At Risk - Hardcover
In a novel the Village Voice calls "memorable" and "striking," Alice Hoffman vividly portrays a family shattered by tragedy when eleven-year-old Amanda is diagnosed with AIDS...
"Brilliant...explosive...heart-rending." --Chicago Tribune
"Graceful...emotionally potent...A cathartic tale that begs us, with heartbreaking eloquence, to stop looking the other way."--Glamour
"Within pages, the reader falls in love with this very real little girl... Moving, dramatic and painfully human."--Miami Herald
"Compelling power...tenderness and perceptiveness." --New York Times
"I have rarely encountered a work that has moved me as strongly... extraordinary." --Mademoiselle
"Deeply impressive...powerful." --Newsweek
"Deeply moving...Sensitivity and empathy...radiate from this beautiful novel." --Chicago Sun-Times
"Compassionate...This is a serious, honest novel." --Village Voice
"Tender, strikingly simple and deeply memorable." --Kirkus Reviews
"An affecting novel of exquisite delicacy, with humor, warmth, and sensitivity. Miss Hoffman heals wounds with the gentle touch of an angel." --Joseph Heller
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Alice Hoffman is the author of fifteen novels: Blue Diary (2001), The River King (2000), Local Girls (1999), Here On Earth (1997), Practical Magic (1995), Second Nature (1994), Turtle Moon (1992), Seventh Heaven (1990), At Risk (1988), Illumination Night (1987), Fortune’s Daughter (1985), White Horses (1982), Angel Landing (1980), The Drowning Season (1979), and Property Of (1977). She is also the author of three children’s books: Aquamarine (2001), Horsefly (2000), and Fireflies (1997).
From Publishers Weekly:
Born in New York City, and raised on Long Island, Hoffman graduated from Adelphi University and received an M.A. from Stanford University, where she was Mirrielees Fellow. She currently lives near Boston with her family and her dogs.
With this moving novel, Hoffman has written a story about a family attacked by tragedy, and has given it a larger relevance by confronting one of the most frightening issues of our times. The Farrells are a middle-class family living in a small New England town. Ivan Farrell is an astronomer, wife Polly a photographer, eight-year-old Charlie a budding biologist and 11-year-old Amanda a talented gymnast. Hoffman has few rivals in depicting domestic scenes: the bickering between siblings, the tension between spouses, and withal, the humor and love that holds families together. Suddenly the Farrells are singled out for grief. Amanda, who has been winning gymnastic meets despite a summer-long malaise, tests positive for AIDS, contracted some five years before when she was transfused with contaminated blood after an appendectomy. In unsensationalized detail, Hoffman depicts the effects of her illness. Too stunned, angry and anguished even to turn to each other, Polly and Ivan retreat into separate worlds. Charlie is abandoned by his best friend and shunned by his schoolmates. Amanda, an average adolescent who loves Madonna records, must come to grips with the process of dying. The hysterical reaction of some members of the community is a further blow. Hoffman's sensitive handling of this material is both matter of fact and heartbreaking. Ivan's friendship with a man he meets through the AIDS hotline, Polly's search for comfort with Amanda's pediatrician, Charlie's stoic bewilderment, Amanda's bond with a young woman who is a medium (the only evidence in this novel of Hoffman's characteristic feeling for the supernatural) are all beautifully portrayed. This will be a book that people will talk about and recommend. 100,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; first serial to Redbook; movie rights to 20th Century-Fox; BOMC main selection.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherPutnam Publishing Group
- Publication date1988
- ISBN 10 5552268342
- ISBN 13 9785552268344
- BindingHardcover
- Rating
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