Bound To Stay Bound

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Bulletin for the Center... - 11/01/2008 In this fictionalized family history, White adopts the voice of her elder sister to describe a difficult time in her family’s past. Living in a coal-mining camp in southwest Virginia in 1948, Audrey is distressed by her father’s drinking, her family’s poverty, and the bullying she endures at the hands of some of the boys in the camp. Her mother is little help, as she has extended spells where she is emotionally and mentally inaccessible to her children. Audrey’s best friend, Virgil, and her teacher offer two bright spots in her daily existence, which consists of scraping by on the scrips her mother manages to wrest away from their father before he turns them into cash for liquor, going to movies on Saturdays, reading books borrowed from her mother’s uncle, and trying to regain the weight and health she lost to a bout of scarlet fever. Audrey’s wish for a better life is granted, oddly, when her father dies in a car crash, enabling the girls and their mother to move to Roanoke, where, with the insurance money, social security checks, and a new job for mother, they can put together life in a home of their own. This slice-of-life drama provides a straightforward sketch of the White family’s circumstances with a simplified affective dimension that makes the book suitable for younger readers; the prominent emotion is Audrey’s discontent, and the details provided all lend support to its causes and cures. There is a strong suggestion that, despite their mother’s grief, the entire family is well shucked of the man in their lives, and all pragmatic Audrey has to do is to parse the memory of her father into the good parts she will keep and the bad parts she will forget in order to move forward into her new dawn. This is spare on nuance and detail, but it’s got an immediacy and impact that should appeal to readers just getting the hang of family sagas. KC - Copyright 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

Booklist - 09/01/2008 *Starred Review* Based on incidents from her own life and told in the voice of her older sister, Audrey, White offers a heartfelt story of what it’s like to be poor, hungry, and sometimes happy. It’s 1948, and Audrey lives in a Virginia coal-mining camp with her father, who drinks; her mother, who drifts away, if not physically, emotionally; and her sisters, “the three little pigs.” Eleven-year-old Audrey has her own troubles. Illness has left her eyesight compromised, and she is so thin kids call her Skeleton Girl. Yet it’s her family’s troubles that weigh on her most. Will her father’s need for drink rob them of the money they need for food? Will her mother’s sadness about the death of baby Betty Gail pull her even further away from the family that’s left? This is a small book, both in size and in the scope of its story. Yet it is fierce in its honesty while remaining utterly childlike. The first-person narrative allows readers to see clearly, through Audrey’s damaged eyes, the real people who inhabit this world, a place where smiles come from a movie or a piece of candy, and how hunger or the fear of it taints everything. A tough, tender story. - Copyright 2008 Booklist.

School Library Journal - 09/01/2008 Gr 4-7-In the voice of her sister Audrey at age 11, White has created a fictionalized memoir of her life as a child in a Virginia coal mining camp. It is 1948, and the family is living in grinding poverty with an alcoholic father and a mother who suffers periods of depression. School bullies torment Audrey, calling her Skeleton Girl (her weight "fell off" during a bout of scarlet fever), and dare her to climb the water tank at night and walk around the perimeter. Shining through the gloom are Audrey's friendship with classmate Virgil, whose cleverness averts the potential water-tank catastrophe, and the compassion of her teacher, Miss Stairus, beloved by all. Audrey's physical hunger and her longing for a better life are palpable, but it is only through tragedy that a better future emerges for the Whites. Details of setting and time are pitch perfect; spare, lyrical language combines skillfully with dialect; and humor infuses the story as the kids share jokes, including some based on the "Little Audrey" comic strip. Characters are carefully drawn and nuanced, and there is neither saccharine sentimentalism in Audrey's relationship with her younger sisters whom she calls the three little pigs, nor are her father and his enabling parents demonized. A note to readers and cover and interior photographs of Audrey and her mother and sisters make this story all the more real and compelling. A little gem.-Marie Orlando, Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information. - Copyright 2008 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

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