Bounce, by Natasha Friend
Friend, Natasha (2007). Bounce. NY: Scholastic. 188 pages.
A surprisingly good novel (I was not a fan of Friend’s weaker, earlier novels, Lush and Perfect) about a family’s dramatic reorganization following a father’s remarriage. When, at her thirteenth birthday dinner, Evyn’s father drops the news that he intends to marry the Boston college professor he’s been seeing and plans for Evyn and her brother to move to the city to live with them, the shit threatens to hit the fan. With a mother long gone (she died when Evyn was a baby), Evyn has no choice but to “bounce” and roll with the punches. Her new life with her father’s wife’s large family (6 kids!) in an unfamiliar city and at a snooty private school is not fun and Evyn has trouble adjusting. Her difficulty becomes even more awkward in the face of her father’s transformation from hippie to yuppie and her brother’s social success at his new school.
This is a short, quick and sympathetic novel that really works. Evyn’s imaginary conversations with her dead mother (shades of Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret are some the most honest and effecting parts of the book and there are some funny and humiliating moments in the story (when Evyn catches her father and stepmother in the shower together–yikes!). Like Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature (by Robin Brande, blogged on YA or STFU), Bounce is a younger YA novel. It’s characteristically graphic cover will draw the attention of established Friend fans and its charm will entice others.