Summary
Summary
The author of several critically acclaimed books for young adults, Martine Leavitt received one of publishing's highest honors when her novel Keturah and Lord Death was named a finalist for the National Book Award. After 16-year-old Angel is lured into prostitution by an older man, she vows that something has to change when an even younger girl is initiated into the life.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-While street prostitution doesn't fit into any young girl's ambition, vulnerabilities and circumstances move many of them into the "world's oldest profession" every day around the globe. Angel lives with her adorable younger brother and her widowed father in Vancouver, Canada, and has no plans to leave home until her compulsion to steal shoes from displays catches the eye of a pimp named Call. He offers to keep her crimes secret if she joins him for a meal, some "candy," and goes home with him. Angel is soon on the street, earning money through prostitution. The drug keeps Angel in line, but when she decides to wean herself off it, Call's intimidation methods became more sinister. Meanwhile, other street girls have been disappearing, and no one is concerned, not even the police. When Call brings home an 11-year-old girl he picks up from a group home, Angel realizes that she and the youngster needed to break away. As Angel faces this journey, she uses her imagination to write her book of life, as it should have been. Leavitt's novel (Farrar, Straus, 2012) ends on a positive note, with hope for a bright future. Ali Ahn has a sweet, age-appropriate voice for Angel's first person dialogue and effectively changes tones and dialects for other characters. No graphic details about prostitution or drug use are included in the story.-Ann Weber, Bellarmine College Prep., San Jose, CA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
This exquisite novel in verse tells the story of 16-year-old Angel, who has been working as a prostitute in Vancouver for nine months after her father throws her out. After Angel's friend Serena disappears, Angel decides to give up her pimp Call's "candy" (the drugs he feeds her) and try to return home. Angel's withdrawal is severe ("I threw up in Call's bathroom sink/ so hard I thought bits of stomach/ slid out of my mouth") but it's nothing compared to the pain she feels when Call brings home an 11-year-old girl, Melli, to follow in Angel's footsteps. Angel is determined to keep Melli safe, even while other women continue to disappear. National Book Award finalist Leavitt (Keturah and Lord Death) makes good use of Milton's Paradise Lost, which a john has Angel read aloud to him "while he does his thing," but the triumph of this story is in Angel's painfully real voice. Her matter-of-fact descriptions of her time with the johns are searing, and the casual brutality of her life will haunt readers. Ages 14-up. Agent: Brenda Bowen, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. (Sept.)? (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
When women begin disappearing from the streets of Vancouver, Serena urges Angel to use her skill with language to write their stories, to give voice to the many vulnerable young prostitutes working the citys rough Downtown Eastside. Soon after, Serena goes missing, and Angel, bereft and afraid, begins writing her book of life. A harrowing memoir in dramatic free verse, sixteen-year-old Angels story tells of an almost accidental yet inevitable slip into drugs, prostitution, and daily abuse from older men, especially her manipulative and enterprising pimp, Call. With startlingly few words and deliberate use of white space, Leavitt re-creates the daily experience of exploited teens in powerful detail (I said, I would never, / and he said, youll do what I say, / and I said, Ill die first, / and he said, okay), while a sobering authors note revealing Leavitts source material -- the Vancouver serial killer who between 1983 and 2002 murdered almost fifty women -- stresses the tragic realities of at-risk teens like Angel. But even more evocative is Angels internal journey. Each poem is a brief exposure of painful memory, stark observation, or comforting fantasy Angel must reconcile in order to escape both Call and the eerie white van that circles the streets, threatening abduction even in the books final pages. Angels story is a stunning, haunting portrait of exploitation and redemption. jessica tackett (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The tragedy of discarded children is skillfully explored in this stunning novel in verse. Angel, 16, pretends she lives at the mall, helping herself to shoes on display. She falls prey to a pimp named Call, who watches her shoplift, buys her meals and gives her "candy" (crack). Knowing that "it's the ones from good homes / who follow orders best," Call persuades Angel to do him a favor with chilling ease. Turning tricks on a street corner in Vancouver, she meets Serena, who teaches her to fend for herself with "dates" and encourages her to write her life. When Serena goes missing, Angel vows to clean up her act. Dope sick, she slowly wakes up to Call's evil, weathering the torments of her captive life with courage. The deliberate use of spacing emphasizes the grim choice confronting Angel when Call brings home a new girl, 11-year-old Melli. Leavitt's mastery of form builds on the subtle interplay between plot and theme. "John the john" is a divorced professor who makes Angel read Book 9 from Milton's Paradise Lost, inadvertently teaching her the power that words, expression and creativity have to effect change. Passages from Milton frame the chapters, as Angel, in her own writing, grasps her future. Based on the factual disappearance of dozens of Vancouver women, this novel of innocence compromised is bleak, but not without hope or humor. An astonishing, wrenching achievement. (author's note) (Fiction. 14 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Sixteen-year-old Angel's life on the street begins when Call, the man she thinks is her boyfriend, gets her hooked on candy, and before she knows it, she is forced to sell herself to support him and her habit. But when Call brings home an 11-year-old girl, Melli, and demands that Angel train her for the street, Angel realizes that things must change. However, change may require a miracle. This novel is itself something of a miracle: a spot-on, compassionate and passionate account of a heartbreakingly horrible life. Perhaps there are angels looking after Angel, though; her efforts to save Melli and herself are heroic and, ultimately, inspired. In this novel in verse, Leavitt has created in Angel's voice a perfect mix of innocence and experience, a blend that is underscored by seamlessly introducing passages from Milton's Paradise Lost into her narrative. Death, too, is present in Angel's life as women she knows begin vanishing from the street victims, perhaps, of a serial killer. The story is loosely based on the epidemic of murders that began in Vancouver in 1983 and continued through 2002. But Angel's story is uniquely her own, and Leavitt has done a brilliant job of imagining and recording it.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist
Excerpts
Excerpts
Bid her well beware ... When Serena went missing I looked in all the places she might go and she wasn't anywhere, just like a lot of the other girls weren't anywhere. I thought oh no when Serena didn't show up at her corner one night and not the next night or the next, and then she didn't show up to church Wednesday. She always went to church Wednesday and told her man Asia it was for free hot dogs but it was really for church-- she told me that secret. Once a man came who smelled so bad everybody pulled away, but Serena said, welcome, you are with friends, have a hot dog. She said she picked me to love because of my name Angel and because of my face, but then she loved me just because. She said that. She said her heart's desire was to see an angel. She said, if I could see an angel that would mean I'm still God's little girl. She said, Angel, if you get scared sometime on a bad date, do this-- She stared big-eyed at nothing over my head and said angel, angel ... I laughed, said, you see an angel? She said, no not yet, but just saying it or thinking about one has powers. Really, Serena? I said. ha ha really? you think there is such a thing as angels? She said soft, maybe. But she meant yes really. The first time Call told me to get out there and me scared and not knowing anything and Call watching from the café across the street saying no more candy for free-- that first time Serena said, I'll tell you what I know. She said, your eyes be always on the man you don't have eyes for anyone but him you don't have business with anybody but him-- that's the only way he can stand it, if you aren't alive except when he needs you to be. Serena taught me about drinks and dinner, told me how to make it go fast, how to fake it. She said, and don't you forget your name suits you. When she wasn't at church Wednesday I said, Asia, where is she? He said, she's run out on me. I thought, but did not say, she gave me her running-away money to hide under my mattress and it is still there. Last church Wednesday Serena said to me, Angel, you write about Nena who had a pretty house and pretty parents and was a ten minute walk from Micky D's. One day she didn't go home for supper and then she didn't go home for curfew and then she didn't go home. Nena went for a burger and ended up at Hastings and Main. Her man, the one who found her, lonesome, said to his friends, it's the ones from good homes who follow orders best-- it's the ones from good families who have the best social skills, who never learned how to fight-- they make the best money. Serena said to me, tell the story of Connie who said, I'm leaving the life behind, who said, I'm going to testify against the man who brought me here and dogged me awful. She said, I'm going to protect other girls and get that boy in jail. On courtroom day, there he was, wearing a pink tie, and in every seat of the courtroom were his buddies, saying with eyes if he goes down so do you. Write how Connie failed to prove to the judge that she was in imminent and present danger so her man walked away and Connie got found dead strangled by a pink tie. Serena said, John the john has made you read that poem, has taught you fancy words and fancy grammar-- Angel, you tell about Blood Alley and Pigeon Park-- the cardboard tents and the water rats and the delousing showers, the SROs and the cockroaches, the people drinking out of puddles and all the girls going missing ... Tell all that, Angel. I said no. She said yes. I said no. She said yes. I said no that is dumb. Then Serena didn't show at church Wednesday, and I got a book to write in. I stopped to listen to the street preacher who talked about God's top ten and how everything you do is recorded in a book of life and angels will read from it someday. Is this what you want your story to be? he said, Is this what you want everyone to hear? I imagined that, to hear everything about me read out loud by an angel like I used to read to my little brother Jeremy. I held my notebook and wished I could write my story over and in this new story I gave up Call's candy forever and I called my dad and he came and got me and him and me and Jeremy drove away from Call forever, and when we got there, there would be Serena. So I tried to make it come true. I called Dad from the pay phone near the library and it was sorry this number is no longer in service so I wrote him a letter and even mailed it, saying Serena my friend is missing I am cleaning up my act like you said and I vow my deepest vow that I won't take Call's candy forever. I wrote on the front of my book My Book of Life by Angel Which Is My Real Name, and This Is My Real Story for Maybe an Angel to Read. I wrote in my book, Serena, when you come back I will tell you about my vow and my letter to Dad and I am sorry I laughed at your idea of angels, I want an angel too. I wrote my angel wouldn't be one of the long dead who has forgotten being alive, who is used to sitting on a throne and being buddies with God. My angel would be a fresh-dead one, still longing for chocolate cake, still wishing she could come back and find out who won American Idol. That's the one I want-- just a junior one who might not mind saving a girl like me. Text copyright © 2012 by Martine Leavitt Excerpted from My Book of Life by Angel by Martine Leavitt All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.