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Candy |  |
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Candy | |
When Joe Beck, a fifteen-year-old suburban kid, gets lost in a disreputable neighborhood on his way to an appointment in London, he is struck dumb by his first sight of beautiful and seemingly innocent Candy. She talks with him, teases him, but reveals nothing about herself except her phone number. Later they have a perfect day at the London Zoo, and soon Joe is as addicted to Candy as she is to heroin, in spite of the threats of her menacing pimp Iggy. Almost nothing matters except his desire to free her from her terrible life -- not his band’s chance for a recording contract, not the song he has written for her that has become a hit without him. But there is something that still matters to him, and when he rescues the young prostitute from her sordid rooming house and takes her into hiding to sweat out her addiction, Iggy finds and uses that one thing that is stronger than Joe’s passion for Candy, in a heart-thumping, breathless conclusion. (Age 14 and up) -- Patty Campbell --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up–Joe is boring. He lives in a comfortable London suburb. He does alright in school, but shows no real promise. He plays in a band, but is less than passionate about music. Then he meets Candy. She is 16, beautiful, addicted to heroin, and a prostitute. She's also the only girl ever to look at him twice. He convinces himself that he loves her, and tries to get her off smack and the streets. Her enormous, terrifying pimp is very unhappy with Joe, and tries to murder him and everyone he loves. Brooks's plotting is masterful, and the action twists and builds to a frenzied and violent climax. Unfortunately, much of the book leading to this climax is filled with Joe's simpering, prosaic inner monologues. The author embellishes the teen's narration with stanzas of fragment or one-word sentences, which are more pretentious than dramatic or pointed. For all the fuss made over her, Candy's character is underdeveloped. If readers assume the book isn't about her, but how she changes Joe, her lack of nuance makes some sense. The shame is that he is the same humorless robot before and after risking his life for her. The minor characters–Joe's sassy sister and her tough, good-guy boyfriend–are so smartly and lightly drawn that they elicit more emotion than Joe and Candy.–Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
Gr. 9-12. Brooks' fourth novel, another provocative, suspenseful work that thrusts an average teen into an intense situation, invites inevitable comparisons with the film Traffic. When Candy, a girl "with the kind of smile that rips a hole in your heart," speaks to suburban teenager Joe outside a London train station, he falls hard but senses something amiss: her pupils are "like pinpricks." She cowers when a rough-looking black guy cuts their conversation short. Candy, it turns out, has a candyman, a pimp who provides the pretty addict with heroin. Joe gets involved (he can't help it; "[he's] hooked"), nursing Candy through cold-turkey detox and sinking into a seedy quagmire of danger and desperate violence. Joe's alternately love-drunk and rueful voice will keep readers engrossed; less easy to accept are Brooks' formulaic plotting, occasionally deliberate symbolism (Joe's future brother-in-law, a smart, compassionate black man, seems present solely to counterbalance Candy's terrifying pimp), and limp ending. But the questions that flicker across Joe's consciousness will speak powerfully to the YA audience, and the story plays skillfully to teens' curiosity about the mechanics of addiction and its manic, lurid subculture. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
