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Summary
Summary
National Book Award Finalist * Printz Award Winner for Best Young Adult Book of the Year
"Ruby's novel deserves to be read and reread. It is powerful, beautiful, extraordinary."--School Library Journal
Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps.
So when young, beautiful Roza went missing, the people of Bone Gap weren't surprised. But Finn knows what really happened to Roza. He knows she was kidnapped by a dangerous man whose face he cannot remember.
As we follow the stories of Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap, acclaimed author Laura Ruby weaves a tale of the ways in which the face the world sees is never the sum of who we are.
Author Notes
Laura Ruby writes fiction for adults, young adults, and children. Her works include Good Girls, Play Me, Bad Apple, Lily's Ghosts, The Wall and the Wing, The Chaos King, the York Trilogy, and a collection of interconnected short stories about blended families for adults entitled I'm Not Julia Roberts. She won the 2016 Michael L. Printz Award for Bone Gap. She teaches at Hamline University's Masters in Writing for Children Program.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 10 Up-It is a rare book that sits comfortably on the shelf with the works of Twain, McCullers, Conroy, Stephen King, and D'Aulaires' Greek Myths--rarer still that a novel combines elements of these authors together. Bone Gap does just this, to superb effect. We start with a boy named Finn and his brother, Sean. Sean is the classic hero: strong, silent, great at everything he does. Finn is a pretty boy whose otherworldly goofiness has earned him the nicknames Spaceman, Sidetrack, and Moonface. Along comes Rosza, a beautiful and damaged young woman, fleeing from some unknown evil. When she disappears, only Finn witnesses her abduction and he is unable to describe her captor. He is also unsure whether she left by force or choice. The author defies readers' expectations at every turn. In this world, the evidence of one's senses counts for little; appearances, even less. Heroism isn't born of muscle, competence, and desire, but of the ability to look beyond the surface and embrace otherworldliness and kindred spirits. Sex happens, but almost incidentally. Evil happens, embodied in a timeless, nameless horror that survives on the mere idea of beauty. A powerful novel.-Nina Sachs, Walker Memorial Library, Westbrook, ME (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In a story that blends realism with dreamlike imagery and echoes of myth, Finn is the only witness to the kidnapping of 19-year-old Roza. However, his vague description of the man who took her leaves just about everyone in the small town of Bone Gap-including his older brother, Sean, who is in love with Roza-without much faith in his story. Through a complex interweaving of chapters, mostly told from Finn and Roza's points of view, Ruby (Bad Apple) slowly reveals that what actually happened to the beautiful Polish immigrant is more complicated than Finn even knew, and that his own disability, which only becomes clear to readers late in the novel, will make it difficult for him to find her. Ruby raises incisive questions about feminine beauty, identity, and power (Finn's new girlfriend, Petey, is marginalized for not being pretty, while Roza is harassed and abused by men who desire her) in a story full of subtle magic that is not compelled to provide concrete explanations. A haunting and inventive work that subverts expectations at every turn. Ages 14-up. Agent: Tina Wexler, ICM. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Finn has always been considered a little strange, and now that Roza has disappeared, his small town of Bone Gap holds him responsible. Finn alleges that she was kidnapped, but he cannot offer up a useful description of the abductor. Roza had appeared under mysterious circumstances a year before, and was taken in by Finn and his older brother, Sean, who subsequently developed a crush on herand now wonders if perhaps her departure was a voluntary rejection of him. But Roza has been taken by a dangerous stranger and imprisoned in a series of bizarre supernatural dwellings from which she cannot escapeunless she agrees to marry the kidnapper. As Finn tries to puzzle out how to find Roza, he develops his own romantic interest in the strongly independent Priscilla (Petey, for short), despite what the town may think. Kidnapped young women are not a new trope in YA fiction, but such books often read like mysteries or thrillers, while this one reads more like a fable, with the matter-of-fact inclusion of magical realism. Finn does find Roza, he does fall in love with Petey, and everybodyfor the most partdoes live happily ever after, but afterward the reader is left to ponder the strange events, quirky characters, and resonant themes. jonathan hunt (c) Copyright 2015. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A teenage boy wrestles against forces real and imagined in a small, rural town named Bone Gap. Finn was the only one to witness the kidnapping of brother Sean's beautiful girlfriend, Roza, at the spring festival. But when he looks at mug shots, all the faces look frustratingly similar. Meanwhile, a tall man with eyes like ice who demands her love traps Roza in an ever changing netherworld. But Roza is determined to find her way back to Sean and Finn's backyard, no matter what the cost. Told from the viewpoints of multiple Bone Gap citizens, this inventive modern fable whimsically combines elements of folklore, mythology, romance and feminism. Finn starts out as a daydreaming cipher, but when he discovers he has a condition called "face blindness," his vague character comes into sharp focus, and his mission to battle the tall man becomes clear. Both Roza and Finn's love interest, Priscilla, develop over the course of the magically real journey into strong women to be reckoned with, while the secondary characters, including a sassy beekeeper, wise chicken farmer and self-aware horse, are charming and memorable. And if the transitions between reality and fantasy are a little rocky and the worldbuilding occasionally a little thin, it can be forgiven due to the sheer ambition of the refreshingly original plot. Cleverly conceived and lusciously written. (Fantasy. 13 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* For all appearances, Bone Gap is a sluggish farming town that most people want to escape, a place with gaps just wide enough for people to slip away . . . leaving only their stories behind. That's what folks assumed happened when Roza disappeared from the state fair, but 17-year-old Finn knows better. He's the only one who sees her leave, but his description of her abductor that he moves like a shivering cornstalk doesn't help the police, and the people of Bone Gap resentfully believe that Finn helped the beloved girl disappear because she wanted to. She arrived just as enigmatically as she left: she appeared one night in Finn and Sean's barn, beaten and cagey and unwilling to see a doctor, but the brothers didn't leer at her like most men, so she stuck around. Even though the people of Bone Gap are suspicious of outsiders, they were quickly taken by the beautiful Polish girl with an uncanny feel for dirt and plants and livestock, but none so much as Finn's brother, Sean, who seems to lose a piece of himself when she disappears. Her departure drives a wedge between the brothers Finn feels like Sean isn't doing enough to look for her, and Sean thinks Finn is hiding something about the night she left. Most of Bone Gap sides with Sean, and Finn, who has always been strange, feels like more of an outsider than ever. Finn keeps searching, however, and odd-looking Petey, the fiery daughter of the local beekeeper, is the only who believes him. She's just as much of an outsider as Finn, especially after ugly, untrue rumors about Petey and a boy at a party spread in that pernicious small-town way. But in spite of the rumors, Finn is deeply drawn to her and her wide-set, bee-like eyes. Even after the strange way Finn stares at her, Petey still thinks he's beautiful. Their endearing romance is free of sticky sweetness, and together they discover that there's more to their town and Finn than meets the eye. It's the gaps in Bone Gap that give it its name, but there are no cliffs or ravines there. Rather, there are gaps in the world. In the space of things. Those gaps in the town are loose enough that a person can fall clear through to the other side of reality, and that's precisely where the cornstalk man took Roza. At first, he keeps her in a normal suburban house, but after she attempts an escape, she wakes up in a cavernous castle and later, a too-perfect re-creation of her village in Poland, all while the sinister cornstalk man waits for her, the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, to fall in love with him. Roza's history is full of such men. As a young girl in Poland, she was constantly pursued, but she soon realized that those men merely wanted to possess her, sometimes violently, for her beauty and nothing more. Her capture is a twisted version of a fairy tale, the kind that prizes a princess for her ethereal beauty and rescues her from a lifetime toiling in the soil. But Roza loves toiling in the soil, and when Finn plumbs the depths of the underworld to rescue her, he does so not as a brawny hero but as someone who believes in Roza's strength and independence. Ruby weaves powerful themes throughout her stunning novel: beauty as both a gift and a burden; the difference between love and possession; the tensions between what lies on the surface and what moves beneath; the rumbling threat of sexual violence; the brutal reality of small-town cruelties. She imbues all of it with captivating, snowballing magic realism, which has the dual effect of making the hard parts of the story more palatable to read while subtly emphasizing how purely wicked and dehumanizing assault can be. But in Ruby's refined and delicately crafty hand, reality and fantasy don't fall neatly into place. She compellingly muddles the two together right through to the end. Even then, after she reveals many secrets, magic still seems to linger in the real parts of Bone Gap, and the magical elements retain their frightening reality. Wonder, beauty, imperfection, cruelty, love, and pain are all inextricably linked but bewitchingly so.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
THE GODDESS DEMETER had a daughter, Persephone, who was abducted by Hades, the lord of the underworld. In her daughter's absence, Demeter let the world go barren out of sorrow and anger. Anyone who had a dog-eared copy of the D'Aulaires' illustrated "Book of Greek Myths" has a handle on Persephone. But Demeter also took the form of a black-winged mare, and she had children other than Persephone, including the horse Arion. Did you know that? I didn't, until I read Laura Ruby's lush and original young adult novel, "Bone Gap," and started to tease out its underlying myths and magic. The mythological references in the novel are subtle, not overt. There are non-earthly realms here, but it's mainly a rural coming-of-age story and a neurological mystery, set in the small town of Bone Gap, among cornfields and 4-H fairs. The novel's hero, Finn O'Sullivan, is called Spaceman and Sidetrack and Moonface because he doesn't look anyone in the eye. He's 18 and lives with his older brother, Sean. Their mother left to move to Oregon with an orthodontist, and Sean has given up medical school to stay home until Finn graduates. Neither of them is happy about the situation. The boys are twice bereft, because Roza, the beautiful Polish girl who's been living with them, has vanished. Roza turned up in the brothers' barn a year earlier, muddy and bruised. She brought love, cheer and Polish food into their house, until she was kidnapped by a strange man in a black S.U.V. Finn witnessed the abduction, but can't describe what the man looks like - only the way he moves, "like a cornstalk in the wind." In "Bone Gap," the texture of smalltown America is vivid and realistic: There are violent bullies, local eccentrics and unkind rumors about the beekeeper's daughter, Petey, who's considered ugly - except by Finn. There's also communal affection, and the intimacy created when everyone knows everyone else. But then, seamlessly, the novel gets strange. The chapters set in Bone Gap alternate with Roza's story of captivity, and her abductor begins to seem not quite human. A black racehorse shows up next in Finn's barn, and carries him to the beekeepers' house. When Finn and Petey ride at night, the horse takes them flying over a mysterious cliff in the cornfields, and it's an unnaturally long time before they land. Plants wilt and die in Roza's absence, and there are other echoes of the Demeter myth: the black horse, a river between worlds and an all-powerful abductor. Pomegranates make an appearance, and there's a catch and a consequence if you eat them. Ruby's previous young adult novels were set in the all-too-real world of high school (although the last one, "Bad Apple," flirted with fairy tales), and she is knowing and funny about school life. In "Bone Gap," Finn and Petey riff together on college essay prompts: "Explain a moment that changed your worldview, written in recipe format. Tell us how you feel about Thursday - is it better or worse than Tuesday?" Ruby's middle-grade books, on the other hand, take place in a realm of magic: of flight and invisibility and supernatural powers. "Bone Gap" is a hybrid of those styles, and there are two kinds of magic in it: One kind summons horses and castles out of nowhere. The other kind is the more temporal magic of first love, of sneaking in through bedroom windows in the middle of the night: "The twitch of her nerves was like the beating of a billion tiny wings, as if messages passed from his breath and his hands through her skin and back again, the way bees stroke one another's antennae, feeding one another by touch." The cornfields around Bone Gap hide passageways between worlds, and the novel moves through them as it untangles its parallel mysteries: what happened to Roza, and why Finn couldn't describe her abductor's face. It's a novel about actual changes in worldview, and all its science and myth and realism and magic are marshaled, finally, to answer crucial questions about empathy and difference, and the ways we see the people we love. MAILE MELOY'S latest middle-grade novel, "The After-Room," the third book in the Apothecary trilogy, will be published this fall.