Pointe - Brandy Colbert

Theo is feeling better these days. She is eating again, back home from treatment, and is on her way to becoming a professional dancer. But then her best friend Donovan shows up after being gone for four years after being abducted. Theo starts to relive her memories of the abduction, and Donovan's abductor. Theo's life is thrown completely upside down and things just keep going from bad to worse. 

      I wish I could say the day Donovan came home was extraordinary from the start, that I woke up knowing something special would happen that Thursday evening in October.
     But the truth is, it's like any other day of the week.
     I go to school, then I get on the train and go to ballet.

 Colbert's debut novel is beautiful and chock-full of richly developed characters, both primary and secondary. Not only is the cover incredibly indicative of the lightness and darkness that both reside within Theo, but the flame-like colouring of the title reflects her voracious spirit. Beyond the richly layered story, Colbert manages to incorporate valuable insight into race, gender, and sexuality, and she manages it without sounding heavy-handed:

 "Why did you call on Theo, Mr. Hammond?"
     Our teacher looked away from me, confused. "Excuse me, Donovan?"
     . . .
     "I said, why did you call on Theo? Her hand wasn't up."
     Mr. Hammond's face puckered. "Would you like to answer the question?"
     "No. I don't think either of us should have to answer." Donovan's voice was calm but his eyes were shooting poison.
     "Well, Donovan," he said slowly, as his neck and jowls then forehead burned an intriguing shade of red. "I'm asking because perhaps you could offer . . . unique perspective, as your ancestors were so closely involved."
     . . .
     Mr. Hammond never called on either one of us again during the Civil War lessons.

Though the beginning of the book does feel rather circular at times, introducing more and more characters while coming back to certain memories time and again, Part One of the novel works to build the world and introduce a cast of very rounded characters before Part Two moves toward a slightly more plot-driven conclusion. The story and the characters are well worth the build-up!

 Pointe, while being about dance, is not a ballet book. There is much more at work beyond Theo's love of dance, her eating disorder, and her confusion and frustration over her past involvement with her much older boyfriend. All of these elements work together to make Theo into a wonderfully nuanced and complex protagonist.

 Readers of realistic contemporary fiction will find much to love about this novel.

 Highly Recommended

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Living - Matt De La Peña

Image
The Living  recently received an Honor from the Pura Belpré committee. The award recognizes of a work which best portrays the Latino cultural experience in a work of literature for children or youth. As I was at the awards announcements, and having known people who served on the committee in the past, I was intrigued. I had read the winning title and the other honor titles, and was impressed with the choices. So here's my review of The Living : The novel begins with Shy, a young guy working for a snazzy cruise line, offering water to people on the Lido Deck of the ship to combat the heat. Everything is going pretty well until an older gentleman comes out and starts spouting of weird, disconcerting phrases: "You have seen the face of evil."Shy doesn't quite know what to think, so he moves on to a couple of ladies on the other side of the deck. Just as he's handing them their water bottles, he sees movement out of the corner of his eye and realizes the old guy h...
Read more

The Music of What Happens - Bill Konigsberg

Image
Max: Chill. Sports. Video games. Gay and not a big deal, not to him, not to his mom, not to his buddies. And a secret: An encounter with an older kid that makes it hard to breathe, one that he doesn't want to think about, ever. Jordan: The opposite of chill. Poetry. His "wives" and the Chandler Mall. Never been kissed and searching for Mr. Right, who probably won't like him anyway. And a secret: A spiraling out of control mother, and the knowledge that he's the only one who can keep the family from falling apart. Over the course of one summer, two boys will have to face their biggest fears and decide what they're willing to risk -- to get the thing they want the most. This is a phenomenal book, in my humble opinion. There aren't too many books dealing with male sexual abuse, particularly in YA. Sex and sexuality are messy parts of young adulthood, but what this book does really well is discuss consent and the ways in which physical cues can be misinte...
Read more

Girls Like Us - Gail Giles

Image
I have now gone out and made sure that I have all of the books longlisted for the National Book Award. I read and reviewed a number of these previously, so now I have five left to read and review. This is one of those five (but would I expect anything less from the fabulous team at Candlewick?) Girls Like Us  is a unique novel in a number of respects, most notably in the fact that both protagonists are identified (and self-identified) as mentally disabled in some way. Biddy has a learning disability that she was born with, while Quincy is a young girl who is disabled due to the fact that her mother's boyfriend hit her in the head with a brick, disfiguring her and damaging her brain. Once the two girls graduate from school, they move into a house together, becoming caregivers for both each other and an older woman, Elizabeth. The two must rely on each other for comfort, knowledge, and emotional strength, and Elizabeth manages to help them along the way. While I had moments of wo...
Read more