Lowry.Pei_Family_Resemblances-EN.pdf

This book will appeal to girls between the ages of around 12 and 15. It has the experiences of a girl who feels unwanted. For the younger readers, it will have a few squeamish bits for you. Overall this book is great. It has the teen girl, the love interest and the stories of her Aunt Augusta.Sent away by her parents so that she can recover from boyfriend problems and they can sort out their shaken marriage, 15-year-old Karen is spending a hot summer vacation in New Franklin, Ill.a small "Midwestern town bisected by the B & O tracks"where her chic schoolteacher aunt Augusta, 35, lives alone in the tall brick ancestral manse. Karen and Augusta talk with laconic awkwardness about love and growing up; Augusta busily hammers away on a garden gazebo that eventually collapses. Furnace repairman Jerry, one of Augusta's many lovers, comes to help and brings along a new beau for Karen, a youth named George. But Karen's edgy self-consciousness is hard to believe: she is embarrassed, for instance, to be seen buying Seventeen magazine. Pei's notion of kid talk is bland and cliche-ridden. Unfortunately, the action trudges on with drowsy slowness.