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Wait for Me |  |
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Wait for Me | |
She walks alone in the rain. The faded pink pajama bottoms and oversized T-shirt clinging to her small frame, heavy with the weight of water. Her breath breaks inside her chest in an upward heave that strangles a cry escaping from her throat. Gulps of air. Her shoulders rising and falling. How much time has passed? She presses the heel of her hand against the tears that blur her vision. Though her chest still throbs, demanding air, she begins to run again. Looks down at her feet and urges them to fly faster, skim across the pavement.
The city, a dusty camouflage of grays punctuated with dots of colors from traffic lights and swirling neon signs, stretches awake in the early-morning drizzle. In the distance there is the slam of metal gates being pushed aside, revealing cluttered storefronts and display windows. The heartbeat of the city thickens with the heat of summer rising as steam from the streets, with the noise of cars speeding across the freeway, with the multitude of voices and languages rising up to greet each other. The day begins, yet all Suna can see is the memory of a face framed by night. A face so familiar, so loved, she can name each imperfection, each mark as though they are her own.
Suna runs forward without a glance, without a thought. To the car rounding the curve of the freeway off-ramp. The road slick with oil and rain. She pumps her arms and wills herself into the light.
媒体推荐 书评
From School Library Journal
Grade 8 Up–The pack of lies about her academic achievement that Mina has told to satisfy her mother''s high expectations (she has her heart set on her daughter going to Harvard) is unraveling as her senior year approaches. Jonathon Kim, a Stanford-bound teen and the son of her mother''s best friend, has helped with the deception by forging Mina''s report cards and backing up her many fictions. He asks too much of her, though, while Ysrael, the attractive new employee in the family cleaning business, encourages her to follow her own dreams–and him–to San Francisco. The tension in this Korean-American family is as uncomfortable as the heat and Santa Ana winds of the southern California setting. Mina''s mother''s bitterness over her lot in life and her neglect of Mina''s hearing-impaired younger sister, Suna, have left the teen responsible. The story is told in two voices: first-person past tense for Mina and a distancing third-person present for Suna, just entering middle school and just beginning to find her own voice. The book is carefully crafted and beautifully written; even the punctuation emphasizes the fact that this is the younger generation''s story. The adults speak without quotation marks. Na plays with her readers, suggesting in the prologue that the resolution of this story will come with a car crash, but instead makes Mina''s decision about her future a logical outcome of her emotional growth. Accessible and wonderfully discussable, this story of family secrets and family love is a worthy successor to Na''s A Step from Heaven (Front St, 2001).–Kathleen Isaacs, Towson University, MD
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From AudioFile
An Na''s poetic style is brought to life by the versatile Kim Mai Guest in this story of a Korean-American family in crisis. Guest''s facility with accents lets the listener hear the heavy accents of the parents in contrast to the very American speech of the children. The story is told in the first-person voice of Mina, with alternating chapters in the voice of her deaf sister, Suna. Mina''s web of lies, woven to maintain her mother''s idealized image of the perfect daughter/student, is beginning to unravel. As senior year approaches, Mina must find a way to weave truth from the threads of her life. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Gr. 8-11. The author of the Printz Award Book A Step from Heaven(2001) tells another contemporary Korean American story of leaving home. This time, though, love is as powerful as the intense family drama. The focus is on high-school-senior Mina, trapped in the web of lies invented to satisfy her overbearing mom, Uhmma, who expects Mina to attend Harvard and escape the drudgery of their small-town dry-cleaning store. Mina''s brilliant friend, Jonathan Kim, helps her cheat and steal. She uses him, but he thinks he loves her--and he eventually rapes her. Then Mexican immigrant Ysrael, a gifted musician on his way to San Francisco, comes to work in the store, and he and Mina fall passionately in love. Will she go with him and make a new life free of lies? Ysrael is too perfect, just as Uhmma is demonized, but both are shown from Mina''s viewpoint, and it is her struggle with her secrets that is spellbinding. Alternating with Mina''s first-person narrative are short vignettes from the perspective of Mina''s deaf younger sister, who Mina protects. The conflicts of love, loyalty, and betrayal are the heart of the story--and they eventually show Mina her way. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Kirkus Reviews, starred review
She draws her characters completely from within their souls. . . .Gripping and engrossing. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
