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St. Ursula's Girls Against the Atomic Bomb |
| Raine, a wildly
eccentric 18-year-old, is making her second try for senior year at St.
Ursula's school on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Her guidance counselor
is Al, who lives next door to Raine's wealthy, intellectual family and
has seen Raine playing the bagpipes in her garden or befriending
homeless people. Obsessed with "humanity's cruel streak," Raine prefers
to organize antinuclear protests and to keep scrapbooks on the Holocaust
rather than study, upsetting her high-achieving parents. But her
idealistic, "crazy, jangling" conversation is filled with truths that
soothe Al, whose marriage is disintegrating, and he finds himself
unwillingly pulled toward his student. Mixing sharp dialogue, lyrical
narration, and Raine's yearning, intelligent diary entries,
first-novelist Hurley explores her characters' complicated, intersecting
lives with an affection that's contagious, even as she asks deeper
questions about how to live bravely and survive betrayals, both global
and personal. |
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Readers won't easily forget Raine, who,
despite her apocalyptic fears and flights of fancy, recognizes the
world's "astonishing things."
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St. Ursula's Girls Against the Atomic Bomb
Book / by Valerie Hurley / Paperback: 272 pages / Plume (November 30,
2004)
Click here to check on availability at Amazon.com
Book Store.
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