Young Adult Literature without Apology
Amy's assessment of contemporary young adult literature, organized by author and title, censored by noone.
Realistic | Romance | Science Fiction | Historical Fiction | Fantasy | Horror | Mystery
Cohn, Rachel (2005). Shrimp. NY: Simon and Schuster. ISBN: 0-689-86612-7. 288 pages.
Shrimp is a sequal to Cohn's charming Gingerbread, which introduced the conflicted character of Cyd Charisse, a California girl sent to live with her father in Manhattan for the summer in hopes that, eventually--in the eyes of her mother and stepfather, at least--she would calm down. Shrimp begins when Cyd returns to California, hoping to reunite with her diminuitive surfer boyfriend (the "Shrimp" of the title), but finds that the course of what she thinks is "true love" will never run smooth--at least, not when your definition of "true love" involves mostly boyfriend worship and very little self-actualization. Oddly, though the title might lead one to believe that this is a story about Shrimp (or, at least, about Cyd and Shrimp), the eponymous boyfriend figures little in the novel. Instead, in the second installation of Cyd's story, we learn more about Cyd the girl, not Cyd, the girlfriend of Shrimp and, as she is revealed to us, we learn to like her for the potential she's just realizing she has.This is an easy to read story that belies its own complexity. While I can't say that I ever feel really close to Cyd, the first person narrator, I get the feeling that few people in Cyd's life can say they feel close to her either. The story does open up a bit (and I think this is kind of the point) and, by the end, I found myself hoping for another sequal.
