Friday Book Beginnings & Friday 56: Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby

This 2006 novel by YA writer Rorby's been lauded by quite a few bloggers in the past few days, so it's one of the two books closest at hand.

The vibration of someone moving through the house woke Joey.  She opened her eyes with a start, her heart racing.  The room was pitch black, but it was getting light outside.  She could see the dim outline of the deck beyond her sliding glass doors and the redwood tree that grew beside it.  It's just Ray.  Her heart slowed.

From page 56:

In the winter, she kept a small brown tarp hidden in the dry center of the hollow.  Joey bent to retrieve it and felt the hair on her neck prickle.  She whirled around, her heart racing, but as usual there was no one there.  Sometimes silence gave her the creeps, especially in the dim light with anger in the air.

Well, one can immediately note that this novel will likely offer action and suspense, and that character and plot will likely trump the stylistic elements here.  Typical enough of current Y.A. fiction.  No worries.

And the issue of inter-species communication still intrigues me (Joey is deaf but not allowed to learn sign, yet when she makes friends with a biologist and his chimpanzee subject Sukari, she secretly begins to communicate with the ape using ASL) still intrigues me, so I'll be gobbling this one up this weekend before heading to the movie theater on Sunday for Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

But before all that, I'm going to visit the folks at Book Beginnings for more tantalizing openers and at Freda's Voice for the Friday 56 , trolling for new books to add to my TBR list.  Hope you will too.

MFB,
L