How It's Done deals with many transitions: going from a teenager to an adult, from feeling unloved to becoming the object of someone's affection, moving from your parents' house to someone else's home. The main character, Grace, approaches all of these transitions and decisions with equal parts hesitation and excitement. Read my full book review here.

What was the most difficult part of the story to write? The most difficult subject to address?

Certainly you have touched on one of the most difficult -- capturing the hesitation and the excitement of being 18 and in love and the thrill of making decisions that could have a life-long impact. Staying firmly in Grace's point of view, approaching situations with her naivete without letting an adult sensibility seep in -- that was the challenge for me. ( Read more... )

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For her entire life, Grace has played by her parents' rules, assumed their beliefs, and stayed close to home. Her father is strict, her mother obedient, and Grace doesn't necessarily want to follow in the footsteps of either one. Finally eighteen years old and almost done with high school, she wants to speak up more than ever, but whenever she does, she seems to get into an argument with her father. In fact, were it not for one particular disagreement, she may not have seized the moment during a fateful meeting with a young man named Michael.

"If it had been any other day, I would have given him a straight answer, but I was still seething over the fight with my father. I had been a good girl -- more or less -- my whole life, and what had it gotten me? A seat on the perimeter of life."

Michael's nice, he's attentive - and he's older. Nearly ten years older. Dating him breaks many of her parents' rules, and living in "a small town where almost everyone knows most everything about each other" means that their relationship has to be kept secret.

How It's Done by Christine Kole MacLean is about far more than this relationship. It is about changing, about questioning your beliefs, about realizing who you are and what you can become. The book toes the line tastefully when discussing adult situations, religion, and responsibility. Recommended for older teens.

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Chloe and Sue may look alike, but they certainly do not act alike. They are the narrators of Marcy Dermansky's debut novel, Twins. The story follows the girls for five years. A lot can happen between the ages of thirteen to eighteen - and a lot certainly does happen to Chloe and Sue. Read my full-length book review.

The New York Times called Twins "(a) brainy, emotionally sophisticated bildungsroman-for-two." What a great compliment! (Not to mention the name of my book site - Always nice to see that someone else knows what it means!)

Thanks! I have to admit, I was thrilled with that Times review. Still am. I love praise from high places.

I also love that your website is called bildungsroman. It's a beautiful word, such a fancy, smooth sounding alternative to coming of age -- a genre, I have to say, which never fails to move me. I want to be eighty-years-old and still reading coming of age stories.

( Read more... )

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Fascinating, twisted characters make for an interesting psychological drama in Marcy Dermansky's debut novel.

Though outwardly identical in childhood, the twins' differences grow more and more apparent through their teen years. One yearns for them to stay the same forever, while the other wants to be her own person. The narration is passed back and forth between them, allowing each girl to tell her side of the story, chapter by chapter.

The story covers five years in the characters' lives, from eighth grade through twelfth grade. A lot of time, a lot of trauma. The older they get, the farther apart they become, both emotionally and literally. By the time the book comes to a close, the sisters have been through the wringer and back again.

It is a story unlike any I've read in recent years. Dermansky sheds some light on the darker side of the teenage psyche. She has created a story which is both intriguing and disturbing. If you are drawn in by the first chapter, you are liking to stay hooked until the end.

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