effect on family members when someone suffers from a serious mental illness. Sophy has lived with her older sister Nicole's schizophrenia for ten years. Ever since their parents' accidental death, both girls have been looked after by their Aunt Shirley, and from the age of four Sophy has silently trailed after her beautiful, fragile older sister, observing her closely and occasionally taking some part in her frequently bizarre behavior. Now fourteen and a promising dancer, Sophy gives voice to the longheld fear that she is mentally ill, too. When she sees her face changing in the mirror, she wonders if she is the same person she always was. She begins shoplifting compulsively, hiding the unused stolen goods under her bed, and lying to her sister about them, although Nicole understands that Sophy is "stuffing pain in the boxes." Only Sophy's dancing gives her peace and hope. While some of the minor characters are but sketchily fleshed out, Sophy and Nicole are honestly and affectingly drawn. Sophy's language frequently appears delusional; the reader can never be sure, any more than Sophy is, whether she has inherited the family curse. Johnson's ability to infuse this melancholy narrative with beauty and life, and to make her readers care, is evidence of her powers as a writer. n.v. Kyoko Mori One Bird The focus of this book, as it was in the author's highly acclaimed first novel, Shizuko's Daughter (Holt), is on a teenage girl's struggles to maintain psychic equilibrium after a wrenching separation from her mother. In despair over her unhappy marriage, Megumi's mother has decided to leave her husband and return to her native village - an especially devastating move in contemporary Japan, where divorce is almost unknown. Forbidden by her father and paternal grandmother to contact her mother, fifteen-year-old Megumi chafes at her grandmother's harsh and restrictive rules and feels virtually abandoned, not only by her mother but by her cold, silent father who spends most of his time with his mistress. As Megumi tries to escape from this sense of utter isolation, old friendships give way to new ones, the resulting upheavals reflecting what is happening in her family. She begins to question her belief in God and attends church less and less frequently, gradually slipping away from the embracing warmth of Pastor Kato and his family, her mother's closest friends. When she finds a wounded bird, she takes it to Dr. Mizutani, a divorced and independent young veterinarian, who offers Megumi a job as her assistant. As Megumi aids in the nursing of wounded birds so that they can be released back into the wild, she begins to see a new life for herself taking form. One of her first steps is to visit her mother. While this novel lacks the poetic touch of Mori's earlier, more tautly structured work, it offers some telling insights into the position of women in middle-class Japanese society. n.v. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Samantha and Juliana have been best friends forever. Now, the summer before their senior year, they are even closer, coping with Sam's mom's new male friend and Jules's straying boyfriend. When Jules collapses at dance class in excruciating pain, she finds herself on a path where no best friend can follow: She has acute leukemia that, in spite of massive doses of chemotherapy, is terminal. Sam is slow to realize that her friend's illness is not something she can fix with sheer good spirits. Both young women finally face up to the fact that Jules is going to die, but make a last, desperate effort to celebrate her life. In the process, they rediscover their enduring love for each other, finding triumph in the midst of their sorrow. This is an unforgettable debut by a writer to watch. In dreamy, painful passages, Hurwin crafts Jules's state as she begins, slowly, to leave earthly things behind. The novel is beautifully composed, with dialogue that never falters, characters who are fully realized, and plotting to make readers turn the pages through their tears. (Fiction. 12+)
Booklist Review
Gr. 7^-12. Juliana and Samantha have been inseparable since dancing-school days at age nine. They perform in a ballet company when not carrying on their ebulliently normal high-school lives. Then Julie is diagnosed with lymphoma, and normal becomes a thing of the past. As a story of friendship and, ultimately, as a story of death and saying good-bye, A Time for Dancing will hold fans of this genre glued to the page and with good reason. The story is told in chapters narrated alternately by each girl; the novel's characters, plot action, and dialogue sparkle with authenticity. Although the intensity of the teens' friendship is a bit startling at first--Sam refers to "Jules" as her "one and only" --it is still quite believable. Both friends confront the horrors of Julie's chemotherapy and other ramifications of her disease with courage, tenacity, and, finally, a sense of helplessness. Strong language could be problematic for some libraries, yet the novel resonates with grace and power. --Anne O'Malley