The Hopeful

by Tracy O'Neill

Overview

A figure skating prodigy, sixteen-year old Alivopro Doyle is one of a few "hopefuls" racing against nature's clock to try and jump and spin their way into the Olympics. But when a disastrous fall fractures two vertebrae, leaving Ali addicted to painkillers and ultimately institutionalized, it's not just her dreams of glory that get torn asunder, but the very fabric that holds her fragile family together.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632460073
Publisher:	Ig Publishing
Publication date:	05/18/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	541 KB

About the Author

Tracy O’Neill is a writer living in Brooklyn, NY. In 2012, she was awarded the New York City Emerging Writers Fellowship by the Center for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and many other places. She currently teaches writing at the City College of New York.

Editorial Reviews

04/20/2015
Debut author O’Neill sets her novel in the world of competitive figure skating, but ultimately it’s a universal story about aspiration and imperfection. Alivopro (a contraction of the Latin phrase alis volat propriis, meaning “she flies with her own wings”) was adopted as a baby by the Doyles, a childless New Hampshire couple who snipe at each other but are utterly devoted to their adopted daughter. When she shows an aptitude for figure skating, her father eagerly drives her to a Boston skating club for coaching, while her mother, the consummate homemaker, organizes the family’s life. But after Ali suffers a serious fall that will likely end her skating career, her family seems at loose ends: her parents reveal their shortcomings while Ali secretly takes amphetamines to try to regain her skater’s figure and return to the ice. Ali’s caustic, unapologetically self-centered voice is strong and well-developed, and the secondary characters—especially Ali’s parents, but also her tutor and her pregnant cousin—offer both thematic reinforcement and opportunities for humor. The novel’s framework is a series of psychotherapy sessions that serve as jumping-off points for Ali’s flashbacks to her skating career and post-accident crises; the conceit is a little shopworn, but O’Neill nevertheless offers a new spin on the sports novel, rarely relying on easy metaphors and instead using Ali’s thwarted ambition to explore other ideas of heredity, ambition, maturity, failure, and, yes, hope. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Named A 5 Under 35 pick by the National Book Foundation.

"Ali’s caustic, unapologetically self-centered voice is strong and well-developed, and the secondary characters—especially Ali’s parents, but also her tutor and her pregnant cousin—offer both thematic reinforcement and opportunities for humor."—Publishers Weekly

"...the book soars in its descriptions of figure skating, capturing its strange and brutal beauty and achieving a beauty of its own in the process."—Kirkus

“Tracy O’Neill is a brilliant and bold new literary voice, and The Hopeful is destined to be one of the most exciting debut novels of the year.”—Julia Fierro, author of Cutting Teeth: A Novel

"The Hopeful is a fine debut, smartly exploring the costs of obsession and trauma, the wages of daring to chase your boldest dreams. Tracy O’Neill’s gift for precise and surprising detail reveals her page after page to be a smart and compelling storyteller, whose gripping first novel is sure to thrill readers.”—Matt Bell, author of In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods

“In her hypnotic debut, Tracy O’Neill has created an indelible character in Alivopro Doyle, a young woman trapped in an anguished tangle of identity and fierce ambition. Though Doyle fights to keep us at arm’s length with crackling comebacks, we can’t help but notice, and want to protect, her tender brokenness as she struggles to break free from a body that has failed her.”—Karolina Waclawiak, author of How to Get Into the Twin Palms

From the Publisher

2015-03-29
O'Neill's debut novel tracks an aspiring figure skater's journey of obsession, triumph, failure, and addiction. In a psych ward in New Hampshire, 17-year-old Alivopro "Ali" Doyle tells her doctor, "In the beginning was skating, and skating was everything…." At one time, Ali was an Olympic hopeful training for the regional championships, until a fall on the ice caused neck trauma and ended her amateur career. As the narrative weaves through sessions with her psychiatrist and a recounting of her training as a figure skater, what emerges is not a predictable story of loss and hope but a complex family drama. While Ali's father, Alvin, embraces her ambition as a distraction from his own depression, her mother, Lou, is more disturbed by Ali's single-minded desire to be a champion at any cost. Further complicating this dynamic is that Ali is adopted, born to a Native American mother. For Ali, her ethnicity and unknown heritage bring up insecurities about her body as she tries to keep herself in "Olympic condition," and her adoption often becomes a sticking point in arguments between Ali and Lou. After her accident, the family that was tentatively held together by a common goal begins to fall apart. Ali becomes addicted to amphetamines, determined to lose weight and start skating again, with predictably disastrous results. The entry into this novel can be difficult. The chronology is often unclear; many chapters are almost exclusively unmarked dialogue between Ali and her therapist; and sometimes the reader is not given enough context to fully understand a scene. But the book soars in its descriptions of figure skating, capturing its strange and brutal beauty and achieving a beauty of its own in the process. For fans of figure skating, this book is edgy and serious enough to not feel like a guilty pleasure.

Kirkus Reviews