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Publisher:
Xlibris |
Release
Date: January 2004 |
ISBN:
1-4134-2349-3 |
Awards:
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Format
Reviewed: Trade Paperback |
Buy
it at Amazon |
Read
an Excerpt |
Genre:
Juvenile Fiction - Action and Adventure (ages 9-13) |
Reviewed:
2004 |
Reviewer:
Kristin Johnson |
Reviewer
Notes: Reviewer Kristin Johnson is the author of CHRISTMAS
COOKIES ARE FOR GIVING, co-written with Mimi Cummins and ORDINARY
MIRACLES: My Incredible Spiritual, Artistic and Scientific Journey,
co-written with Sir Rupert A.L. Perrin, M.D. |
Copyright
MyShelf.com |
|
The
Trapping
By Anthony Vela
The
“Oops, I’m really dead and I was just sticking around
long enough to complete a mission” plot device may have lost
its luster for young adult readers after “The Sixth Sense”
and “The Others." Yet Anthony Vela’s spooky-spiritual
novel, The Trapping, revitalizes a cliché his intended
audience might have yawned at, had he not mixed in a touch of “Joan
of Arcadia,” and a battle between angel and devil. After all,
when you’re old enough to drive legally, you automatically
know all there is to know, even if your clinging mother tells you
repeatedly that (a) girls are evil, (b) girls are evil, and (c)
girls are evil. One can picture actress Maureen O’Hara from
“Only the Lonely” in the role of Vela's character, "Martha
Chaplin," a possessive mom to college-going artist Gabe Chaplin.
When
he falls in love with high school student Sara Livingston, Gabe
is robbing the cradle. But an angry father is the least of his problems,
and is not even one of his problems. Sara’s father admires
and respects Gabe, unlike Gabe’s mother. While Martha Chaplin
gets the clingy-abusive-dependent-elderly-mom role, caregivers will
recognize that there is truth to this stereotype. Vela infuses the
portrayal with complex emotions undoubtedly drawn from caring for
his own mother in real life. Caregivers also will recognize that
mental illness comes and goes, as does Martha’s, when she
at last confronts Sara, and, for a moment, the harridan becomes
human. When a battle between good and evil shatters Martha's precious
television (she’s an Oprah fan who misses the point of Oprah’s
dynamic messages), her reaction is reminiscent of the classic “Twilight
Zone” episode, “Time Enough at Last,” in which
a bookish man escapes with his library only to have his glasses
break.
In a
real sense, Martha Chaplin is caught in a trap, as is Gabe. Sara,
an angel, inhabits the body of a young girl who died in a car accident.
This is the “trapping” the of the novel’s title.
And Sara’s trap frees Gabe to become the artist he is working
to become and to live his life freely. Even jaded teenagers can
appreciate that denouement.
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