You know how certain books seem to take up residence in some internal place? Maybe your head, sometimes your heart, at times your imagination and occasionally your soul? This is one of those books. From the opening page this novel that presents as a work of nonfiction, absolutely grabbed me and I can’t wait to booktalk it at the high school.
Told completely in interviews, news excerpts and images, this book magnificently wove a most believable cloth from threads of a fictional girl’s life. We learn on the very first page of the book that Addison Stone, a heartbreakingly beautiful and talented young woman, has fallen to her death while attempting to plaster a billboard with one of her own original art pieces. Knowing how Addison’s life ends does nothing to alleviate the almost palpable need to know how she lived and I struggled to put this book down. Super compelling.
I have something to confess. Author Adele Griffin so masterfully told this story that I actually spent some time searching the internet for clues about the art which accompanies the text in the novel. My attempt at determining responsibility for the book’s artwork is a testament to the authenticity with which Griffin relates Addison’s life.
As her friends and family, along with various other players from her abbreviated life, relate their impressions and memories, a picture which reveals a gifted, yet mentally unstable girl becomes increasingly more apparent. Poor Addison! Her sensitivity to all she alone could see made her, like many artists, too vulnerable to survive. Read this book. It will help to keep Addison alive a little longer.
DelSo 