L. A. Times
By Susan Salter Reynolds
November 23 2003
By Susan Salter Reynolds
November 23 2003
"But your personality came with you," thinks 18-year-old Raine Rassaby. "It was like a package deal to Florida — kind of chintzy but you were supposed to see what you could do with it — grow and change and turn yourself into someone quite marvelous."
Raine's problem, not unlike Don Quixote's, is that she is crazy, suffering from what she calls "scrupulosity." She has picnics in the park with the seven deadly sins. She believes in the possibility of a world without nuclear weapons. She is obsessed with the evils of the world. The Holocaust, Hiroshima, she feels all of history's disasters acutely.
But she is also a saint. A senior at a Catholic academy in New York City, she believes the world can change, and to this end she creates a group, St. Ursula's Girls Against the Atomic Bomb. No one comes to the first meeting. Then the group picks up speed.
Valerie Hurley tells Raine's story: She's somewhat like a grown-up Eloise, raised on the Upper East Side by a concert violinist mother and an astronomer father who are rarely home.
Raine decides to become Jewish, in honor of her Slavic grandmother, Vakey. Thank goodness there's Mary, the Greenlander hired by her parents who is forever performing rituals to raise her ancestors and who cannot bring herself to discipline Raine because she is convinced that the spirit of her dead grandfather lives in Raine.
Raine keeps a journal, which is found and read by her school counselor, Al, to whom she has been referred by the Mother Superior because she's about to be kicked out of school. In her journal, she reveals her wisdom about the world, garnered from park benches and her lone protests in front of military academies.
Al's own life is not so fabulous. His wife is leaving him for someone a little less dead. And so Al is reluctantly drawn into Raine's world. She tells him about Pavel, the boy with whom she has fallen in love and who may or may not be real. Then, on a trip to see a missile silo with Pavel in Nebraska, Raine gets pregnant.
Raine, as created by Hurley, is a deeply misunderstood heroine. "I'm just so deeply in love with the dogwood tree that it actually discusses things with me, " she tells her horrified father. "When you love something, it responds to you. It's one of the Seven Laws of Noah."
Her father replies, "Don't you have exams coming up?"
In this remarkable novel, Hurley leans back and gives her charming character full rein, filling readers with hope and possibility.
Raine's problem, not unlike Don Quixote's, is that she is crazy, suffering from what she calls "scrupulosity." She has picnics in the park with the seven deadly sins. She believes in the possibility of a world without nuclear weapons. She is obsessed with the evils of the world. The Holocaust, Hiroshima, she feels all of history's disasters acutely.
But she is also a saint. A senior at a Catholic academy in New York City, she believes the world can change, and to this end she creates a group, St. Ursula's Girls Against the Atomic Bomb. No one comes to the first meeting. Then the group picks up speed.
Valerie Hurley tells Raine's story: She's somewhat like a grown-up Eloise, raised on the Upper East Side by a concert violinist mother and an astronomer father who are rarely home.
Raine decides to become Jewish, in honor of her Slavic grandmother, Vakey. Thank goodness there's Mary, the Greenlander hired by her parents who is forever performing rituals to raise her ancestors and who cannot bring herself to discipline Raine because she is convinced that the spirit of her dead grandfather lives in Raine.
Raine keeps a journal, which is found and read by her school counselor, Al, to whom she has been referred by the Mother Superior because she's about to be kicked out of school. In her journal, she reveals her wisdom about the world, garnered from park benches and her lone protests in front of military academies.
Al's own life is not so fabulous. His wife is leaving him for someone a little less dead. And so Al is reluctantly drawn into Raine's world. She tells him about Pavel, the boy with whom she has fallen in love and who may or may not be real. Then, on a trip to see a missile silo with Pavel in Nebraska, Raine gets pregnant.
Raine, as created by Hurley, is a deeply misunderstood heroine. "I'm just so deeply in love with the dogwood tree that it actually discusses things with me, " she tells her horrified father. "When you love something, it responds to you. It's one of the Seven Laws of Noah."
Her father replies, "Don't you have exams coming up?"
In this remarkable novel, Hurley leans back and gives her charming character full rein, filling readers with hope and possibility.
© 2003 Los Angeles Times