Retrieved from: the book-sale shelf at my library0439221609, 1999
Suggested by: the cover and the blurb
My Ratings: 8 Merit, 8 Interest, 9 Fun
This is a book aimed squarely at the 15-year-old market, primarily girls, but hoping to draw in the boys with the arcade-game aspect. Not sure how well that would work, though.
It's quite interesting that this book came out two years before September 11. There is a lot of discussion about prejudice, including against Arab-Americans, which plays rather well (to me) and makes it even more current than it might have been when it was originally released.
Roberta works in her family's virtual reality (the only 'clunk'--a big one--in the book) arcade in a dying mall in Florida. Her father's focus is himself and his surfboard and his girlfriend; he rarely works at the arcade. No, it's run mostly by her uncle along with his two teenage kids, Robertawith help from two 'loser' guys who work for game-plays: take out the garbage, paint, general dogsbody work. Roberta's aunt lives and works in Germany; her mother is dead, murdered 7 years ago in the arcade she and her husband were running on the Strip, which is now hooker-and-ho central. Her killer was never caught.
The book also includes: a spate of hate crimes going on at the mall, some discussion of the games being at fault, a really bitchy Rich Chick, a suicide, a near-suicide, explanations of how TV broadcast equipment works, Southern-fried politics, undercover detective work, a caretaker who dies and leaves a wonderfully surprising bequest, teachers and administrators who seem completely at a loss, a hippie TV evangelist with a horrible past...and ecological issues.
Yeah. And somehow it works pretty well, without sounding too many false notes. It's a decent book. I think we should add it to our collection at the library.
No comments:
Post a Comment