Life: An Exploded Diagram

by Mal Peet

Overview

Carnegie Medalist Mal Peet ignites an epic tale of young love against the dramatic backdrop of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Can love survive a lifetime? When working-class Clem Ackroyd falls for Frankie Mortimer, the gorgeous daughter of a wealthy local landowner, he has no hope that it can. After all, the world teeters on the brink of war, and bombs could rain down any minute over the bleak English countryside – just as they did seventeen years ago as his mother, pregnant with him, tended her garden. This time, Clem may not survive. Told in cinematic style by acclaimed writer Mal Peet, this brilliant coming-of-age novel is a gripping family portrait that interweaves the stories of three generations and the terrifying crises that define them. With its urgent sense of history, sweeping emotion, and winning young narrator, Mal Peet's latest is an unforgettable, timely exploration of life during wartime.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780763656317
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	10/11/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
Lexile:	820L (what's this?)
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Mal Peet (1947–2015) is the acclaimed author of the Carnegie Medal–winning novel Tamar as well as the Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Book Life: An Exploded Diagram and three Paul Faustino novels: Keeper, The Penalty, and Exposure, a winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. He is also the co-author of Cloud Tea Monkeys, Mysterious Traveler, and Night Sky Dragons, all of which he wrote with his wife, Elspeth Graham.

Mal Peet (1947–2015) is the acclaimed author of the Carnegie Medal–winning novel Tamar as well as the Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Book Life: An Exploded Diagram and three Paul Faustino novels: Keeper, The Penalty, and Exposure, a winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. He is also the co-author of Cloud Tea Monkeys, Mysterious Traveler, and Night Sky Dragons, all of which he wrote with his wife, Elspeth Graham.

Mal Peet’s story in his own words . . .


As a child:
I grew up as a member of an emotionally impaired family on a council estate in a one-horse market town in north Norfolk. The three things that kept me sane were my bike, books, and soccer. The bike took me great distances. (Norfolk is, famously, flat, although there are hills that can sneak up on you). Books took me further away, often to islands: Treasure Island, the Coral Island, and wherever it was that the Swiss Family Robinson found themselves. I also loved comics, and originally wanted Keeper to be a graphic novel. As for soccer, by the time I was sixteen, I was playing at least three full matches a week – for my school, for my county, and for the town.


As an adult:
After university I had some lost years, like many of my peers. I tried teaching to start with. Then I quit and went on walkabout. I worked in a hospital mortuary. I worked at an abattoir; what with the heat and the carnage it was an authentic vision of Hell. I went to Devon because I liked the sound of it, and there worked on building sites. I went to Canada and worked with a road crew consisting of a variety of interesting characters, including mad Newfoundlanders and exiled Irishmen. I met a lovesick man in Ontario who wanted someone to drive with him to Vancouver, where his girlfriend was. That week-long drive across Canada was one of the best and worst things I have ever done.


As an artist:
Like many people (I suspect), I had no real interest in children’s literature until I had children of my own. It'll sound a bit evangelical, I suppose, but I truly believe that there are few things more important, useful, and protective than sharing stories with your children. After their bath, heaped into a big chair, doing the voices, discussing the pictures, softening your voice as the rhythm of their breathing deepens. . . . You start to understand why certain books work and others don't.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Peet creates an explosive world where love is frowned upon and the past has bloody teeth and bad breath. It's a world that demands deep examination and thought, and Peet has done a splendid job of creating it.
—Booklist

Peet's brilliant, ambitious novel bridges the years between World War II and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City, but at its heart is a star-crossed affair set during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Recommend this memorable novel to mature teen readers, and if you can wrest away a copy, read it yourself.
—School Library Journal

This is mesmerizing through the sheer force and liveliness of its prose, as well as its unpredictable, inexorable plot. Peet's gift for imagery makes the novel fizz with the intensity of an adolescent's heightened perceptions-in which everything is alive, and even boredom is an all-engrossing activity. Place, period, and adolescent passion all come through with exuberant feeling and humor; Peet's subtle, literary play with narrative voice, style, and chronology make this a satisfyingly sophisticated teen novel. Outstanding.
—The Horn Book

Sophisticated teens and adults will appreciate this subtle yet powerful exposition of the far-reaching implications of war.
—Kirkus Reviews

Editorial Reviews

Gr 9 Up—Peet's brilliant, ambitious novel bridges the years between World War II and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City, but at its heart is a star-crossed affair set during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The titular life is that of 17-year-old Clem Ackroyd, a working-class boy living in British government-assisted housing. The object of his lust, 16-year-old Frankie Mortimer, resides in ritzy Bratton Manor. Despite their class differences, Clem and Frankie launch a torrid (and top secret) romance, engaging in some eyeball-melting make-out/groping sessions wherever and whenever possible. As the threat of nuclear annihilation grows, Peet effectively juxtaposes the tension surrounding Cuba with the increasingly sexual relationship between the lovers: "I absolutely refuse to die a virgin," bemoans Frankie at one point. Peet's immediate writing style brims with fine detail, from the "cigarette and strawberry juice" tastes of the couple's first kiss to Frankie's train compartment that "smelled of fart and smoke." While much of the narrative consists of Clem's point of view, an omniscient narrator occasionally takes readers into the minds of Frankie and several villagers, and into the respective war rooms of the U.S. and Russia. The horrific ramifications of war are implicitly stated, but not in a heavy-handed way. Recommend this memorable novel to mature teen readers, and if you can wrest away a copy, read it yourself.—Sam Bloom, Groesbeck Branch Library, Cincinnati, OH

School Library Journal

Peet’s ambitious novel attempts to tie the story of two British teenagers’ ill-fated romance to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. At age 16, Clem Ackroyd, the intelligent son of working-class parents, falls hard for Frankie, the rich daughter of Clem’s father’s boss. Though the main thread involves Clem and Frankie’s increasingly frisky sexual behavior, Peet’s sweep is both parochial and vast, with attention paid to Ackroyd family genealogy and to tracing the post–WWII geopolitics that brought the U.S. and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear annihilation. The history lessons, linking the showdown over Cuba with Clem’s urgent attempts to lose his virginity before the world is blown to smithereens, are an uneasy fit, and clarity suffers a bit from narration that hopscotches from Clem’s first-person account to a third-person voice. There are some sharply observed scenes involving Clem and his parents, though the dialogue is written in a regional British vernacular that readers may find difficult to parse. The denouement is heartbreaking, as the young lovers finally satisfy their longing but pay a horrifically high price. Ages 14–up. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Peet creates an explosive world where love is frowned upon and the past has bloody teeth and bad breath. It's a world that demands deep examination and thought, and Peet has done a splendid job of creating it.
—Booklist (starred review)

Peet's brilliant, ambitious novel bridges the years between World War II and the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City, but at its heart is a star-crossed affair set during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Recommend this memorable novel to mature teen readers, and if you can wrest away a copy, read it yourself.
—School Library Journal (starred review)

This is mesmerizing through the sheer force and liveliness of its prose, as well as its unpredictable, inexorable plot. Peet's gift for imagery makes the novel fizz with the intensity of an adolescent's heightened perceptions-in which everything is alive, and even boredom is an all-engrossing activity. Place, period, and adolescent passion all come through with exuberant feeling and humor; Peet's subtle, literary play with narrative voice, style, and chronology make this a satisfyingly sophisticated teen novel. Outstanding.
—The Horn Book (starred review)

Sophisticated teens and adults will appreciate this subtle yet powerful exposition of the far-reaching implications of war.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Remarkable work of historical fiction...War is the backdrop, but the heart of the story is the forbidden love affair between middle-class Clem and Frankie Mortimer...This title would be an ideal choice for a multi-generational book discussion, and will very likely have adult crossover appeal.
—VOYA

The story is beautifully told and Peet is masterful in his ability to combine history with a family's story, a bold move on his part, but his writing, combined with the stories of this family, make it difficult to put down.
—Library Media Connection (highly recommended)

A reminder that labeling a work as "YA" is often, well, arbitrary. Peet may put young people at the center of his fiction, but his work is so spectacular that it can- and should-be savored by readers of all ages...If you'd like to give a young person this novel, do yourself a favor: Read it first!
—BookPage

Peet has once more produced a winner: a subtle, minutely observed novel with a huge heart and a bold historical sweep.
—The Guardian (UK)

All I wanted to do was tear home, grab the book and start reading it again, this time to savor the language, ponder the connections and howl at the moon.
—Bookends (Booklist blog)

LIFE: AN EXPLODED DIAGRAM is a unique and profound look at how a multigenerational family survives war time.
—TeenReads.com

An outstanding example of what truly astounding literature should be.
—American Mensa

From the Publisher

Peet’s ambitious novel is about first love (and lust) and how world events help make people who they are. The tent poles holding up Clem Ackroyd’s life include WWII, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and 9/11. The author focuses on the tiny details of everyday life, and narrator Simon Vance gives them quiet dignity. The point of view jumps from omniscient to first person, with Vance ensuring that listeners always know where they are. His English accents, both earthy working class and crisp upper class, are, unsurprisingly, spot-on, but his American and Russian accents tend to be less effective. Still, his husky voice convincingly depicts all the love, longing, and human messiness this story offers. G.D. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2012 - AudioFile

A coming-of-age story framed by some of the most terrifying events of the last 60 years, from World War II to 9/11.

Peet achieves what few writers for young adults have: a bold venture that spans generations against a backdrop of war and global politics and their effect on individual lives, while describing minute facets of those lives in intimate, cinematic detail.Clem came unexpectedly into the world, a "wartime mishap," whose premature birth was brought on by a German air raid over rural England. A smart, working-class boy with a talent for drawing, Clem attends school on scholarship. In defiance of the local prohibition against "getting Above Yerself," Clem falls in love with Frankie, the daughter of a wealthy man bent on bulldozing his land into a prairie. In delicious and often humorous meanderings through time and place, the author adroitly intertwines the brinkmanship of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis with the teenagers' secret romance. His narrative glides easily from Clem's first-person retrospective to third-person storytelling from several points of view, including Kennedy's and Krushchev's.

Sophisticated teens and adults will appreciate this subtle yet powerful exposition of the far-reaching implications of war.(Fiction. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews