07/28/2014
Francesca Schnell, nicknamed Frankie, is a 15-year-old girl tormented by guilt over the death of her little brother, Simon, who drowned four years earlier when she was supposed to be watching him. Her devastated, withdrawn mother seems to blame her for Simon’s death, and Francesca suspects her father is having an affair. But a babysitting job for a little boy, also called Frankie, offers a path to healing and forgiveness, and Francesca even wonders if he is her brother reincarnated. Sands’s narration is excellent. Her youthful voice is a perfect match for teenage Francesca, and every word is full of heartfelt emotion, particularly when Francesca is upset and her voice trembles. Sands also creates distinctive voices for the other characters: Francesca’s perky best friend, Lisette; Lisette’s deep-voice boyfriend Bradley (whom Francesca has a crush on); Frankie, a bubbly boy; and Frankie’s mom, who has a bright, melodic voice. Teens and lovers of well-written coming-of-age YA fiction will want to give this one a listen. Ages 12–up. An Algonquin Young Readers hardcover. (Apr.)
The Summer of Letting Go
Narrated by Tara Sands
Gae PolisnerUnabridged — 7 hours, 33 minutes
The Summer of Letting Go
Narrated by Tara Sands
Gae PolisnerUnabridged — 7 hours, 33 minutes
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Overview
Summer has begun, the beach beckons-and Francesca Schnell is going nowhere. Four years ago, Francesca's little brother, Simon, drowned, and Francesca's the one who should have been watching. Now Francesca is about to turn sixteen, but guilt keeps her stuck in the past. Meanwhile, her best friend, Lisette, is moving on, most recently with the boy Francesca wants but can't have.
At loose ends, Francesca trails her father, who may be having an affair, to the local country club. There she meets four-year-old Frankie Sky, a little boy who bears an almost eerie resemblance to Simon, and Francesca begins to wonder if it's possible Frankie could be his reincarnation. Knowing Frankie leads Francesca to places she thought she'd never dare to go, and it begins to seem possible to forgive herself, grow up, and even fall in love-whether or not she solves the riddle of Frankie Sky.
Editorial Reviews
12/23/2013
Francesca Schnell goes by Frankie and has avoided the water ever since her brother drowned four years ago. But odd things are happening this summer: she thinks her father's having an affair; she has a guilty crush on her best friend's new boyfriend; and she's hired to look after a rambunctious four-year-old, also named Frankie, who loves the water. Not only does Frankie look like Francesca's brother, he also was born right around the time of his death, and she can't help wondering if the two events are somehow linked. It makes sense that a grieving Francesca would be sensitive to signs and portents, but Polisner (The Pull of Gravity) overemphasizes the coincidences, adding a distracting layer to an already plot-heavy book. No device is necessary to explain the bond between the two Frankies, and the mysticism risks overshadowing the real story: nearly-16-year-old Francesca's reentry into a wider life and the way it builds to a confrontation with the withdrawn but overprotective mother who seems to blame Francesca for her brother's death. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. (Mar.)
The genre of sibling-loss fiction is two books richer… [Francesca] learns from Frankie Sky that it’s important to keep on living rather than going through the motions. This is really the emotional heart of the novel… Fran[cesca’s] outpouring resonates with real feeling. Here, Polisner gets her subject exactly right.” —The New York Times Book Review “A touching and beautiful story about life’s beautiful surprises.” —Justine magazine “The Summer of Letting Go is haunting, heart-lifting, and impossible to put down . . . Francesca Schnell is one of the most authentic young adult characters I've read in a long time.” —A. S. King, author of Reality Boy, Ask the Passengers, and Please Ignore Vera Dietz “With a light, deft hand, Polisner gives Frankie’s world touches of humor, gravitas, and teen-centered reality, as well as multifaceted, sympathetic characters who seem plucked from any typical suburban street . . . [The Summer of Letting Go] deserves a spot beside the hammock.” —Booklist “Polisner’s delicate handling of such questions raises this novel above the pack of young-adult novels that deal with loss.” —Newsday “Gae Polisner brings joy and sadness to readers every time a page is turned . . . A beautiful novel about unlikely friendship that will put a smile on anyone's face.” —TeenReads.com “A beautiful story of heartbreak and hope.” —Daisy Whitney, author of The Mockingbirds and Starry Nights “A very realistic novel…truly able to capture the emotions of a teenage girl haunted by her past… The novel is great quick-read to read anytime of the year, which makes the soul long for summer and a time for change. I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in coping with tragedy and learning to love at the same time.” —Teen Ink “The prose is gentle but evocative, and Frankie Sky’s childlike exuberance and occasional misconceptions add heart and humor . . . [The Summer of Letting Go is] both hopeful and careful—like Francesca herself.” —Kirkus Reviews “The characters of the story are all very well drawn, the dialogue realistic, and the story itself well written, with much for teens to think and talk about.” —VOYA “First-rate realistic fiction with plenty of heart.” —School Library Journal
“The genre of sibling-loss fiction is two books richer… [Francesca] learns from Frankie Sky that it’s important to keep on living rather than going through the motions. This is really the emotional heart of the novel… Fran[cesca’s] outpouring resonates with real feeling. Here, Polisner gets her subject exactly right.” —The New York Times Book Review
“The Summer of Letting Go is haunting, heart-lifting, and impossible to put down . . . Francesca Schnell is one of the most authentic young adult characters I've read in a long time.” —A. S. King, author of Reality Boy, Ask the Passengers, and Please Ignore Vera Dietz
“Polisner does a great job portraying the inner world of a 16-year-old whose trials have aged her prematurely. With a light, deft hand, Polisner gives Frankie’s world touches of humor, gravitas, and teen-centered reality, as well as multifaceted, sympathetic characters who seem plucked from any typical suburban street.” —Booklist
“Gae Polisner brings joy and sadness to readers every time a page is turned... a beautiful novel about unlikely friendship that will put a smile on anyone's face.” —TeenReads.com
“A beautiful story of heartbreak and hope.” —Daisy Whitney, author of The Mockingbirds and Starry Nights
“A very realistic novel…truly able to capture the emotions of a teenage girl haunted by her past… The novel is great quick-read to read anytime of the year, which makes the soul long for summer and a time for change. I highly recommend to anyone who is interested in coping with tragedy and learning to love at the same time.” —Teen Ink
“The prose is gentle but evocative, and Frankie Sky’s childlike exuberance and occasional misconceptions add heart and humor . . . [The Summer of Letting Go is] both hopeful and careful--like Francesca herself.” —Kirkus Reviews
“The characters of the story are all very well drawn, the dialogue realistic, and the story itself well written, with much for teens to think and talk about.” —VOYA
“First-rate realistic fiction with plenty of heart.” —School Library Journal
02/01/2014
Gr 7 Up—With gentleness and thoroughness, Polisner probes the wounds of a family rocked by the drowning death of one of their own, four-year-old Simon. The story begins four years after Simon's death, the summer Frankie turns 15. The beach beckons, but Frankie is cemented in fear and guilt. She believes she is responsible for Simon's death. While Frankie's loyal BFF, Lisette, is wrapped up in her new boyfriend, Frankie has a lot of time to call her own, so she takes on a babysitting job for the emotionally wounded young mother of a four-year-old boy who shares the protagonist's name. Events in little Frankie's short life and his personality bear an eerie resemblance to Simon's, so much so that big Frankie begins to wonder if Simon has been reincarnated. Polisner has a keen understanding of the suffering, maturing teen psyche; Frankie's fragility and self-doubt are heartbreaking in their realism. Her guilt is compounded by the unhealthy coping mechanisms of her parents and by her own distress at having a crush on Lisette's boyfriend. There are no easy answers, but over the course of the summer, Frankie learns the value of believing in something bigger than herself. First-rate realistic fiction with plenty of heart.—Jennifer Prince, Buncombe County Public Libraries, NC
Four years after Francesca’s small brother, Simon, drowns, she begins falling apart. Narrator Tara Sands tracks Francesca’s courageous summer journey as she confronts an array of fears—from swimming to being honest with her parents and her “bff.” Confusion clouds Francesca’s already complicated emotions when she agrees to babysit Frankie Sky, a 4-year-old boy born on the day of her brother’s death. Is this coincidence, or is Frankie her brother reincarnated? Nearing the story’s climax, Sands expresses the terrible anger that Francesca has denied for years. Even stronger than this crescendo of a performance is Sands’s portrayal of the active, adorable Frankie Sky. His malapropisms and misunderstandings counteract Francesca’s pain—winning her heart and wowing listeners. S.W. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
2014-01-29
Four years after her younger brother, Simon, drowned in the ocean, Francesca Schnell meets a child she thinks might be his reincarnation. Maybe everything happens for a reason. Following the woman with whom she suspects her father is having an affair leads Francesca to a country club where she meets—and rescues from an ill-advised dive into a pool—4-year-old Frankie Schyler. As she gets to know "Frankie Sky" and his kind but inattentive mother, Francesca begins to see connections between Frankie and her own brother and to wonder if there is a spiritual explanation for the similarities between the two. Unfortunately—or is it fortunately after all?—the only person Francesca can talk to about reincarnation is her best friend Lisette's very charming, very taken boyfriend, Bradley. And there's nobody, really, with whom Francesca can share her deepest secret: Simon's death was Francesca's fault. This is a quiet story about miracles and relationships, and Francesca has something to learn from each person whose life touches hers—even the neighbor her father keeps visiting on the sly. The prose is gentle but evocative, and Frankie Sky's childlike exuberance and occasional misconceptions add heart and humor. Some long-standing family conflicts are resolved very quickly, but the story never comes off as saccharine or simplistic. Both hopeful and careful—like Francesca herself. (Fiction. 12-16)
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170010981 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HighBridge Company |
| Publication date: | 03/25/2014 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
The Summer of Letting Go
By Gae Polisner
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Copyright © 2014 Gae PolisnerAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61620-256-9
CHAPTER 1
It's not even noon in not even July, yet already the sun bakes down hot and steady, making the air waffle like an oily mirage.
Lisette walks ahead of me, her blond ponytail bobbing happily, the stray strands lit gold by the sunshine that spills down through the fresh green canopy of leaves. Bradley holds tight to her hand, ducks to avoid the low-hanging branches. Prickles of sweat appear between his shoulder blades—dark gray spots against the pale blue cotton of his T-shirt that mesmerize me.
I shift my gaze to my spring green, no-lace Converse sneakers, wondering for the millionth time what it would feel like to have my hand in his.
As if he reads my thoughts, he turns for a second and smiles. My heart somersaults. I shouldn't feel this way about Lisette's boyfriend.
I duck my head and keep walking.
The path winds to the right. Lisette leans against Bradley into the curve, her shoulder bumping his, and he wraps his arm around her. I slow my pace and stare up through the sunny trees.
I hate summer to begin with, and it looks like I'm going to spend this one being a third wheel.
We reach the clearing that opens to Damson Ridge. Less than a minute from here to Lisette's house. Another five minutes to mine.
Lisette and I have made this trek from high school to home hundreds of times together, but today it feels different, at this hour, with Bradley Stephenson along.
We're out early for lunch in between final exams, this afternoon's test our last ever of tenth grade. Bradley's a junior, so he finished a few days ago. He's just being chivalrous walking Lisette home.
"Come on, Frankie!" She turns, still walking. "We need to hurry. We have, like, what, an hour?" But Bradley stops, sidetracked, at the edge of the path. "Are you kidding, Nature Boy?" she says. "You are so totally goofy."
I stop, too, so I don't catch up to them.
"What?" He holds out a leafy stalk he's pulled up by the roots. "It's sassafras." Lisette shakes her head and rolls her eyes, even as my heart melts. I love sassafras. My dad and I used to pick it from the fields by the elementary school, back when we did that sort of thing. "Suit yourself," he says, wiping the stem with the inside corner of his T-shirt and slipping it in his mouth. "Tastes like root beer."
"Ew, come on." Lisette pulls his arm. "I kiss those lips, you know. And, anyway, you may be done, but Frankie and I really need to eat something and get back to school. I hear Shaw's final is crazy. We need sustenance. And I don't mean root beer sticks." She veers off the path toward her street and walks backward to face me. "You coming to my house, Francesca?"
"Nah, it's hot. I think I'll go home and change."
"You sure? It's fine by me." It's Bradley who says this, not Lisette.
"Yes, but thanks." I flip a wave and keep walking.
"Okay, see you back at school," Lisette calls. "Just one more to go, Frankie, and then we're free as birds for the summer!" She blows me a kiss before skipping away with Bradley.
I watch them disappear, my heart filled with longing, my life feeling anything but free.
* * *
When I'm about to turn onto our street, I perk up. Dad's car heads toward me. His silver-gray Jeep Grand Cherokee with the sunroof and the tinted windows. He shouldn't be home. He should be at work selling houses. I guess he had no clients this afternoon.
I smile and hold up my hand to wave, but the car turns right at the prior block instead of making the left onto ours.
I figure he spaced or something, so I wait, but his car never comes back around.
* * *
When I reach home, our driveway's empty. I must have been mistaken. Dad's still at work then, and Mom's where she always is: at her desk at the Drowning Foundation.
Fine. The Simon A. Schnell Foundation for the Prevention of Blah, Blah, Blah and Whatever.
After nearly four years, I still don't get how she spends her life there. I know she thinks it somehow "gives it all purpose," but the place only makes me feel worse about things.
I stop on the stoop, kiss my fingers, and touch them to Simon's stone frog. Inside, I make a lame cheese and mayo sandwich and stand at the kitchen window, eating.
As I'm about to head upstairs to change, Mrs. Merrill appears in her window across the street through the slats of her venetian blinds. They're parted just enough to make her out, though not clearly or completely. She moves to the center of the room, seems to talk on a phone, then walks to the window, presses a few slats down, and peers out.
I duck from view. I know I'm nosy, but I'm fascinated by the little I've seen of Mrs. Merrill since she moved in the summer that Simon died.
Dad was actually the broker who sold her the house, but Mom and I were never formally introduced. It's not like we were feeling too neighborly those days, and over the years, I guess, not that much had changed. Still, I've watched her working in her garden, taken by how pretty she is, but in a sophisticated, confident way like Angelina Jolie, not a pale, fragile way, like my mother.
Mrs. Merrill lets the blinds slip back and leaves the room, so I rinse my dish and turn to go upstairs, but she reappears a second later, walking quickly past the window. This time, she's not alone, but with a man—tall, dark hair, broad shoulders—who looks awfully like my father.
My heart stops, but in fairness, it's hard to make out much through the blinds.
I tell myself to chill, but my eyes dart back to our empty driveway, and my mind to the car I saw go by a few minutes ago. Did Dad park on the next street over and sneak in through her backyard?
I look at the window again, but Mrs. Merrill and the man are gone.
* * *
As I walk back to school, I try to shrug it off. Why would it be my father? If it was my father, and he needed something from Mrs. Merrill, he would have parked in our driveway and walked across the street. Plus, he barely knows her. Why would he park somewhere else and sneak into her house in the middle of a weekday afternoon?
I know the obvious answer even if I don't want to, and all through Mrs. Shaw's English Honors final, questions circulate in my brain.
Dad has been acting funny lately, hasn't he? Too cheerful. But, of course, he's like that anyway—the only person in our family who is. But this is more than that. He seems unusually happy.
I try to keep my focus on my one remaining essay question about Homer and his poems, but it drifts to the poster on Mrs. Shaw's far wall. It's a scene from The Odyssey, which we read with The Iliad midyear.
The poster shows an old-fashioned illustration of Odysseus tied high on his ship's mast, a dark-haired siren trying to lure him with her song. In the poem, the sirens live on a magical island. Their song is enchanting but deadly, because the sailors who follow the music are led to dangerous, raging waters, where they die upon jagged rocks. Odysseus knows this, but he wants to hear them sing, so he orders his sailors to bind him there, while filling their own ears with wax.
On the poster, Odysseus strains against the ropes as the dark-haired siren reaches for him. A siren who looks uncannily like Mrs. Merrill.
What if it was my father in Mrs. Merrill's house? If it was him, don't I need to know?
If it was him, and I don't put a stop to it, there will be no hope left for my parents. I'm not naive. My parents' marriage has been teetering on the verge of destruction for years. They fight or, worse, they don't talk at all. It's not Dad's fault. Mom isn't herself anymore, and hasn't been one bit since Simon died.
Still, she's my mother, and she needs him.
She can't take more destruction.
She can't take one more person she loves being swept out to sea.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Summer of Letting Go by Gae Polisner. Copyright © 2014 Gae Polisner. Excerpted by permission of ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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