Love, Ghosts & Facial Hair

From Booklist*Starred Review* In publishing these novels by an Australian poet as original paperbacks, Simon Pulse combines the slick packaging of series fiction with rich, layered verse reminiscent of works such as Sonya Sones' Stop Pretending (1999). The narrative rotates among several characters, but the primary speaker is Jack, who is 16 at the start of Love, Ghosts, & Facial Hair. Jack is an aspiring poet who falls in love with another soulful teenager, Annabel. Their intense connection, as cerebral as it is lustily sexual, soothes Jack's grief over the loss of his mother seven years earlier, a loss Herrick captures in shifting, raw emotion--from nihilistic bitterness ("They said it was a harmless lump / it wasn't") to brooding melancholy ("There's a ghost in our house / in Mum's / red evening dress"). A Place Like Thi s follows Jack and Annabel on a postgraduation road trip, tapping into a Kerouacian fantasy that will resonate with many teens. This novel lacks the immediacy of the family tragedy found at the heart of Love, focusing instead on the pregnant, 16-year-old daughter of the apple farmer who gives Jack and Annabel a job. Both books, however, speak with sincerity and sensitivity to the "quiet revolution in every family." Billed as "companion novels," this pairing evidently does not represent the beginning of a Jack-and-Annabel franchise, though YAs touched by the couple's sweet, redemptive relationship may wish it were otherwise.


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