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A review by nicolemhewitt
After Zero by Christina Collins
5.0
This review and many more can be found on my blog: Feed Your Fiction Addiction
I immediately felt for Elise because of her anxiety about saying the wrong thing to people. I could completely understand how she gradually went from trying to relate to the people around her to feeling safer saying nothing at all. Her situation at home was heartbreaking—her mother was so distant, and Elise had never really learned to relate to the outside world all that well since she’d been sheltered (and homeschooled). There’s an interesting hint of either an unreliable narrator or magical realism going on that kept me guessing throughout the book, wondering what was actually going on. And then there’s also a slight mystery that gets introduced with Elise’s family. These elements kept me eager to find out where the story was going. There were a couple of small things that kept me from giving this my highest rating: I get a little frustrated when homeschooled kids are all portrayed as “strange” and desperate to go to public school so they can be normal (Cam’s family has the added stereotype of being weirdly religious but also mean—Cam and his sister are rebels by going to public school and not attending church). These stereotypes tend to frustrate me as a (Christian) homeschooling mom. Still, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives, and this book builds compassion for those kids who have selective mutism or even kids who simply suffer from social anxiety.
Jesse Vilinsky did a fantastic job with the narration of this one. I had to listen to this at 1x speed (because I got CDs from the library), which would normally drive me sort of crazy, but I really enjoyed the listening experience.
I immediately felt for Elise because of her anxiety about saying the wrong thing to people. I could completely understand how she gradually went from trying to relate to the people around her to feeling safer saying nothing at all. Her situation at home was heartbreaking—her mother was so distant, and Elise had never really learned to relate to the outside world all that well since she’d been sheltered (and homeschooled). There’s an interesting hint of either an unreliable narrator or magical realism going on that kept me guessing throughout the book, wondering what was actually going on. And then there’s also a slight mystery that gets introduced with Elise’s family. These elements kept me eager to find out where the story was going. There were a couple of small things that kept me from giving this my highest rating: I get a little frustrated when homeschooled kids are all portrayed as “strange” and desperate to go to public school so they can be normal (Cam’s family has the added stereotype of being weirdly religious but also mean—Cam and his sister are rebels by going to public school and not attending church). These stereotypes tend to frustrate me as a (Christian) homeschooling mom. Still, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives, and this book builds compassion for those kids who have selective mutism or even kids who simply suffer from social anxiety.
Jesse Vilinsky did a fantastic job with the narration of this one. I had to listen to this at 1x speed (because I got CDs from the library), which would normally drive me sort of crazy, but I really enjoyed the listening experience.