#susan perabo

[litrant]

The Fall of Lisa Bellow: A Novel by Susan Perabo (Simon & Schuster, $16).

The typical family thriller these days is about a family who lost a daughter--abducted, dead, gone--with a varying point of view. Sometimes we get the mother’s story; the father’s; a sibling; the detective’s; even, occasionally, the missing girl herself. 

In The Fall of Lisa Bellow, Susan Perabo takes a slightly different tack. Meredith Oliver, an eighth grader, is by chance in a deli when a robbery takes place. So is “mean girl” Lisa Bellow. Lisa is kidnapped; Meredith is left behind. Instead of focusing on Lisa’s family, Perabo’s novel focuses on Meredith’s. We see how a family under stress copes when the absolute worst doesn’t happen--or rather, when it happens to someone else’s family instead of yours. 

The characterizations of Meredith and her mother, Claire, are incredibly well-realized, and this family drama is far more subtle and intriguing than the typical fare. Put it on your list for when you want “brain candy” with some nutrition wrapped inside.

[wendyrward]

What happens before, during, and after The Fall of Lisa Bellows?

Meredith, a self-conscious and nerdy 14-year old girl, attempts to decipher what’s real and what’s trauma-induced fantasy in Susan Perabo’s coming-of-age novel, The Fall of Lisa Bellows. After a classmate gets kidnapped in a deli robbery that Meredith witnessed, she along with her mother Claire, father Mark, and teenage brother Evan (who recently suffered his own trauma when his left eye was blown out in a freak baseball accident killing his once superior athletic skills and almost his spirit) are lost in a sea of confusion as to how to deal with luck and whatever the opposite of luck is. Meredith’s travel to anther place mentally not only seems natural in the aftermath of the crime but, like her, we hope that it’s true that Lisa is alive and kept company--at the very least by the little white dog.

Wendy Ward http://wendyrward.tumblr.com/

[scrollingplayers]

There is fire in my heart. I do what I can.

Susan Perabo, Some Say the World

[emilyisreading]

The thing about fire is this—it's yours for one glorious moment. You bear it, you raise it. The first time, in a record store downtown, I stood over the bathroom trashcan thinking I would not let it grow. That I would love it only to a point and then kill it. That's the trick with fire, for that 30 seconds you have a choice, spit on it, step on it, douse it with a can of Coke. But wait one moment too long, get caught up in its beauty, and it's grown beyond your control.

Susan Perabo, "Some Say the World" via This American Life #59