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thegoodrain 's review for:
Dear Zoe
by Philip Beard
Dear Zoe is a very pretty book. I don't believe this review will be humorous at all, because of the subject-matter, so bear with me.
Tess is a 15 year-old girl trying to deal with seeing her 2 year-old little sister be hit by a car and later die of internal bleeding and this story is composed as a sort of journal directed towards Zoe. Where Beard excels is at expressing the details of a teenaged girl's day-to-day life that she would find important and meaningful to keep Zoe somehow involved with the family. Tess edits her life down to brief vignettes about her sister, mother, father, and step-father. Each character is developed well, and it's easy to understand why Tess would think these interactions would help keep Zoe involved in their family life.
The journal progresses as Tess goes through the grieving period, and Tess begins to use it as a sounding-board for the stress she's going through in her own life. She finds out that even her "good" parent can do something stupid, and her "bad" parent isn't so bad, after all. I know that was a simple sentence, but it makes sense with the novel. Dear Zoe has a simplistic writing style, but isn't simple in its themes or emotions. Tess is young, with a self-professed limited vocabulary, and Beard does well to keep the language within that scope. I don't know if all teenage girls say this, or just Pittsburgh ones, but I got very nostalgic reading Tess say "all of a sudden" every third paragraph. I still say this in my stories to progress my stories or explain a sudden turn of events.
The whole novel was nostalgic for me, as Beard described Tess working at Thelma's Lemonade Stand near the Logjammer in Kennywood -- and how Disney World wasn't all that much better than Pittsburgh's beloved amusement park. I'd have to agree. I can remember going to the park during the summer months, when the sidewalks were burning with the heat of the sun, and how my friends and I would ride the Logjammer, Pittsburgh Plunge, and Raging Rapids repetitively to cool off.
I even remember that the skanky girls would wear khaki shorts and bright underwear, so when they got wet, the boys could see their underwear clearly.
Ahhh, Pittsburgh.
Tess is a 15 year-old girl trying to deal with seeing her 2 year-old little sister be hit by a car and later die of internal bleeding and this story is composed as a sort of journal directed towards Zoe. Where Beard excels is at expressing the details of a teenaged girl's day-to-day life that she would find important and meaningful to keep Zoe somehow involved with the family. Tess edits her life down to brief vignettes about her sister, mother, father, and step-father. Each character is developed well, and it's easy to understand why Tess would think these interactions would help keep Zoe involved in their family life.
The journal progresses as Tess goes through the grieving period, and Tess begins to use it as a sounding-board for the stress she's going through in her own life. She finds out that even her "good" parent can do something stupid, and her "bad" parent isn't so bad, after all. I know that was a simple sentence, but it makes sense with the novel. Dear Zoe has a simplistic writing style, but isn't simple in its themes or emotions. Tess is young, with a self-professed limited vocabulary, and Beard does well to keep the language within that scope. I don't know if all teenage girls say this, or just Pittsburgh ones, but I got very nostalgic reading Tess say "all of a sudden" every third paragraph. I still say this in my stories to progress my stories or explain a sudden turn of events.
The whole novel was nostalgic for me, as Beard described Tess working at Thelma's Lemonade Stand near the Logjammer in Kennywood -- and how Disney World wasn't all that much better than Pittsburgh's beloved amusement park. I'd have to agree. I can remember going to the park during the summer months, when the sidewalks were burning with the heat of the sun, and how my friends and I would ride the Logjammer, Pittsburgh Plunge, and Raging Rapids repetitively to cool off.
I even remember that the skanky girls would wear khaki shorts and bright underwear, so when they got wet, the boys could see their underwear clearly.
Ahhh, Pittsburgh.