2. Plot Summary. Sixteen-year-old Laura Williams and her family have moved to London for one year while her father closes the Eurpoean offices of the floundering company he works for. She and her eleven-year-old brother Billy attend the London International Academy with students from all over the world. One day, on their way to school, Billy is handed a package, and too late, realizes that it is a bomb. In order to protect the people in the crowded tube entrance, he curls himself around the box just before it explodes, killing him. Laura, not ever one to pay attention to world events, is suddenly thrust into a reality that involves terrorism as she fights to discover who killed her brother, and why.
3. Critical Analysis. Caroline Cooney has long been one of my favorite authors for young adults. Her novels include sympathetic characters caught up in over-the-top adventure that most people will never experience. In this story, there is a combination of adventure and mystery as Laura spends the novel trying to figure out who killed her brother and finds that she suspects everyone and trusts no one. As the story unfolds, Laura's character is developed through her interactions with her classmates, students from around the world. She seems to be the only teenager who doesn't know, and doesn't care, how the relationships between various countries affects the relationships among the students at the school, and she realizes quickly that her ignorance hinders her ability to think through who may be responsible. As might be predicted, her naivete also leads her into trouble. Interestingly, the characterization of Laura seems to be developed more weakly than I expect from Cooney's protagonists. The reader actually learns more about Billy through his family's reactions and responses to various stimuli as the proceed through a fog of trauma after his death, and I found myself enjoying the development of Billy much more than the development of Laura.
As a mystery, the plot itself includes plenty of characters who are possible suspects; however, none of them is developed very fully, and when Laura becomes involved with the actual terrorist, she seems to be the only one who doesn't realize it. The storyline is thin as Laura decides to hone in on her classmates and goes from person to person, annoying and frustrating most of them. When the terrorist is finally known, the terrorist's motivation is unclear, and so is her connection to the people whom Laura had met living with her.
While this story has verisimilitude - enough reality to convince the reader that the story is plausible - it is simply not as engaging as the stories I've come to love from Cooney. The plot and amateur detective work of Laura is not intricate enough to create the suspense that is so captivating in some of Cooney's other novels. While her classmates get annoyed with Laura, I as the reader am annoyed as well. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of annoyance that Cooney may have intended. Her family's grief over Billy's death as they insist on remaining in London despite the pleading from family, business associates, and the London police to return to the States will bring an occasional tear but not the tension and anxiety Cooney fans love.
What started as excitement over the fact that I was "required" to read a Caroline Cooney novel for homework fizzled into a bit of disappointment at it not being one of her best novels. Absent are the fast-moving plot and quick-thinking teenagers of novels such as Flight #116 is Down and Flash Fire. Absent are the characters that are dynamic and sympathetic such as Janie in The Face on the Milk Carton series. Absent are the twists and turns that keep the reader wanting to turn the pages until the conflicts are resolved. The best chapter is Chapter One when we meet Billy and discover that he has been the target of a terrorist that results in his death at the end of the chapter. The best parts of the remaining chapters are when characters reminisce about what Billy was like, or when they think about how he was likely to act or feel in the current situation.
The cover art was done by Tim O'Brien, husband of Elizabeth Parisi, Executive Art Director at Scholastic. It is a beautifully painted package wrapped in brown paper, intricately tied with twine, and complete with the cheap cellophane tape that Billy mentions in Chapter One. The cover art wraps completely around the front and back covers and the spine in one unbroken picture. O'Brien is also the creator of the cover art for The Hunger Games series from Scholastic. A gifted artist, O'Brien's work is worth checking out at his website http://www.obrienillustration.com/ and his blog http://www.drawger.com/tonka/?
4. Review Excerpts.
teenreads.com: "Underneath the action, suspense, and the seemingly ordinary life of an American teenager in an English school is the sorrow and the confusion that only the violent death of a son and a brother can cause in a family's life."
School Library Journal: "Indeed, readers come to know the short-lived Billy better than many of the other characters, including the vaguely draw villain, whose motivation is never really clear. Cynicism rather than honor is the victor at the tale's conclusion; it ends not with a bang, but a whimper."
Kirkus Reviews: "The novel isn't perfect: Laura's transformation from a self-involved ``ugly'' American abroad to vengeful paranoiac is fairly convincing, although readers may have trouble getting past their initial dislike of her and her self-satisfied oblivion. While most of the characters are as real as their grief--making human choices, and suffering the consequences--others simply fade out of the story, and the culprit is based more on a stereotype than on logic. If the novel requires a few big leaps of faith, readers will be glad they stayed with it, and will be caught up in exciting, compulsive reading."
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