Review: Ballads of Suburbia by Stephanie Kuehnert
Young Adult
MTV Books (July 21, 2009)
ISBN: 978-1439102824
368 pages
From Amazon:
The jaded youth in this story use drugs, parties, and sex increasingly as a means of escape from the realities of their home lives behind the white picket fence facade. Lonely Kara, and later her brother Liam, fall into this pattern to find friends, understanding, and her own means of escape. It's a hard tale, often with harsh outcomes. It's an honest look at the difficulties of adolescence. It's a cautionary story of parents who set bad examples and focus too much on themselves and the children who become irrevocably damaged because of it.
The protagonist and narrator, Kara, is not a lost cause like so many of her friends. She's simply a good kid who found herself trapped on a wayward path and, somehow, manages to claw her way to a second change. Her idealism is what makes her such a sympathetic character. Instead of wanting to berate her for some of her decisions, I cried with her once the consequences were dealt.
Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to reading Kuehnert's previous novel, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone
.
Grade: A
ISBN: 978-1439102824
368 pages
From Amazon:
Kara hasn't been back to Oak Park since the end of junior year, when a heroin overdose nearly killed her and sirens heralded her exit. Four years later, she returns to face the music. Her life changed forever back in high school: her family disintegrated, she ran around with a whole new crowd of friends, she partied a little too hard, and she fell in love with gorgeous bad-boy Adrian, who left her to die that day in Scoville Park....Ballads of Suburbia caught me quite off-guard - I was not expecting something so raw. The cover copy mentions Kara's struggles with drugs, family, and friends, but what's on those pages is so much more than that. The book is creatively formatted, with the epilogue both beginning and ending the novel and several chapter groupings, called "Verses", than span specific periods of time. Interspersed between all of this are the "Ballads": introspective confessionals supposedly written by various members of Kara's circle. These vignettes go a long way in adding to the story and developing the secondary characters.
Amid the music, the booze, the drugs, and the drama, her friends filled a notebook with heartbreakingly honest confessions of the moments that defined and shattered their young lives. Now, finally, Kara is ready to write her own.
The jaded youth in this story use drugs, parties, and sex increasingly as a means of escape from the realities of their home lives behind the white picket fence facade. Lonely Kara, and later her brother Liam, fall into this pattern to find friends, understanding, and her own means of escape. It's a hard tale, often with harsh outcomes. It's an honest look at the difficulties of adolescence. It's a cautionary story of parents who set bad examples and focus too much on themselves and the children who become irrevocably damaged because of it.
The protagonist and narrator, Kara, is not a lost cause like so many of her friends. She's simply a good kid who found herself trapped on a wayward path and, somehow, manages to claw her way to a second change. Her idealism is what makes her such a sympathetic character. Instead of wanting to berate her for some of her decisions, I cried with her once the consequences were dealt.
Needless to say, I'm really looking forward to reading Kuehnert's previous novel, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone
.Grade: A
3 Comments:
I'm glad that you like this author. I have I Want To Be Your Joey Ramone to read. I am looking forward to it.
Fantastic review -- this sounds like an intense read.
I have this on my TBR list and honestly I wasn't going to get to to it any time soon. But your review seriously bumped it up on my list and I'll definitely have to pick it up soon!
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