Powerful conclusion to a stunning trilogy: Fallout By Ellen Hopkins

Fallout

By Ellen Hopkins


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Hunter, Autumn, and Summer—three of Kristina Snow’s five children—live in different homes, with different guardians and different last names. They share only a predisposition for addiction and a host of troubled feelings toward the mother who barely knows them, a mother who has been riding with the monster, crank, for twenty years.

Hunter is nineteen, angry, getting by in college with a job at a radio station, a girlfriend he loves in the only way he knows how, and the occasional party. He's struggling to understand why his mother left him, when he unexpectedly meets his rapist father, and things get even more complicated.

Autumn lives with her single aunt and alcoholic grandfather. When her aunt gets married, and the only family she’s ever known crumbles, Autumn’s compulsive habits lead her to drink. And the consequences of her decisions suggest that there’s more of Kristina in her than she’d like to believe.

Summer doesn’t know about Hunter, Autumn, or their two youngest brothers, Donald and David. To her, family is only abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriends and a slew of foster parents. Doubt and loneliness overwhelm her, and she, too, teeters on the edge of her mother’s notorious legacy.

As each searches for real love and true family, they find themselves pulled toward the one person who links them together—Kristina, Bree, mother, addict. But it is in each other, and in themselves, that they find the trust, the courage, the hope to break the cycle.

Told in three voices and punctuated by news articles chronicling the family’s story, FALLOUT is the stunning conclusion to the trilogy begun by CRANK and GLASS, and a testament to the harsh reality that addiction is never just one person’s problem.

Review
Fallout - an unexpected or incidental effect, outcome, or product.

FALLOUT is exactly that definition....the effects of Kristina Snow's addiction with crank. The fallout that the title is referring to is the effects on her kids. FALLOUT tells the story of three of Kristina's children: Hunter (the oldest), and two daughters, Autumn and Summer.

Each of these children live different lives with different families. Hunter, the most fortunate of Kristina's children, lives with his grandparents in a normal life. Hunter constantly battles his own demons, though. He has a decent job with a local radio station and a relationship with a good girl, Nikki. But Hunter is constantly messing up that relationship and trying to find ways to prove to Nikki that he truly loves her.

Autumn is the daughter of the infamous Trey. She lives with her Aunt Cora and her grandfather. Her situation isn't that bad, either. But her aunt is getting married and that changes everything. It's at her aunt's wedding that Trey appears and shakes things up.

And finally we meet Summer. Summer lives in a broken-down trailer these days with her alcoholic father and his current flame. Summer had a decent boyfriend, but ruins it all when she falls for his best friend, bad news Kyle.

During the course of the next few months, the children of Kristina are on a spiral to a surprise ending one Christmas. They will all come together in an unplanned way.

FALLOUT is yet another amazing novel by Ms. Hopkins. It is an emotional roller coaster that leaves the reader saddened, and then triumphant, for the children affected by a parent's addiction.

Reviewed by: Jaglvr

Biography

Ellen Hopkins is the New York Times bestselling author of Crank, Burned, Impulse, Glass, Identical, Tricks, and Fallout. Her novels are praised by teens and adults alike, and she has been called the “bestselling living poet in the U.S.” by mediabistro.com. She lives with her family in Carson City, Nevada. Be sure to visit Ellen Hopkins online at ellenhopkins.com; myspace/com/ellenhopkins; and twitter.com/ellenhopkinsYA.


Fallout by Ellen Hopkins more details!

ADAM CANFIELD, WATCH YOUR BACK! By Michael Winerip.

All the Principal’s Men

By RICH COHEN
From The New York Times(nytimes.com)
Children Books: Pulished March 16, 2008


Life is not like high school. Life is like junior high school. Even high school is like junior high school. That is the real proving ground, the passage from elementary to upper, bliss to hell, where identities are fixed and alliances hammered into place. If you’re a kind of Columbus of the near at hand, wanting to map the world, there is nothing better to be than a reporter at a junior high newspaper, just like Adam Canfield, the hero of Michael Winerip’s new novel. Adam is the star reporter of The Slash, a paper named for the punctuation mark that so aptly describes the school as a place of painful transition: Harris Elementary/Middle School. Of course, Adam, having the body of a middle schooler but the soul of a reporter, likes to think the paper is in fact named for the verb, because the pens of his fellow newshounds “were so mighty, they slashed like swords through thick, swampy lies until they reached the truth.”

This is the story of a good, overachieving, overscheduled American boy, as imagined by Michael Winerip, a good overachieving American journalist (writes for The Times, won a Pulitzer). It opens with Adam walking the streets of his sleepy town on a snow day, shovel in hand, looking to make some cash. “The one nice thing about being the most overprogrammed middle-school kid in America was that doing nothing felt like a special treat,” Winerip writes. “Even shoveling snow seemed enjoyable.”

This episode ends with Adam getting mugged by high school bullies, who make off with 40 bucks and set the plot in motion. A half dozen subplots also play out, giving the book the classic structure of a newsroom drama, wherein each story — a report on a popular old tree that is to be felled; a poll on the school’s most feared bullies; an examination of a plan to gentrify the town’s last poor neighborhood — is pursued until The Slash goes to press. All else is postscript. In this, the book is organized like an episode of the old “Lou Grant” show. Of course, this is a junior high paper we’re talking about, one that semi-regularly outperforms the local newspapers, TV news, etc., so to some degree a willing suspension of disbelief is required.

In fact, now and then, too much so — the characters are seldom allowed to think the thoughts of kids, which are often trivial or cunning or even lowdown and dirty. They instead serve almost as pieces to be moved around to make points about life out here, in the world of adults. The book can seem a little too good for you — the jokes and fine writing like the sugar on the pill.

The novel is a sequel, second in a kind of Philip Marlowe series for the junior high set. At times, it takes on the tone of the old noirs: “They always wanted the big ones from him. Just once in his lousy life, couldn’t he do an easy story?” The series began with “Adam Canfield of The Slash,” in which Adam and other newsroom characters were introduced (Phoebe, the annoying third-grade phenom; Jennifer, his co-editor, Hepburn to Adam’s Tracy). Adam broke a series of stories, the biggest leading to the ejection of that queen bee of all youth-league bogeymen — the junior high principal. “Adam had caught her red-handed ... and once they printed it in The Slash, she was fired.”

With these books, Winerip has set himself a grand task. He does not seek merely to entertain or educate — he seeks to rescue the newspaperman, even to save the newspaper itself in the age of the freebie Web site and blog, by planting the image of the truth-seeking newshound deep in the mind of the next generation. (“Adam had his eyes shut, and Jennifer nudged him. ‘Are you asleep?’ she whispered. ‘Unfortunately wide awake,’ he said. ‘It’s easier to spot the lies with my eyes closed.’”)

We see Adam experience the joys of the newsman, the perks that go with the job: the adventures, which are real, that compete with any chase on the far side of the wardrobe, and the occasional glimpse of the big picture that all little stories add up to: “Jennifer was quiet, finally. If this didn’t convince her Phoebe’s tree story was worth saving, nothing would. It was almost dark; they could still see their breath in the cold. Lights were coming on all over town. From up this high, they could spy the red lights of a cargo ship moving down the Tremble River and the green lights of buoys bobbing on the river and the boatyard all lit up.”

In short, the book is excellent — funny and charming, with occasional flashes of big-league beauty that are way more than its junior high school audience deserves, but let’s give it to them anyway.


Rich Cohen is the author of “Tough Jews” and “Sweet and Low: A Family Story.”

Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff

Don't Go Into That Closet!

By Kevin Autrey (Dallas, TX 75218)

See all my reviews

March 9, 2008

First off, I should say that I'm not one of those "I read it cover to cover in one day" kind of readers. I hear people say "I couldn't put it down" when describing a book and wonder what kind of life - obviously devoid of things needing to be DONE - they live.

That said, I read "Tweak" - cover to cover - in one day. I couldn't put it down.

I've had friends addicted to meth. I know that meth's grip is insidious and tenacious - that the predictable and almost-methodical way it destroys everything in a person's life is almost viral in nature. But seeing this "inside look" at how a meth addict perceives his addiction, his drug, his life, and the destruction of everything perceived as valuable - occurring right before his eyes... it's a compelling, haunting narrative.

The most striking thing for me in Nic's story is how at the very bottom - when virtually all is lost - the only thing that remains is the most sober of thoughts: "it's time to get clean". And at a time and in a condition where no hidden reservoirs of strength remain, the fight of a lifetime begins.

Watching Nic's recovery is like watching the heroine in a horror flick walk (usually backwards... go figure) into a closet where the slasher villain is lying in wait to kill her. You recognize the villain and the precariousness of the situation long before Nic does - and you're screaming "don't go in there" - because by this point, you see how far he's come and you're rooting for him to make it and you see the disaster about to happen. It's interesting that Nic's father (who also writes "the parent's perspective" of his son's addiction in Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Meth Addiction) is involved in the production of horror movies, because his story has so many elements of a great horror movie.

There are many heroes in this story aside from Nic - his family and his sponsor (Spencer) chief among them. To open yourself up to participating - emotionally investing - in a life with someone who repeatedly has shredded all sense of normalcy, safety and comfort - that takes a healthy dose of courage, perseverance, and love. Those are the hallmarks of every great hero, and his father, step-mother, mother, sponsor (and his wife) bear all of these hallmarks.

Read this book to reaffirm your faith in the strength of the human spirit - its dogged determination to survive, its desire to thrive and its capacity to forgive. Give this book to the young people in your life to instill an honest, powerful image of how drugs can destroy a life and inflict pain and sadness on everyone connected to that life.

But be prepared to lose a day, because you're not going to want to put it down.