Stephanie Jane recenzis Grace & Serenity de Annalisa Crawford
A heartbreaking novel
4 steloj
Grace & Serenity is a heartbreaking novel which explores how easily childish dreams can be smashed when confronted with the callousness of the adult world. Grace is only fifteen when ninteen-year-old Neil sweeps her off her feet at a party. Even after he uses her pregnancy as an excuse to abandon her for months, the socially conditioned desirability of marriage-and-happy-families leads Grace to immediately accept his eventual proposal, unwittingly putting herself and her unborn child into danger as she ignores or underestimates all the aspects of his behaviour that should ring alarm bells.
The novel is narrated entirely in the first person by Grace herself and I particularly loved how Crawford portrays the glaring differences between how Grace perceives herself and the immaturity of her actions. She is an unreliable narrator too, and I often felt as though I was being led to dismiss her words as unbelievable even when …
Grace & Serenity is a heartbreaking novel which explores how easily childish dreams can be smashed when confronted with the callousness of the adult world. Grace is only fifteen when ninteen-year-old Neil sweeps her off her feet at a party. Even after he uses her pregnancy as an excuse to abandon her for months, the socially conditioned desirability of marriage-and-happy-families leads Grace to immediately accept his eventual proposal, unwittingly putting herself and her unborn child into danger as she ignores or underestimates all the aspects of his behaviour that should ring alarm bells.
The novel is narrated entirely in the first person by Grace herself and I particularly loved how Crawford portrays the glaring differences between how Grace perceives herself and the immaturity of her actions. She is an unreliable narrator too, and I often felt as though I was being led to dismiss her words as unbelievable even when physical evidence backed her up. Grace's rapid slide into isolated homelessness is all too plausible though. Crawford vividly describes Plymouth's urban landscape and I could visualise this city in a different light after having been shown it from Grace's perspective.
I would recommend Grace & Serenity to readers who enjoyed Angelica Stone by Susi Osborne or The Tender Birds by Carole Giangrande. Crawford's novel is a dark coming of age story that I frequently found upsetting. It is ultimately a rewarding read however and a book that should be pressed into the hands of all fifteen-year-olds, boys as well as girls, as a cautionary tale.