Bound To Stay Bound

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Booklist - 04/15/2009 Eleven-year-old Zoë is a survivor. Her fiery independence has seen her through a series of adults who “don’t stick,” and she trusts no one, including Uncle Henry, who has just taken her in after the death of her neglectful mother. Henry is a renowned sculptor of what Zoë skeptically calls “wild things.” Other wild things slip through Henry’s North Carolina woods unnoticed until Zoë’s arrival catapults them into the spotlight, with life-changing consequences for everyone. In her debut novel, Carmichael gives a familiar plot fresh new life in this touching story with a finely crafted sense of place. Zoë’s first-person narration alternates with the observations of a feral tomcat who provides hints to the past, and an array of well-drawn eccentric characters add additional sparkle to the magic-touched story. Zoë’s fierce, funny voice is compelling, whether she is describing tense standoffs or moments of rare vulnerability that go straight to the heart. Carmichael uses a sure, light touch to portray the gradual blooming of trust among the story’s many wild things in this satisfying tale. - Copyright 2009 Booklist.

Bulletin for the Center... - 06/01/2009 After the suicide of her mentally ill mother, eleven-year-old Zoë finds a home with her uncle, a reclusive heart surgeon turned sculptor. With Henry, the mouthy, precocious girl begins to settle in, a domestication that’s paralleled in her gradual gentling of a wary feral cat who roams the neighboring woods. Just as Zoë begins to uncover some of her family’s hidden history, however, she’s caught up in present storms as a classmate of hers begins causing trouble on her uncle Henry’s land and threatens a beautiful deer that Zoë keeps seeing in the forest. Carmichael’s a smooth and evocative stylist, and the classic elements of the orphan story retain their appeal as Zoë begins to come to terms with her sad past in the face of her loving present. The book goes way over the top, though, in its inclusion of maudlin elements such as Zoë’s gruff uncle, who left behind his world-renowned heart surgery for world-renowned sculpting when his own heart broke, an ailing neighbor of saintly goodness, and the beautiful white deer and her wild-boy companion (who turns out to be Zoë’s hitherto-unknown half brother). Zoë herself is at times a new-millennium Shirley Temple in her relentlessly adorable moppetry, and the interpolation of narrative from the point of view of Zoë’s cat blurs focus rather than broadening it. There’s enough Frances Hodgson Burnett-adjacent pleasure here (with elements of both A Little Princess and The Secret Garden), though, to satisfy readers in it for the heartstring-tugging. DS - Copyright 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

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