Tricks Author: Visit Amazon's Ellen Hopkins Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1416950087 | Format: PDF
Tricks Description
From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up—Five teens desperately seek to find their way through the darkness in Hopkins's latest epic novel in verse. Eden flees an evangelical household; Cody blocks out a family illness with gambling and sex; Whitney gives up her body in exchange for the love she finds so elusive; Seth struggles to define himself as a homosexual; and Ginger comes to terms with an awful truth about her neglectful mother. Burden after burden piles on the teens' shoulders until they resort to the unthinkable in order to survive. As they near rock bottom, their narratives begin to intersect. It is only when their paths converge that a glimmer of redemption appears out of the hopelessness. From the punch delivered by the title, to the teens' raw voices, to the visual impact of the free verse, Hopkins once again produces a graphic, intense tale that will speak to mature teens.—
Jill Heritage Maza, Greenwich High School, CT END
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
About the Author
Ellen Hopkins
is the #1
New York Times bestselling author of
Crank,
Burned,
Impulse,
Glass,
Identical,
Tricks,
Fallout,
Perfect,
Tilt, and
Smoke, as well as the adult novels
Triangles and
Collateral. She lives with her family in Carson City, Nevada, where she has founded Ventana Sierra, a nonprofit youth housing and resource initiative. Visit her at EllenHopkins.com and on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter at @EllenHopkinsYA. For more information on Ventana Sierra, go to VentanaSierra.org.
- Paperback: 656 pages
- Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books (December 6, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1416950087
- ISBN-13: 978-1416950080
- Product Dimensions: 7 x 5.1 x 1.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
I just finished the book, and I have to admit that I desperately flipped through the last few blank pages hoping to find more. I warn you all now, the latter half of this review may end up with spoilers. If it does, I'll let you know with asterisks and pretty little caps.
First of all, I'm not an experienced Hopkins reader. I read another one of her books from my library (I'm pretty sure it was Impulse? Staring Tony, and two others in a suicide rehab clinic)
So going in to Tricks I sort of knew what to expect. Gritty, honest writing, emotion, and heartbreak.
Lots of people complain about two things in this book. One, universal with Hopkins it seems, it the writing style. I will admit I was also victim to the old mistake of opening it up, assuming it was poetry, and putting it down. Please, if You pick this book up, give it a chance! It's written in verse, but outside the "A Poem By ___" openers it's all straight prose divided in crafty line breaks that drive subtle points home.
Another thing is that people complain it's just too graphic. I'm sorry, but you're reading about love, heartbreak, and eventual prostitution. People say it's too detailed, and it disturbs them. Imagine how the ones who LIVE this kind of thing feel. When you're being raped there is no neat way to avoid the gritty truth and details. There's no way to forget the smell of sex or scrape away enough skin in the shower to ever feel clean. Hopkins takes that feeling of desperation, fear, and the thoughts of "who will want me now" and instills this into her book.
So if you don't want to feel like someone's gripping your heart with cold fingers, don't read this. If you're light stomached or can't take the truth of what's really happening in this world, this book isn't for you.
In her five previous novels, which focus on such timely and disturbing social phenomena as sexual abuse, attempted suicide and methamphetamine use, Ellen Hopkins cuts through propaganda and politics to get to the emotional heart of the often controversial subjects she explores. In TRICKS, her most ambitious novel to date, Hopkins uses her free verse style to great effect as she explores the different routes taken by five teens to the same desperate solution: prostitution.
Hopkins utilizes slightly different styles for each of her five subjects, a distinction that will probably go unnoticed by many readers, especially once they become absorbed in each person's story. She also provides transitions between narrators by repeating key words, further expressing the connections among these young people even before the plot does so. Although these stylistic niceties are subtle, the differences among Hopkins's subjects are not, and readers will likely have no trouble distinguishing the teens' narrative voices because their stories are so singular.
Eden is the daughter of a fundamentalist preacher in Idaho, whose parents send her to a religious rehabilitation camp, where she falls in love with a non-believer and trades sexual favors with a prison guard to try to secure her freedom. Seth is an Indiana farm boy who comes out to his father in the wake of his first gay love affair, only to be thrown out of the house and into the arms of a wealthy but demanding and manipulative older lover. Whitney is a typical wealthy teen from Santa Cruz; when her first serious relationship fails, her insecurities and desire for affection connect her with a charismatic older man who promises her love but may not have her best interests at heart.
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