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Everyone go buy it. This is one of my very favorite books. It's by Susan Palwick, and it's partly a ghost story and partly a family story and partly a coming of age novel. It has the narrative drive of a thriller, the emotional punch of an expose, and is written in that very transparent prose which makes you flip the pages quickly, but which proves to be well-crafted and even poetic when you re-read the book more slowly later, which you probably will.
I am a sucker for books about abused children triumphing over their horrid circumstances, but even allowing for my bias in favor of the subject matter, this is a great book. Emma is a bright girl whose doctor father is abusing her, and whose English teacher mother uses literature to keep unpleasant realities at bay. When Emma starts to think she can't take it any more, she gets visited by the ghost of her older sister, who died before Emma was born. Ginny knows the family secrets. Ginny can teach Emma to leave her body and fly. But Ginny has secrets of her own...
It reminds me a little bit of Robin McKinley's Deerskin, a little bit of Sean Stewart's Perfect Circle, and a little bit of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, but is very much its own thing. I've been waiting for Palwick's supposedly forthcoming second novel for years and years and years.
Soon after its first publication, Flying in Place disappeared without a trace. I think it was sunk the first time by misguided marketing which suggested that it was wholesome, educational, and good for you-- all of which is true, or more or less true, but which presumably caused customers to run away screaming. Other people didn't like the cover. It now has a different one, which... is still sort of boring. And it still has the same correct but misleading inspirational quotes. Well, maybe it'll do better this time anyway.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0765313863/102-6777892-1694549?v=glance&ref=ed_oe_p&st=*
I am a sucker for books about abused children triumphing over their horrid circumstances, but even allowing for my bias in favor of the subject matter, this is a great book. Emma is a bright girl whose doctor father is abusing her, and whose English teacher mother uses literature to keep unpleasant realities at bay. When Emma starts to think she can't take it any more, she gets visited by the ghost of her older sister, who died before Emma was born. Ginny knows the family secrets. Ginny can teach Emma to leave her body and fly. But Ginny has secrets of her own...
It reminds me a little bit of Robin McKinley's Deerskin, a little bit of Sean Stewart's Perfect Circle, and a little bit of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, but is very much its own thing. I've been waiting for Palwick's supposedly forthcoming second novel for years and years and years.
Soon after its first publication, Flying in Place disappeared without a trace. I think it was sunk the first time by misguided marketing which suggested that it was wholesome, educational, and good for you-- all of which is true, or more or less true, but which presumably caused customers to run away screaming. Other people didn't like the cover. It now has a different one, which... is still sort of boring. And it still has the same correct but misleading inspirational quotes. Well, maybe it'll do better this time anyway.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0765313863/102-6777892-1694549?v=glance&ref=ed_oe_p&st=*