Reconstructing Amelia : a novel

Title:

Author:

Summary:

When her high-achieving fifteen-year-old daughter Amelia supposedly commits suicide after she is caught cheating, litigation lawyer and single mother Kate Baron, leveled by grief, must reconstruct the pieces of Amelia's life to find the truth and vindicate the memory of the daughter whose life she could not save.

Edition:

1st ed.

Physical Description:

382 p. ; 24 cm.

Subject Term:

Single mothers -- Fiction.

Daughters -- Death -- Fiction.

Private schools -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Harper,

Publication Date:

2013

ISBN:

9780062225436

Publication Information:

New York : Harper, c2013.

Call Number:

MCCREIG

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003058453	Adult Fiction	MCCREIG	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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Summary

In Reconstructing Amelia, the stunning debut novel from Kimberly McCreight, Kate's in the middle of the biggest meeting of her career when she gets the telephone call from Grace Hall, her daughter's exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Amelia has been suspended, effective immediately, and Kate must come get her daughter--now. But Kate's stress over leaving work quickly turns to panic when she arrives at the school and finds it surrounded by police officers, fire trucks, and an ambulance. By then it's already too late for Amelia. And for Kate.

An academic overachiever despondent over getting caught cheating has jumped to her death. At least that's the story Grace Hall tells Kate. And clouded as she is by her guilt and grief, it is the one she forces herself to believe. Until she gets an anonymous text: She didn't jump.

Reconstructing Amelia is about secret first loves, old friendships, and an all-girls club steeped in tradition. But, most of all, it's the story of how far a mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she couldn't save.

Fans of Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl will find Reconstructing Amelia just as gripping and surprising.

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

After her teenage daughter Amelia's mysterious suicide, litigation attorney Kate Baron becomes an unlikely amateur sleuth in McCreight's diverting, if busy, debut. Kate's grief over Amelia's death and guilt about her failures as a mother are compounded by a series of anonymous text messages intimating that Amelia was actually murdered. She partners up with NYPD Lt. Lewis Thompson, who involves her, to an implausible degree, as an equal in the investigation as they trawl through Amelia's online history and interview her classmates and their families. The real story of Amelia's life and death emerges slowly, through a creative blend of Kate's present, Amelia's past, and such varied communication methods as texts, e-mails, blog entries, and Facebook status updates, leading to a chaotic landslide of climactic revelations that strains believability. Amelia's first-person narration provides the most human note, as McCreight portrays the darkness of adolescence, complete with doomed love, bullies, poisonous friendship, and insecurity. Fans of literary thrillers will enjoy the novel's dark mood and clever form, even if the mystery doesn't entirely hold together. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff and Associates. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Library Journal Review

Kate Baron, a single mother and partner at a Manhattan law firm, is astonished to get a phone call about the suspension of her 15-year-old daughter, Amelia, previously an excellent student at a prestigious Brooklyn private school. But by the time Kate arrives at the school to pick her up, Amelia is dead in a fall from the roof. While the police investigation rules Amelia's death a suicide, Kate soon receives an anonymous text saying that Amanda didn't jump. Grieving, guilt-stricken, and desperate to better understand her daughter, Kate starts looking into recent events in Amelia's life, aided by a seasoned detective who reopens the case and discovers that the cruelty of teenagers pales next to adult vengeance. VERDICT Debut novelist McCreight tailors her format to her subject, sprinkling text messages and blog postings into a narrative that zigzags in chronology over a period of several months. Alternating perspectives from Kate and Amelia reveal the inner lives of a woman trying to balance motherhood with a demanding career and a teenager struggling with her blossoming sexuality while dealing with severe bullying. Despite a plot heavily dependent on coincidence, this is a compulsively readable novel that will appeal to Jodi Picoult fans. [See Prepub Alert, 10/28/12.]-Michele Leber, Arlington, VA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.