Darcey Steinke
Part of what makes the teenage years so fascinating, and so full of trepidation, for both teenagers and the adults involved in their lives, is that ethical codes are still in in their larval form and, very much in flux. As she did in her National Book Award-winning What I Saw and How I Lied (2008), in Strings Attached Judy Blundell offers another noirish thriller in which teenagers uncover the questionable actions of their elders and learn to form their own judgments.
—The New York Times
Mary Quattlebaum
Judy Blundell follows her 2008 National Book Award winner, What I Saw and How I Lied, with an intense young-adult mystery cut from the same midcentury-noir cloth but, if possible, even more intricately stitched. Family secrets are the warp and weft of this novel, too.
—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
The New York City mobster scene during the 1950s is vibrantly brought to life in this saga of a poor dancer who pays a high price for the breaks she gets. When the story opens, 17-year-old Kit Corrigan has left her Providence, R.I., family for the lights of Broadway and still has mixed feelings about her hotheaded ex-boyfriend, Billy, who has since joined the army. Then Kit receives an offer she can't refuse: become a snoop for Billy's gangster father in exchange for a much-needed Manhattan apartment and a nightclub gig. Kit almost immediately regrets her decision but is unable to prevent a future tainted by heartache, deception, and murder. Past tragedies suffered by Kit and her Irish-American family are artfully woven into the plot; if the book is a little slow-moving at first, National Book Award–winner Blundell (What I Saw and How I Lied) successfully constructs a complex web of intrigue that connects characters in unexpected ways. History and theater buffs will especially appreciate her attention to detail—Blundell again demonstrates she can turn out first-rate historical fiction. Ages 13–up. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
Praise for Strings Attached:* "National Book Award–winner Blundell delivers a brilliantly conceived novel set against the backdrop of the 1950 Kefauver mob hearings and the Red Scare with a story of redemption and truth at its core." - Kirkus Reviews, starred review* "National Book Award–winner Blundell successfully constructs a complex web of intrigue" - Publishers Weekly, starred review"Blundell is a master of the literary slow build, and her emotive yet sober style is reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald's in The Great Gatsby." - LA Times"Evoking the glamour, grit, and gusto of the era, Blundell has produced a compelling narrative with well-crafted characters who bring different ambitions, fears, and memories toward tragic collisions." - School Library Journal
School Library Journal
Gr 7 Up—It's 1950 and 17-year-old dancer Kit Corrigan has recently fled Providence, RI, and her former boyfriend, Billy, arriving in New York City with big dreams. In a lucky break, she scores a small part in a Broadway production, but she knows luck doesn't last. When Billy's estranged father, "dapper gangster Nate the Nose Benedict," a lawyer for the mob, shows up unexpectedly requesting her help to make things right, he convinces her that they both want the same thing—Billy's happiness. In return, he promises to help her, with no strings attached. However, Kit soon learns that there's no such thing as a free lunch, job, apartment, or fancy clothes. When a gangster Nate asked her to spy on is found dead, Kit becomes terrified and begins searching for the truth, only to discover that often life is a sticky web of lies woven one string at a time. Judy Blundell has written an intriguingly dark page-turning novel (Scholastic 2011) built on the shattered innocence of youth and filled with secrets, deceit, murder, and tangled relationships. Occasional chapter flashbacks to Kit's complicated past weave a history that reflects her actions in the present. Narrator Imma Gaivin's range of accents from New York to Irish is superb. A must have!—Cheryl Preisendorfer, Twinsburg City Schools, OH
JUNE 2011 - AudioFile
Redheaded Kit Corrigan is a dancer with a dream who has fled her Providence, Rhode Island, family and her volatile sweetheart, Billy, to head for Broadway lights. Emma Galvin expertly depicts the exciting world of the theater in 1950s New York. The glamour of uptown nightclubs, the mystique of Greenwich Village, and the postwar optimism of young chorus girls play out against a background of the Korean War, Red scares, and nuclear foreboding. When Billy’s father, who works for the Mafia, offers her a deal that could help Kit survive in the city, the plot takes a suspenseful turn. Galvin negotiates flashbacks and period details without ever losing the story’s tension. At the end, Judy Blundell takes a curtain call to answer listeners’ questions with warmth and charm. M.C.T. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Caught up in dreams of dancing on Broadway, Kit Corrigan unwisely accepts an apartment and a nightclub job from mob lawyer Nate Benedict in exchange for keeping tabs on his son Billy, who's enlisted in the Army along with Kit's brother, Jamie. Kit broke off her relationship with Billy after his last jealousy-fueled outburst. Nate starts calling in favors, and Kit becomes entangled in a web of secrets and lies. Like her Aunt Delia before her, she came to New York to escape a suffocating life in Providence and what Jamie calls "the Irish form of advancement—you don't dare do better than those before you." Kit's father had scraped together a living off the novelty of his motherless triplets, the Corrigan Three, in a home with psychic and emotional "undertows, things we didn't understand, and jokes and stories passing for truth." Layers of deception are peeled away in a jumbled sequence of events that echoes Kit's confusion as she discovers the extent of her family's connection with the Benedicts and realizes that her own actions at the age of 12 set in motion a chain of events that end in murder. National Book Award–winner Blundell (What I Saw and How I Lied, 2008)delivers a brilliantly conceived novel set against the backdrop of the 1950 Kefauver mob hearings and the Red Scare with a story of redemption and truth at its core.(Historical fiction. 14 & up)
