Objects in Mirror

by Ronder Thomas Young

• ISBN13: 9780761315803
• ISBN10: 0761315802
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2002-04-01
• Publisher: Roaring Brook
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Summary

When the dramatic Allison Anderson changes the way Grace views her best friend, Grace finds that not only objects in mirrors are distorted. You don't always know everything you think you do. And people aren't always who they appear to be. From the highly regarded author of Moving Mama to Town, this richly textured and rewarding novel brings to life a young woman exploring the boundaries of friendship poised between the past and possibility.

Author Biography

Ronder Thomas Young received the International Reading Association's Award for Moving Mama to Town. Her novel Learning by Heart was named an ALA Notable Book. She lives in Norcross, Georgia

Table of Contents

Kirkus Reviews

 

In this richly nuanced, if not particularly eventful, story, a teenager gets a fresh dose of self-confidence while discovering that she doesn’t know a new friend as well as she thinks. . . . Bounded by home, school, and the local art center where she works, Grace’s world is a small one, but filled with distant, happy, fretful, wise, weary, suspicious, loving people in the throes of living. . . . Young infuses her tale with the same warmth of feeling and subtly delivered insight into character.

 

 

Booklist

 

Teens. . . will relate to Grace’s determination to overcome the preconceptions of the adults around her.

 

 

Publishers Weekly

 

Writing in a less distinctive voice than in her previous novels, Young delivers a mild-mannered slice-of-life tale. Grace, a high school sophomore, believes that people have a slightly distorted image of her; the statement on her car's rearview mirror, "objects in mirror are closer than they appear," feels to her like a metaphor for her life. Unlike her sisters, Sophie, a high-school dropout and runaway, and Angela, who got pregnant without being married, Grace doesn't cause problems. Nevertheless, she faces some turbulence. Her father, who recently suffered a stroke, can't work any more and the family has to sell his body shop; and 30-year-old Sophie moves back home. At school, Grace is bombarded by multiplying mishaps. A wealthy new girl wants Grace (who hates parties) to hostess a "surprise" birthday bash for her, as part of a plot to attract the interest of Grace's best friend's older brother. The narrative's continual shift of focus among the subplots is jarring, with the result that the stakes always seem low.