My Candlelight Novel

Gr 10 Up—Similar to Secret Scribbled Notebooks (Allen & Unwin, 2005), this story features Kate O'Farrell's 21-year-old sister, Sophie, a new mother, as she prepares to go to university. Unlike her more grounded younger sister, Sophie lives the life of a Romantic heroine: natural, ephemeral, beautiful, and lonely. Loving and loyal, she wants desperately to connect with others, though she is guarded, still wounded by a series of abandonments that began with the death of their mother when the sisters were very young. Sophie's story is about her move from near isolation to building a community of her own, her baby and Border collie in tow. Very much a character-driven novel, the story is quiet and lush and emotional, though never contrived. Sophie is strong and foolish, complicated and simple, all at the same time. She is highly observant though also a bit obsessed with the mundane; her response to the world is both to find the beautiful in the tiniest of details, but also to be hurt by them. She wants to live in the world and eschews it, distancing herself by analyzing it. Like Kate's story, Sophie's is slow and thoughtful, a very special piece of YA fiction crafted with such care and love that it is clear the author imagines an intellectual audience. Girls like Sophie—pale and bespectacled romantics and lovers of literature—will adore this novel (and its companion) that reads like a classic but is clearly contemporary.—Jennifer Miskec, Longwood University, Farmville, VA