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All We Know Of Love (2013)

by Nora Raleigh Baskin(Favorite Author)

3.29 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0763666505 (ISBN13: 9780763666507)

languge

English

genre

Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction

publisher

Candlewick Press

review 1: Natalie Gordon's mother walked out on her and her father when Natalie was 11. Natalie, in a dysfunctional relationship and thinking she might be pregnant (and knowing her mother was pregnant with her when she married her father), sets out on a 28-hour bus trip to see her mother and find out. . . what? Why she walked out? What it was like to be pregnant out of wedlock and faced with several choices? Whether she's ever coming back? Nope.Natalie's mother was in the middle of a sentence when Natalie asked for a different kind of cookie with her after-dinner glass of milk. The sentence is never completed; Natalie's mother leaves abruptly, and four years later, Natalie wants to know what her mother was about to say. It was something about love. Maybe her mother will help her fig... moreure out what love is, what it means, how to recognize true love when you find it, something, anything. Nope. So, Natalie meets some interesting people on her bus journey. Maybe she has interesting conversations with some of them and this turns into sort of a coming of age/odyssey/journey of self-discovery story.Nope.Natalie encounters several people on the way to find her mother, but their stories are told by a third-person omniscient narrator, while Natalie's part of the story is told in first-person. Perhaps this works on some level, doing these other people's stories from an omniscient narrator's point of view instead of as a dialogue between Natalie and the storyteller, but I found it a little annoying, especially as Natalie doesn't seem to have been touched in any way whatsoever by the stories. One of my students, a high-school freshman, had no idea what the switching narrators thing was about. "Did they actually talk to her? Does another narrator take over? I thought you told us not to do that." There's also no real denouement. Natalie's mother can't remember what she was saying when Natalie interrupted and asked for a different cookie; however, Natalie finds out her mother does love her after all, that her mother has such low self-esteem that she didn't think Natalie needed her anymore once she was able to take care of herself (wtf--as if diapering, bathing, and braiding hair was all a parent needed to do to take care of a child. Srsly). Seeing her mom again, finding out she did love her, has never stopped loving her, seems to be enough for Natalie. While not a Disney-style, shiny-bow ending, it still seemed forced and simplistic to me.The most concerning thing is Natalie's codependent behavior regarding her self-absorbed boyfriend. This isn't her first pregnancy scare; she keeps breaking up with this douche and then going back to him because he makes such sweet pillow talk and he's a big jock or something, whatever. The pacing is a little awkward too. Natalie has flashbacks of her relationship with this guy as she's on the bus, but they're introduced at odd times. I understand that the human brain hops about in real life, but in a novel it makes for sloppy pacing and awkward storytelling. In the hands of another writer, it might have worked.
review 2: You've probably read something similar--girl on a journey to find the parent who deserted her. Girl with a problem. Girl who meets people on the way who give her a new way to think about things.But it's wonderfully done. Natalie felt real to me. And I love the way that though Natalie herself never learns to stories behind the people she meets, we, the readers get an insight into each of them and their dealings with love.***Scrotum Alert**** No, she doesn't use that famed word. But there is discussion of sex, though it's vague, and stuff about out of wedlock pregnancy. For older teens--it's a thoughtful little book that would be wasted on your 12 year old anyway--even if she IS a lot more brilliant than my own daughters ;) less

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