Girl Gone Bad - - - ?

Devon is the perfect high school girl: straight A's, varsity and club soccer player with Olympic aspirations, more responsible even than her mother, a sought-after babysitter. But then she is arrested and charged with disposing of her newborn infant in a dumpster behind the apartment building where she lives. And she denies that she was even pregnant. During the following days in the juvenile detention center, as she meets with her attorney, a psychologist, and other adults sent to get to the bottom of the "incident," she flashes back to significant scenes in her life over the past few months. And to all the years with her mother, the flirty and flighty Jennifer, who'd had Devon when she was 16 and has spent most of the years since going from one man to another. Devon remembers when she was 5 and her mom left her alone for the weekend, because she "needed some time to herself" - (though she had really gone away with a man). Devon has lived her life according to some very strict rules, trying to be excellent and to be -- at any cost -- NOTHING like her mother.

I liked After for its look into the mind of a teen portrayed as a monster by the media, whom we see in all her complexities. I liked it for the sympathetic look at the many "types" of girls who are incarcerated, and at the people who choose to work with them. In some ways this book took on an almost nonfiction tone, though Devon's character and story were fictional. I give it 3 out of 4 stars.

Appearances can be deceiving

Yet ANOTHER book using the currently-popular writing style of two stories told concurrently in alternating chapters, which eventually merge as the author slowly reveals the common elements. And though I found myself initially irritated by the style, the story grabbed me, and I found myself staying up late and trying to find stray moments to pick up this book to continue reading.

Each of the two stories is about a mother immersed in the early months of parenthood. Lexie Sinclair (aka Alexandra) is tempestuous, fiercely independent, and bright. At 18, she left Devon for postwar London and was soon deeply involved in the art scene - living in Soho, writing as a critic for a magazine, and deeply in love. Fifty years later Elina is an Finnish artist who just had a baby with her boyfriend Ted. She almost died during delivery, and can't remember anything about her life before the baby. Ted is having his own memory issues -- he is starting to remember disturbing new things about his early childhood.

I love the "period piece" descriptions of 1950's London, the dreamy writing style, and generally the language of the book. The characters came alive, and the story was gripping.

4 out of 4 stars