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A review by claudiaswisher
Triangles by Ellen Hopkins
5.0
Definitely NOT YAL! Hopkins is very up-front about that, and I will continue to make the point when I talk about this book.
This DOES prove her cross-over power. The same format of multiple voices, connected characters, chapters in verse, and her own two-column poems, works wonderfully well.
These are characters I can, as a woman of a certain age, identify with. They're all turning 40-ish, and I've long since passed that milestone, but...Hopkins captures the conflicting emotions of Holly and Andrea and Marissa with clarity.
Holly has what appears to be a perfect life: good provider husband, a wonderful house, bright kids...but she's not satisfied. Of all three women, she's the one who has the farthest to fall, and fall she does.
Sisters Andrea and Marissa struggle in other ways. Andrea's husband is long out of the picture and she's raising her daughter alone. She is so alone.
Marissa's life was changed forever with the birth of her daughter Shelby, born with a debilitating, terminal condition. She and her husband are drifting apart and neither Shelby her daughter nor Shane, her older son who's recently 'come out' to his parents are making their lives any easier. Christian, Marissa's husband is an absent and angry father, and sometimes the household moves more smoothly without him.
Ex-husbands, a teen pregnancy, infidelity, loneliness, children's illnesses and secrets...it's all here. So is that yearning for more...but more what? Will Holly's search for her birth mother satisfy her? Will Andrea find the peace and balance she craves? Will a trustworthy man enter her life? And Marissa...will we watch her shatter under all the pressures?
Hopkins' writing here is especially beautiful -- metaphors and images startle you as you recognize a truth you'd never noticed before.
Geometry: lines, parallel and intersecting, are part of the symbolism...triangles of lives, tragedies of parallels, possibilities of intersecting lives and lines.
As she always does, Hopkins broke my heart but I feel like lives will be stronger.
My girls have something to look forward to when they get enough years on them to read and appreciate this one.
Favorite lines:
A daughter is a rainbow -- a curve of light
Time has stolen more than sonnets
Regrets are like molecules -- we're all made up of a lot
For every pain-infused minute we shared twenty saturated with joy
Damaged love is like injured skin -- sometimes the wound will heal completely. Other times it leaves a scar.
Genetics is Got and God gets pissed when you misspend love
Sometimes you have to close your eyes to forecast the weather.
This DOES prove her cross-over power. The same format of multiple voices, connected characters, chapters in verse, and her own two-column poems, works wonderfully well.
These are characters I can, as a woman of a certain age, identify with. They're all turning 40-ish, and I've long since passed that milestone, but...Hopkins captures the conflicting emotions of Holly and Andrea and Marissa with clarity.
Holly has what appears to be a perfect life: good provider husband, a wonderful house, bright kids...but she's not satisfied. Of all three women, she's the one who has the farthest to fall, and fall she does.
Sisters Andrea and Marissa struggle in other ways. Andrea's husband is long out of the picture and she's raising her daughter alone. She is so alone.
Marissa's life was changed forever with the birth of her daughter Shelby, born with a debilitating, terminal condition. She and her husband are drifting apart and neither Shelby her daughter nor Shane, her older son who's recently 'come out' to his parents are making their lives any easier. Christian, Marissa's husband is an absent and angry father, and sometimes the household moves more smoothly without him.
Ex-husbands, a teen pregnancy, infidelity, loneliness, children's illnesses and secrets...it's all here. So is that yearning for more...but more what? Will Holly's search for her birth mother satisfy her? Will Andrea find the peace and balance she craves? Will a trustworthy man enter her life? And Marissa...will we watch her shatter under all the pressures?
Hopkins' writing here is especially beautiful -- metaphors and images startle you as you recognize a truth you'd never noticed before.
Geometry: lines, parallel and intersecting, are part of the symbolism...triangles of lives, tragedies of parallels, possibilities of intersecting lives and lines.
As she always does, Hopkins broke my heart but I feel like lives will be stronger.
My girls have something to look forward to when they get enough years on them to read and appreciate this one.
Favorite lines:
A daughter is a rainbow -- a curve of light
Time has stolen more than sonnets
Regrets are like molecules -- we're all made up of a lot
For every pain-infused minute we shared twenty saturated with joy
Damaged love is like injured skin -- sometimes the wound will heal completely. Other times it leaves a scar.
Genetics is Got and God gets pissed when you misspend love
Sometimes you have to close your eyes to forecast the weather.