The Lonely

August 1, 2014

Gr 10 Up-Easter Deetz has a huge chip on her shoulder about the failures of her family, particularly those of her parents, who she refers to as "The Mother" and "The Father." It's these dire circumstances that culminate in an event that traumatized Easter can only refer to as "The Terrible Thing," which sends her off to the woods. Easter becomes trapped under a boulder and begins to bleed out and her fragile psyche starts to shatter. As her life slips away and dark things encroach from the woods, the teen narrates the story of her losses and loves, most of which seem to radiate around her parents and her sister Julia. Or is this really happening at all? Easter is the quintessential unreliable narrator and readers are left wondering what elements of her story they can believe. Debut author Hogarth can't quite pull off this unique premise. The novel is written using highly stylized prose that often leaves readers unclear on what is reality. The novel's language, while strong and vivid, isn't enough to sustain the wobbliness of this narrative decision. These weaknesses are not helped by the fact that it more than occasionally veers into grotesquerie. The author's writing and willingness to take narrative risks is promising for future books, but The Lonely doesn't quite come together. Recommended as an additional purchase for larger libraries looking to expand their young adult horror collections.-Angie Manfredi, Los Alamos County Library System, NM

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2014
Grades 8-11 Easter Deetz sees a terrible thing, and goes to visit her sister, Julia, in the woods to talk about it, even though she doesn't really want to speak of it again. Unfortunately, when she tries to retrieve something pinned under a boulder, the huge stone falls, crushing her underneath, and she's left to live out what time she has left among squirrels (bearing attitude and smoking cigarettes) while pondering her life up to this moment. Easter is an unsettling and sometimes unreliable narrator, though still full of tongue-in-cheek humor: it's not a happy story, she warns at the very start, I die at the end of this. So don't get too attached. The slow reveal of Easter's historyher odd family life, the dangerous behavior that landed her in a group home, her disquieting relationship with Juliacoupled with the unknown terrible thing give Hogarth's novel the feel of a maniacal psychological thriller. Dark and daring, this memorable debut should appeal to teens with a black sense of humor.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2014
This debut novel chronicles a disturbed teen girl's descent into madness. Easter has Problems (of the capital P variety). First, there is The Lonely, which she inherited from The Mother. Then there is The Terrible Thing, which leaves her "just a bleeding ornament" crushed beneath a boulder in The Woods at the novel's onset, waiting for The Something Coming. Her sister, Julia, is the most vocal of an assortment of strange family members that readers meet as Easter bounces through time in her often unreliable narration. Alternating between her present in The Woods (complete with cigarette-smoking, hamburger-eating squirrels) and flashbacks of the troubling, hallucination-filled events of her past, Easter is obviously a victim of undiagnosed mental illness and parents ill-equipped to handle her problems. By the time help is sought, Easter may be too far gone to recover. Beautiful prose masks plot holes, and the dark humor often falls flat. Teens may lack the incentive to finish, although the grossness factor may keep the attention of a few. Adults (who may be the most apt audience for the book) could be left with the feeling that Hogarth was simply trying too hard to write a strangely great tale that is less great and too strange. An initially promising psychological thriller that ultimately fails to deliver. (Thriller. 14 & up)

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