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Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands: A Novel
Author:
Bohjalian, Chris
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3552.O
Print Run: 150000
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ISBN-13: 9780385534833
LCCN: 2013034613
Imprint: Doubleday
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Pub Date: 07/08/2014
Availability: Out of Print Confirmed
List: $25.95
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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271 pages ; 25 cm
H 9.53",
W 6.4",
D 1.05",
1.2844 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Blockbuster List
Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Awards:
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Starred Reviews:
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TIPS Subjects:
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Suspense/Thriller
Young Adult
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Coming of Age
FICTION / Family Life / General
FICTION / Literary
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LC Subjects:
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Runaways, Fiction
Teenage girls, Fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Girls, Fiction
Runaway teenagers, Fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 04/01/2014 |
| Still convinced that her alcoholic father played a key role in the nuclear meltdown that forced thousands from Vermont's Northeast Kingdom and sent her into hiding, homeless 16-year-old Emily Shepard abandons her classmates to forge her own life, adopting an identity that favorite poet Emily Dickinson would be proud of as she vows to protect a homeless boy at any cost. But Emily's past is patient, and she cannot run forever... 288pp., 150K, Auth res: Lincoln, VT |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 07/01/2014 |
| If the dystopian coming-of-age novel has been the inspiration for many a Hollywood blockbuster in recent years, the increasingly ubiquitous genre more closely resembles literary fiction in critically acclaimed author Chris Bohjalian's Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands. For readers who discovered Bohjalian after his luminous Midwives became an Oprah's Book Club selection, the prolific author's latest novel will not disappoint: He once again reveals an uncanny talent for crafting a young female protagonist who is fatally flawed, but nevertheless immensely likable. Emily Shepard is a high school student struggling with a typical adolescence--until her comfortable life is torn asunder after a catastrophic meltdown at a Vermont nuclear plant, where her parents are employed. As Armageddon annihilates the once idyllic Northeast Kingdom, Emily's father, who was once disciplined for drinking on the job, and her mother, who is also renowned for her alcohol-fueled escapades, become scapegoats. Orphaned and alone, Emily joins the ranks of homeless teens wandering the streets of Burlington, her intelligence and passion for poet Emily Dickinson coexisting warily alongside a tawdry life riddled by drugs and prostitution. Indeed, it is Emily's inherent integrity and capacity to endure that proves her salvation. Although Bohjalian's latest novel is unflinchingly raw in its depiction of homelessness and the devastation of a nuclear meltdown, it never feels preachy or maudlin. Instead, it resonates with a message of hope, truth and the fragility of life. Karen Ann Cullotta. 288p. BOOKPAGE, c2014. |
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| Booklist | 06/01/2014 |
| When a disastrous meltdown occurs at a Vermont nuclear power plant, forcing people to flee for their lives and face permanent exile from their beloved homes, everyone blames Emily's parents. Her father was chief engineer, and her mother was the communications director, and they had a reputation for drinking. Terrified, Emily, a bookish, 16-year-old only child, runs away and ends up crashing in the squalid lair of a guy called Poacher, who recruits homeless teens for his drug-and-prostitution ring. But smart Emily, who knowledgeably reveres Emily Dickinson, gets it together once she takes responsibility for a nine-year-old boy on the run from foster care and builds a trash-bag igloo to protect them from the bitter cold. In his sixteenth novel, theversatile Bohjalian (The Light in the Ruins, 2013) has Emily tell her harrowing, tragic story retrospectively, under medical care. If only this well-meant and compelling tale offered more scenes depicting the shocking aftermath of a nuclear disaster to provide an even more arresting and significant context for traumatized yet tough and resilient young Emily's sad, brave saga. Seaman, Donna. 288p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2014. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 06/15/2014 |
| After a nuclear meltdown, a Vermont teen flees to the mean streets of Burlington.Emily Shepard, 16, is hanging out with fellow juniors in the lunchroom at her exclusive private school when sirens signal disaster: The Cape Abenaki nuclear power plant in northeastern Vermont has exploded, and the entire area surrounding it, including the school, must be evacuated immediately. Rather than stay with her classmates, Emily strikes out on her own. She assumes, correctly as it develops, that her father, the chief engineer at the plant, and her mother, the communications director, were killed in the disaster. Her entire town is cordoned off, part of an "exclusion zone"; armed guards prevent Emily from returning home to rescue the family dog. As she hitchhikes southwest toward Burlington, she overhears talk blaming her father for the accident. (Both her parents were heavy drinkers.) Fearing she will be asked to testify about her father's alcoholism, she assumes a new identity and claims to be 18. After bouncing from a Burlington shelter to the home of a drug dealer who exploits her and other young women as prostitutes, Emily rescues 9-year-old Cameron, an escapee from an abusive foster home. During the frigid Vermont winter, the two inhabit an igloo of frozen, leaf-filled trash bags, but when spring thaw melts their domicile, Emily gets a waitressing job and a place to stay, thanks to a shelter acquaintance. This newfound security is short-lived: Cameron falls seriously ill, and after an emergency room visit threatens to expose both their identities, Emily fears she has run out of Plan B's.Readers hoping for a futuristic novel imagining the aftermath of a Fukushima-type disaster in the United States may be disappointed--Bohjalian's primary focus is on examining, in wrenching detail, the dystopia wrought by today's economy. Emily's voice is a compelling one, however, and hers is a journey readers will avidly follow. 288pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2014. |
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| Library Journal | 04/01/2014 |
| Even before catastrophe strikes the Cape Abenaki nuclear power plant that her father manages, 16-year-old Emily Shepard's world is less than ideal. As the child of alcoholics she's seen more drama than most people twice her age, but the ordinary insanity of life pales beside the reactor meltdown that turns Vermont's Northeast Kingdom into a wasteland. After losing her parents, home, and dog to the disaster that her father is suspected of causing, Emily is left homeless and alone except for the similarly dispossessed nine-year-old boy that she's taken under her wing. Before long, Emily is cutting herself to relieve her grief, isolation, and overwhelming fear of what she's supposed to do with the rest of her life. VERDICT No stranger to tough issues, Bohjalian tackles nuclear power, homelessness, and self-mutilation with his trademark sensitivity, careful research, and elegant prose. These are heavy subjects to read about--Emily's story is both heartbreaking and frightening, and even the final denouement is afflicted with sorrow. Nevertheless, the book rings with poetry and truth. Neither Bohjalian's fans nor book clubs will be disappointed. [See Prepub Alert, 1/10/14.]. Jeanne Bogino, New Lebanon Lib., NY. 288p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 01/13/2014 |
| Emily Shepard is hiding out in a shelter made of ice and trash bags after a nightmarish meltdown at a nuclear plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom that left her parents dead. Since the meltdown might have been her father's fault, she's not reaching out for help, but she does take a homeless boy named Cameron under her wing. More heartfelt, engaged work from relentlessly best-selling, best-book author Bohjalian, and how can you not love a heroine who identifies with Emily Dickinson?. 288p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2014. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 05/12/2014 |
| Bohjalian's (The Light in the Ruins) impressive 16th novel charts the life of a teenage girl undone after a nuclear disaster. Already troubled, rebellious Emily Shepard becomes orphaned and homeless after the meltdown of Reddington's nuclear power plant in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. Wandering aimlessly, she finds refuge in a local shelter with Cameron, a nine-year-old boy she soon finds herself protecting. Emily is banished once she's pegged as the daughter of heavy-drinking parents both employed (and held responsible by surviving townsfolk) at the power plant where the meltdown occurred. Frequent flashbacks to her days at school and the youth shelter show her surrounded by influential miscreants, self-abusing "cutters," and drug takers like friends Andrea and Camille. Stealing and shoplifting through neighboring towns in order to survive the frigid New England winter becomes an often harrowing ordeal for Emily and Cameron as she attempts to figure out her next move. Through her first-person narration, readers become intimately familiar with Emily (and Cameron), as she grapples with the frustrating life of a misunderstood homeless youth on the run. Emily continually surprises herself with her newfound maternal instincts for Cameron and how difficult it is to survive life on the streets. Her admiration for kindred spirit Emily Dickinson serves to humanize her plight, as does an epiphany in the book's bittersweet conclusion. (July). 288p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2014. |
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9780385534833,dl.it[0].title
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