It's 1947 and 15-year-old Evelyn Spooner is glad to have her father home from the war; glad the world is more optimistic about the future, and glad her family can get out of New York for a vacation down in Florida before school starts back. All Evie wants to do is 'experience life' so she can report back to her best friend and 'know' what all the other popular girls already seem to. As the saying goes, "Be careful what you wish for." Evie finds herself suddenly having to grow up too fast when she realizes what the real world is all about: racism in the South, bigotry everywhere, cheating and possibly worse in her own family, scandal, and lies around every corner.....some of them her own. Oh, and did I mention there's a hurricane, too?This is author Blundell's first book under her own name, but she has been a writer for many years. She has used various pseudonyms, most notably that of Jude Watson for the numerous children's Star Wars series of books.
It's little wonder this particular title won the National Book Award for Young Adult literature. I can see Hollywood jumping all over What I Saw and How I Lied with the possibilities it offers in a compelling noirish narrative, a story of a young girl wanting to become a woman, ties to Jewish persecution in WWII, a fragile family dynamic, an idyllic setting, and some truths about human nature. This one's got them all. In my mind, it already won the Oscar for cinematography. That's how vivid and descriptive the writing is. Recommended for mature 8th graders on up, there's a little language and a hint or two of inflamed passions, but nothing obscene or graphic. There's some smoking and drinking of cocktails frequently by the adult characters, but remember this was the late 1940's, so those vices were commonplace for the times. If it were a movie, I'd give it a PG or mild PG-13 rating.
A copy of this book is available from Stone Library, and although the publisher recommends it for ages 13-18, I believe it will find a quick audience with older readers who remember the days after World War II better than anyone. After all, they lived them.
