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Résumé
Résumé
A teenage girl. A survivalist childhood. And now a bomb strapped to her chest. See the world through her eyes in this harrowing and deeply affecting literary thriller.
I'm Valkyrie White. I'm fifteen. Your government killed my family.
Ever since Mabby died while picking beans in their garden - with the pock-a-pock of a helicopter overhead - four-year-old Valley knows what her job is: hide in the underground den with her brother, Bo, while Da is working, because Those People will kill them like coyotes. But now, with Da unexpectedly gone and no home to return to, a teenage Valley (now Valkyrie) and her big brother must bring their message to the outside world - a not-so-smart place where little boys wear their names on their backpacks and young men don't pat down strangers before offering a lift. Blythe Woolston infuses her white-knuckle narrative, set in a day-after-tomorrow Montana, with a dark, trenchant humor and a keen psychological eye. Alternating past-present vignettes in prose as tightly wound as the springs of a clock and as masterfully plotted as a game of chess, she ratchets up the pacing right to the final, explosive end.
Critiques (5)
Critique de School Library Journal
Gr 9 Up-In the nine years since 15-year-old Valkyrie's mother was killed while picking beans from their garden, she and her brother Bo have been forced to hide in an underground room when their Da is gone. Da is a survivalist who makes bombs to subvert government activities, and he teaches Valley and Bo all he knows. Valley and her family are convinced that the government is killing its citizens and want to alert the rest of the country. When Bo and Valley return from a day of training, they find their home burning and their father missing and presumed dead. They put his plan into action, and eventually gather with other survivalists in a terrorist camp whose members base their faith on Norse mythology. Valley designs a plan where she will be a suicide bomber, and even when it goes awry, she's still determined to complete her mission. Befriending a teenage boy and his little brother, Valley creates a hostage situation with terrifying consequences for the boys. Valkyrie is a complex character-childlike and kind at times, yet brutally ruthless in the next moment. Kate Rudd does a great job narrating the book in the first person. She perfectly portrays Valley's stoic commitment to her goals at all costs. The book is bleak, depressing, and some parts are horrific to listen to. Teens will love it.-Julie Paladino, East Chapel Hill High School, NC (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Critique du Publishers Weekly
This brief but razor-sharp novel from Woolston (Catch & Release) is as unpredictable as the bomb strapped to the chest of the girl at its center, 15-year-old Valkyrie White. Raised in isolation in remote Montana, Valkyrie was four years old when her mother was killed tending the garden after black helicopters passed overhead. She and her brother are brought up by their father, who believes in being a free and free-thinking person, and who is happy to deliver violent messages for a price, such as targeting an "activist" judge. It's a path that, following more tragedies, finds Valkyrie dressed as an ordinary girl, an explosive hidden beneath her hoodie, riding in a U-Haul truck headed out into the world. Valkyrie makes every word count in her narration, which makes sense coming from a girl who grew up with such rules as "Never waste an opportunity to conserve resources." The ambiguities and of-the-moment realism of Woolston's story muddy the lines between right and wrong, while giving provocative insight into the mindset of those who see modern government as an unnecessary evil. Ages 14-up. Agent: Sarah Davies, Greenhouse Literary Agency. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Critique de Horn Book
Valkyrie, the teen daughter of a homegrown terrorist who disappeared a year ago, is charged with a mission: strap a bomb to her chest and send a message to the U.S. government. While the sparseness of the text keeps its fractured timeline and underdeveloped characters from cohering, this tonally intense study in brainwashing is disturbing and provocative. (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Critique de Kirkus
A chilling exploration of the life, motivations and strategies of a young American suicide bomber. Valkyrie (ne Valley) White is on a mission to wake up everyone. Her statement of purpose recorded and media-ready, she departs the survivalist camp where she and her brother Bo live, but when her driver detonates their truck bomb too early, Valkyrie sets off on her own to complete the mission. Through brief chapters alternating between the past and present, readers learn about Valley and Bo's childhood in Montana's backwoods, where their Da trained them to be self-sufficient and deeply wary of the world outside their land. After Valley and Bo's mother, Mabby, dies in what they believe was a black-helicopter attack authorized by Those People in the government, Da insists that the children learn paramilitary and bomb-building skills along with chess and how to read. In the present, Valkyrie uses Da's lessons to manipulate a teenage boy into driving to an opportune place for her to detonate her vest. Woolston's slow, tense revelation of the full horror of what the adults in Valkyrie's life have wrought in and through her is breathtaking. Readers who may have previously associated suicide bombers with religious fanaticism will be fascinated by Valkyrie's totally secular but equally single-minded devotion to anti-government rhetoric and revenge. Harrowing and unforgettable. (Fiction. 14-18)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Critique de Booklist
Woolston (The Freak Observer, 2010; Catch & Release, 2012) further sharpens her pen with a short novel that is daring on multiple fronts. Fifteen-year-old Valkyrie and her brother, Bo, live so far off the grid that they don't even technically exist. For years they have worked alongside their survivalist father, part of a secret network of free people who proudly take on paid missions for anarchist or paranoid clients: building bombs, illegally transporting humans across borders, and so on. If it sounds vague, it is Woolston limits us to Vally's proud, brainwashed perspective as the narrative intercuts between the siblings' initial struggle to continue their father's cause after his death and Vally's current and final mission: explode the bombs laced to her chest to deliver a last message to humankind. Much of the book is a puzzle of uncertain motives, ambiguous characters, and ominously childlike musings ( We fix clocks. We wear socks. We fix clocks while we wear socks ). But Woolston's resistance to standard redemption tropes is courageous, making this a periodically confounding but impressively focused work.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist
