One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies ANNOTATION
Fifteen-year-old Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother's grave in Boston and reluctantly flies to Los Angeles to live with her father, a famous movie star who divorced her mother before Ruby was born.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Fifteen-year-old Ruby Milliken leaves her best friend, her boyfriend, her aunt, and her mother's grave in Boston and reluctantly flies to Los Angeles to live with her father, a famous movie star who divorced her mother before Ruby was born.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
This winning portrayal of a teenage girl's loves and losses, written in Sones's (What My Mother Doesn't Know) signature free-verse style, opens as 15-year-old Ruby is en route from Boston to L.A. ("Hell A" as she calls it). Following her mother's untimely death (in a poem called "Maybe You're Wondering About It," Ruby furiously says, "But that's just tough./ Because I'm not even going to go in/ to how she died"), Ruby leaves behind her best friend Lizzie and her boyfriend Ray, to live with a father she's never met. Whip Logan, a famous actor, seems anxious to kindle a relationship; however, when Ruby meets him, she thinks: "I don't know whether/ to ask him for his autograph,/ kick him in the balls,/ or run." The scene in California proves "deeply surreal": neighbor Cameron Diaz pops over, Brad Pitt grins at her in the local bookstore, and at the high school she enrolls in "Dream Interpretation Through the Ages." The only person Ruby feels comfortable with is her father's live-in "assistant/slash personal trainer," Max, whom Ruby believes is gay. Sones gives the audience clear signals of what Ruby can't allow herself to take in. Readers will accept some melodrama because, even with a few contrivances, Ruby's voice conveys genuine emotions. Ages 12-up. (May) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
VOYA - Carlisle K. Webber
It is true that the mother dies, but this hilarious and painfully real novel in verse and letters is anything but hideous. Ruby Milliken knows everything that she needs to know about her father, Whip Logan, whom she has not seen since she was a baby. He is a world-class actor, and more important, a world-class jerk who left her and her mother and never wrote once. When her mother dies, however, Ruby is sent from her home in Massachusetts to Los Angeles to live with him. She resolves not to like him, a decision that is steadily worn down by a mutual love of classic cars and some first-rate mediation by Max, Whip's personal assistant. As the school year progresses, Ruby finds a home in Los Angeles and makes some important discoveries about Whip's absence from her life. Whip Logan might be in the movies, but Sones's sparse, carefully chosen prose is the star here, conveying Ruby's conflicts of home, friendship, and family in a sympathetic, thoroughly believable manner. Ruby's grieving for her mother is heartbreaking, but also humorous and never overwrought. Without being preachy, Sones addresses stereotyping, variations of friendship, betrayal by loved ones, and parent-child relationships. Readers will cry as easily as they laugh at Ruby's frank observations of life in, as she calls it, Hellywood, even if they do not have teachers named Feather who make them keep a dream journal. VOYA CODES: 5Q 4P J S (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Broad general YA appeal; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2004, Simon & Schuster, 272p., Ages 12 to 18.
KLIATT - Claire Rosser
Sones is a gifted writer of novels in poetry. (Her novel What My Mother Doesn't Know was selected as an ALA Best Book for YAs, and KLIATT chose it as an outstanding YA novel of 2002.) This story, told in a series of brief poems interspersed with e-mails and letters, could have been just another story about celebrity—the narrator's father is a famous movie star. It evolves into much more than that! Ruby is the narrator. Her parents were divorced before she was born and she never knew her father. Now her mother has died of cancer and the story begins as Ruby is flying to California from the East Coast to live with this father she despises because she thinks he deserted her and her mother. She is leaving behind a best friend and a boyfriend, and the loss of her mother and these close friends is enormous; yet, she is unable to cry, numbed by the trauma of her mother's death. The story moves on to details of the luxury of her father's home and way of life, Ruby's private school, filled with children of celebrities, and Ruby's continuing rage, grief, and isolation. But, then things change. Ruby feels betrayed as her best friend links up with Ruby's boyfriend back home; this loss comes to a climax when a schoolmate dies in a car accident, and his death elicits waves of grief over Ruby's mother's death—finally Ruby is able to weep. And the person who can comfort her is her father. When Ruby finally is willing to listen to him, she discovers he is quite different from the person she imagined him to be, that he has always loved her and wanted to be part of her life. YAs will love this book—for the emotional storms, for the details of life among the rich and famous, and for the basiccharacter of Ruby—smart, responsible, resilient. In a nice twist at the end, Ruby discovers she is a promising actor herself, and starts the next part of her life with a starring role in the school play, and new friends. KLIATT Codes: JS*—Exceptional book, recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2004, Simon & Schuster, 268p., Ages 12 to 18.
School Library Journal
Gr 7-10-In one- to two-page breezy poetic prose-style entries, 15-year-old Ruby Milliken describes her flight from Boston to California and her gradual adjustment to life with her estranged movie-star father following her mother's death. E-mails to her best friend, her boyfriend, and her mother ("in heaven") and outpourings of her innermost thoughts display her overwhelming unhappiness and feelings of isolation, loss, and grief ("-most days,/I wander around Lakewood feeling invisible./Like I'm just a speck of dust/floating in the air/that can only be seen/when a shaft of light hits it"). Ruby's affable personality is evident in her humorous quips and clever wordplays. Her depth of character is revealed through her honest admissions, poignant revelations, and sensitive insights. This is not just another one of those gimmicky novels written in poetry. It's solid and well written, and Sones has a lot to say about the importance of carefully assessing people and situations and about opening the door to one's own happiness. Despite several predictable particulars of plot, Ruby's story is gripping, enjoyable, and memorable.-Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
In a story worthy of Hollywood, 15-year-old Ruby moves to LA to join her estranged father, the movie star Whip Logan, when her mother dies. The grieving Ruby, given the fulfillment of many a teen's fantasies, is nothing but sullen at being wrenched away from her Boston home and friends and plunked into the middle of the celebrity district of Beverly Hills with a father she's never known. Short, stream-of-consciousness free-verse poems make up most of the narrative, by turns bathing readers in Ruby's emotions and treating them to very sharp, very funny observations about LA. It's a hugely artificial form, but its free acknowledgment thereof ("my life better not turn out to be like one of those hideous books where the mother dies and so the girl has to go live with her absentee father . . . ") allows the text, and Ruby, to explore the possibilities behind the fantasy. Ruby's eventual adjustment and her rapprochement with her father (cue the violins) will come as no surprise to readers but, hey-this is Hollywood after all, and sometimes a happy ending is exactly what we need. (Fiction. 12+)
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