Many Stones

by Carolyn Coman

Overview

A father and daughter confront each other and their own wounds in a land of loss and reconciliation.
HONORS
Trudi Birger Prize Honor Book
Tayshas High School Reading List -Texas Library Association
Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book
National Book Award Finalist
ALA Best Books for Young Adults
Top Choice List -Children's Literature
CCBC Choices
Editors' Choice Top of the List -Booklist
Lasting Connections -Book Links
SLJ Best Books
Books for the Teen Age -NYPL
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
Editor's Hardcover Fiction Choice List -KLIATT
REVIEWS
"Coman has deftly woven together the themes of death, grieving, and reconciliation through the characters and setting of this emotionally elegant novel."
-School Library Journal
"In plain words, as hard as stones, this small, riveting book connects the anguish in one family with the struggle of a country to come to terms with its savage past."
-Booklist
"It's an uplifting tale: harsh, complex, but lit at the end by a promise of reconciliation."
-Kirkus Reviews
"You read this small book in one breathless rush to the end, then go back and back again and find more to think about each time."
-New York Times Book Review
"There is gripping writing here, from the lightning-quick portraits of passing players to the descriptions of South Africa to the convincingly clipped conversations between daughter and father. And most important, the protagonist's emotional complexities seem uncannily true to life."
-Publishers Weekly
"R Coman etches with telling clarity Berry's stormy ambivalence, delicately and deliberately picking out the authentic adolescent hypervigilance. Recommended."
-Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
"A deeply moving story."
-Financial Times (London)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608981366
Publisher:	namelos
Publication date:	03/15/2012
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	162
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.37(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

National Book Award Finalist

Carolyn Coman is the author of Tell Me Everything, What Jamie Saw, and Bee and Jacky. What Jamie Saw received a 1996 John Newbery Honor Award from the American Library Association and was also named a National Book Award Finalist. She has two children and lives in New Hampshire.

Editorial Reviews

Coman (What Jamie Saw) adopts some conventions of the problem novel in this ambitious work about forgiveness. Berry's sister, Laura, has been murdered in South Africa, where she was volunteering at a school, and Berry, still smarting from her divorced father's perceived rejection of the family, is becoming angry and isolated. Early on she explains that she collects stones and stacks them on her chest so that she can feel their heft and "know there's something there to be weighted." Obliged to accompany her loathed father to South Africa for a memorial service, Berry, who narrates, is sure so much time with her father will be disastrous. But when they meet South Africans searching for ways to forgive after apartheid, Berry and her father realize they must begin their own reconciliation. As Berry confronts the devastation of a race of people subjected to degradation, imprisonment and torture, her own experiences come to seem almost trivial by comparison: "I feel smaller and smaller.... It's like big, important history drapes over everything here in South Africa.... Nothing I know comes close to being a matter of life and death," she realizes. The implied parallel, however, is frequently jarring--exactly what has Berry suffered at the hands of her father, and how unforgivable is it? The ending, like the controlling device, is unusually neat for Coman. But there is gripping writing here, from the lightning-quick portraits of passing players to the descriptions of South Africa to the convincingly clipped conversations between daughter and father. And most important, the protagonist's emotional complexities seem uncannily true to life. Ages 12-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gr 8 Up-Berry Morgan is weighed down by Many Stones (Front Street, 2000), as she deals with the murder of her older sister, Laura, and the continuing strain in her relationship with her self-absorbed father. Award-winning author Carolyn Coman has artfully captured the complex emotional terrains of teen grief and family conflict. Frequent forays into Berry's interior dialogue explore her anger and need for reconciliation. Most of this is set in South Africa, where Laura was killed, and father and daughter are dedicating a memorial sculpture. The people and the events that have transformed that nation in recent decades are skillfully woven into the story, along with glimpses of wild life in Kruger National Park. Berry finally recognizes that learning about South Africa, and time alone with her father, have helped her begin the process of healing. With a perfect blend of insolence and anguish, narrator Mandy Siegfried helps listeners care about a very believable teen. Good quality is evident in the sound, and in the information on the cassettes and case. Many Stones provides valuable insights into how both nations and individuals can cope with shattering losses and make new beginnings. This superior recording has a great deal to offer teens and adults, and it will be well received in public and school libraries.-Barbara Wysocki, Cora J. Belden Library, Rocky Hill, CT Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

You read this small book in one breathless rush to the end, then go back and back again and find more to think about each time...The question of forgiveness is always part of this story, but Coman draws no neat parallels between the political horror and Berry's personal conflict with her dad, except perhaps to show that, in both, truth and reconciliation are hard, incomplete.
—New York Times Book Review

Hazel Rochman

Gripped by powerful, often contradictory, emotions, a bereaved teenager unexpectedly finds healing in a country struggling with its own wounds. More than a year after her older sister Laura's murder in South Africa has turned her into a rebellious, mercurial loner, Berry reluctantly agrees to fly with her estranged father to Cape Town for the dedication of a memorial. It's a long 11 days, as she meets the priest and children with whom Laura worked, tours Soweto and Robben Island, marvels at the wildlife in Krueger Park, and hears South Africans talk about their experiences and attitudes. She and her equally strong-minded father swing repeatedly between open hostilities and sincere efforts to establish some common ground. Writing with her usual economy and penetrating insight, Coman (Bee & Jacky, 1998, etc) portrays a young person searching for something—she's not sure what—and finding it in keeping the link that her sister forged with an amazing people. These are people who have suffered for their beliefs, but now look resolutely toward a better future, alive. It's an uplifting tale: harsh, complex, but lit at the end by a promise of reconciliation. (Fiction. YA)

Kirkus Reviews