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The Tenth Circle
by Jodi Picoult
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Synopses & Reviews Jodi Picoult, the New York Times bestselling author of Vanishing Acts, offers her most powerful chronicle yet of an American family with a story that probes the unbreakable bond between parent and child — and the dangerous repercussions of trying to play the hero.Trixie Stone is fourteen years old and in love for the first time. She's also the light of her father's life — a straight-A student; a freshman in high school who is pretty and popular; a girl who's always looked up to Daniel Stone as a hero. Until, that is, her world is turned upside down with a single act of violence...and suddenly everything Trixie has believed about her family — and herself — seems to be a lie. For fifteen years, Daniel Stone has been an even-tempered, mild-mannered man: a stay-at-home dad to Trixie and a husband who has put his own career as a comic book artist behind that of his wife, Laura, who teaches Dante's Inferno at a local college. But years ago, he was completely different: growing up as the only white boy in an Eskimo village, he was teased mercilessly for the color of his skin. He learned to fight back: stealing, drinking, robbing, and cheating his way out of the Alaskan bush. To become part of a family, he reinvented himself, channeling his rage onto the page and burying his past completely...until now. Could the young boy who once made Trixie's face fill with light when he came to the door have been the one to end her childhood forever? She says that he is, and that is all it takes to make Daniel, a man with a history he has hidden even from his family, venture to hell and back in order to protect his daughter. The Tenth Circle looks at that delicate moment when a child learns that her parents don't know all of the answers and when being a good parent means letting go of your child. It asks whether you can reinvent yourself in the course of a lifetime or if your mistakes are carried forever — if life is, as in any good comic book, a struggle to control good and evil, or if good and evil control you. Review: "Some of Picoult's best storytelling distinguishes her twisting, metaphor-rich 13th novel (after Vanishing Acts) about parental vigilance gone haywire, inner demons and the emotional risks of relationships. Comic book artist Daniel Stone is like the character in his graphic novel with the same title as this book?once a violent youth and the only white boy in an Alaskan Inuit village, now a loving, stay-at-home dad in Bethel, Maine?traveling figuratively through Dante's circles of hell to save his 14-year-old teenage daughter, Trixie. After she accuses her ex-boyfriend of rape, Trixie?and Daniel, whose fierce father-love morphs to murderous rage toward her assailant?unravel in the aftermath of the allegation. At the same time, wife and mother Laura, a Dante scholar, tries to mend her and Daniel's marriage after ending her affair with one of her students. Picoult has collaborated with graphic artist Dustin Weaver to illustrate her deft, complex exploration of Daniel and his beast within, but the drawings, though well-done, distract from the powerful picture she has drawn with words. Laura and Daniel follow their runaway daughter to Alaska, at which point Picoult drives the story with the heavy-handed Dante metaphor?not the characters. Still, this story of a flawed family on the brink of destruction grips from start to finish." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information) Review: "Some of Picoult's best storytelling distinguishes her twisting, metaphor-rich 13th novel (after Vanishing Acts) about parental vigilance gone haywire, inner demons and the emotional risks of relationships. Comic book artist Daniel Stone is like the character in his graphic novel with the same title as this book — once a violent youth and the only white boy in an Alaskan Inuit village, now a loving, stay-at-home dad in Bethel, Maine — traveling figuratively through Dante's circles of hell to save his 14-year-old teenage daughter, Trixie. After she accuses her ex-boyfriend of rape, Trixie — and Daniel, whose fierce father-love morphs to murderous rage toward her assailant — unravel in the aftermath of the allegation. At the same time, wife and mother Laura, a Dante scholar, tries to mend her and Daniel's marriage after ending her affair with one of her students. Picoult has collaborated with graphic artist Dustin Weaver to illustrate her deft, complex exploration of Daniel and his beast within, but the drawings, though well-done, distract from the powerful picture she has drawn with words. Laura and Daniel follow their runaway daughter to Alaska, at which point Picoult drives the story with the heavy-handed Dante metaphor — not the characters. Still, this story of a flawed family on the brink of destruction grips from start to finish. 20-city author tour. (Mar.)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: "Drivers crossing the Maine border are greeted by a sign proclaiming 'Maine: The Way Life Should Be.' Readers approaching the same territory in Jodi Picoult's new novel, 'The Tenth Circle,' should be warned 'Maine: The Way Life Really Is.' Picoult, whose 12 previous books include the best-sellers 'Vanishing Acts' and 'My Sister's Keeper,' spins fast-paced tales of family dysfunction, betrayal ..." Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) and redemption, often set in northern New England (she lives in New Hampshire). 'The Tenth Circle,' a grimly entertaining if overplotted tale of a Bethel, Maine, family blasted apart by the teenage daughter's date rape, hews closely to the concerns of Picoult's earlier work. Fourteen-year-old Trixie is the much-loved only child of Daniel and Laura Stone. Daniel is an artist for Marvel Comics. Laura is a prominent Dante scholar at (fictional) Monroe College. They seem like one of those mismatched couples whose marriage triumphantly defies the odds — Laura the straitlaced scholar, Daniel the former Alaskan wild man who cleaned up to become a full-time father once Trixie was born. And Trixie? Bright, loving, sensitive Trixie is the dream child who, overnight, becomes every parent's nightmare. At the beginning of her freshman year, she has a prized older boyfriend — Jason, a high school hockey champion. But when 'The Tenth Circle' opens, Jason has just broken up with her. Not altogether unkindly, as it turns out, but the split devastates Trixie. Weeks afterward, still reeling from the rejection, Trixie rushes from her psych class to vomit in the girls' bathroom. She begins cutting herself, first with a broken mirror and then with her father's razor. Parents of teenage children will shudder at how her best friend Zephyr tries to cheer her up: She hosts a party while her mother is out of town, complete with alcohol, drugs and sex games. Picoult's depiction of these rites of contemporary adolescence is exceptional: unflinching, unjudgmental, utterly chilling. Jason is at the party, too. After most of the other guests have left, they begin a game of strip poker. Trixie, desperate to win him back, seems happy to play along, until things go too far, and Jason rapes her. This event and its immediate aftermath are the most powerful parts of the novel. As Picoult notes, one in six American women will be the victim of a rape or attempted rape during her lifetime. Those who have survived a sexual assault will recognize Trixie's subsequent dissociation, the cold horror of the emergency room and police interview, the sense of a life being irrevocably broken, as well as the rage and guilt of Trixie's parents. Trixie accuses Jason of rape, but when her name is leaked to local media, she's ostracized and tormented by her schoolmates, who accuse her of having been a willing participant. If Picoult had retained this tight focus on Trixie's experience, 'The Tenth Circle' might have had the power of Alice Sebold's 'The Lovely Bones' or Rosellen Brown's 'Before And After.' Instead, the novel veers off into an increasingly implausible chain of events. Jason plunges from a bridge, but did he fall or was he pushed? Trixie is under suspicion; so is her father. Trixie runs away, to the same remote village in Alaska where her father grew up, and her desperate parents follow. Two of Picoult's books have been adapted for Lifetime Channel movies. In its latter pages, 'The Tenth Circle' seems to have been written with one (or both) eyes on the TV screen. The book becomes mired in whimsical, fleeting, TV-ready moments — the police detective's potbellied pig; a description of Sorrow Soup; Trixie's hiding in a truck loaded with cattle; and her melancholy pre-Christmas visit to Santa's Village, en route to Alaska. And for a reader in a post-9/11 world, it defies belief that a 14-year-old girl could fly cross-country without benefit of a photo ID. Illustrated pages (by artist Dustin Weaver) are interspersed throughout 'The Tenth Circle' to show Daniel's work on the graphic novel that gives the novel its name, a too-neat takeoff on Dante's 'Circles of Hell.' But the pictures seem intrusive, a blatant attempt to cash in on the current graphic novel craze. (And if that's not enough, there's also a secret message hidden in the illustrated pages.) Still, Picoult manages some touching scenes near the end, when Trixie is befriended by a Yup'ik boy her own age. One wishes Picoult had trusted her considerable gifts for understatement and wry humor, as when Zephyr and Trixie discuss the possibility of an afterlife: '"I wonder if it's like it is here. If there are popular dead people and geeky dead people. You know." That sounded like high school, and the way Trixie figured it, that was more likely to be hell.' This sounds like the real thing, and not mere wistful longing for The Way Life Should Be. Elizabeth Hand is the author of seven novels and the forthcoming collection 'Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories.' She lives in Maine." Reviewed by Elizabeth Hand, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review) Review: "[A] grimly entertaining if overplotted tale..." Washington Post's Book World Review: "Picoult's sad, complex novel should appeal to the many readers who have enjoyed her previous works." Booklist Synopsis: Fourteen-year-old Trixie Stone has been a ghost for 14 days, seven hours, and 36 minutes, not that she is officially counting. With a story that transports readers from smalltown New England to the wilds of the Alaskan bush, Picoult probes the unbreakable bond between parent and child and the dangerous repercussions of trying to play God. Illustrations.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780743496704
- Author:
- Picoult, Jodi
- Publisher:
- Atria Books
- Author:
- Picoult, Jodi
- Illustrator:
- Weaver, Dustin
- Subject:
- General
- Subject:
- Literary
- Subject:
- Comic books, strips, etc.
- Subject:
- Fathers and daughters
- Subject:
- General Fiction
- Copyright:
- 2006
- Publication Date:
- March 2006
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 389
- Dimensions:
- 9.18x6.70x1.33 in. 1.49 lbs.
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