Dirty Laundry: Stories About Family Secrets - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670879118 ISBN 13: 9780670879113

Publisher: Viking Juvenile, 1998

Synopsis

A collection of eleven original short stories includes contributions by such authors as Cris Crutcher, M. E. Kerr, and Bruce Coville, and explores the haunting, funny, and unexpected secrets kept by families.

About this title

Review:

What family doesn't have secrets? The Dirty Laundry collection, edited by Lisa Rowe Fraustino (author of Ash), explores this universal fact of life via 11 original short stories penned by acclaimed young adult writers. Graham Salisbury shines with "Something Like ... Love," his story about a Hawaiian boy who befriends a Caribbean man of mystery and in the process learns a little about what matters in life. In "Popeye the Sailor," Chris Crutcher uses the cycle of child abuse to reveal that secrets tend to rear their hideous heads--no matter how firmly they are pushed aside. M.E. Kerr artfully explores the haunting of a teenage girl by her dead adoptive brother in "I Will Not Think of Maine," and in "Passport," Laurie Halse Anderson takes an amusing look at a young person torn between divorced parents and struggling to create a reality all his own. Diverse as they are, the stories share the quality of compelling, solid writing, as well as the message that no matter how normal or perfect a family appears, secrets are sure to lurk just beneath the surface. --Brangien Davis

From Kirkus Reviews:

Fraustino (Ash, 1995, etc.) presents 11 fresh, diverse pieces in a fierce collection of salacious family stories. The theme is sure to appeal to a wide audience, and these stories run from merely amusing to devastating. The weakest story comes first: In Bruce Coville's attention-grabber, Randy discovers not only that he has a long, lost uncle, but also that the uncle is a pre-op transsexual. The treatment is preachy and obvious, with dialogue and confrontations right out of daytime talk shows (``Don't pretend I'm something you have to hide. I'm not evil. I'm not! I just what to be what I am!''). Otherwise, the collection has more than its share of gems: Rita Williams-Garcia's affecting account of a brother's broken dreams and his societal withdrawal; Anna Grossnickle Hines's powerful tale of a girl who inadvertently learns of her mother's abortion; Laurie Halse Anderson's hilarious story of a boy who must reconcile his parents' post-high-school expectations of him with his own plans to travel; Fraustino's own atmospheric portrayal of a mental hospital where the teenager who visits to cheer up a patient discovers her own family's history of mental illness. The stories are engrossing; the writers stray from the obvious, making for many pleasant reading surprises. (Fiction. 13-15) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking Juvenile
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0670879118
• ISBN 13: 9780670879113
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160