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Library | Audience | Home Location | Material Type | Shelf Number | Status |
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Searching... Collier | Teen/Young Adult | Fiction | Teen Book | GILLI | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Sometimes one night can change everything. On this particular night, Wren and her three best friends are attending a black-tie party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to celebrate the opening of a major exhibit curated by her father. An enormous wind blasts through the city, making everyone feel that something unexpected and perhaps wonderful will happen. And for Wren, that something wonderful is Nolan. With his root-beer-brown Michelangelo eyes, Nolan changes the way Wren'sheart beats. In Isabel Gillies's Starry Night, suddenly everything is different. Nothing makes sense except for this boy. What happens to your life when everything changes, even your heart? How much do you give up? How much do you keep?
Author Notes
Isabel Gillies is an American actress and author. She was born in New York City, New York, on February 9, 1970 and graduated from NYU with a BFA in film.
Best known as Kathy Stabler, the wife of Detective Elliot Stabler on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Gillies played a number of roles in an acting career that spanned two decades.
Her memoir about the failure of her first marriage, Happens Every Day, was published in 2009 and became a New York Times Bestseller. Her follow-up memoir, A year and Six Seconds, was published in 2011.
Gillies' first foray into fiction, the young adult novel, Starry Night, was published in 2014.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Gillies's (Happens Every Day) first YA novel traces the rise and fall of a young artist's first love and how it changes her course. High school sophomore Wren is eager to spend her junior year abroad, studying art in France at Saint-Remy, where Vincent van Gogh created The Starry Night, her favorite masterpiece. But that's before a magical evening at a Metropolitan Museum of Art event orchestrated by her museum director father. There, decked out in her mother's precious Oscar de la Renta gown, Wren is swept off her feet by a handsome young musician, who appears to be just as enamored with her. Over the next few weeks their feelings for each other intensify, making Wren lose sight of her dream of going to France. The enchantment of the couple's first evening together outshines the rest of the novel, making subsequent conflicts, squabbles, and betrayals anticlimactic by comparison. Still, Wren's rude awakening from her fairy-tale happiness will be felt deeply, alerting romantics to the danger of losing oneself amid the dazzle of infatuation. Ages 12-up. Agent: Bill Clegg, William Morris Endeavor. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Wren has had a close circle of friends since before she was born. Known as the Turtles, Wren and her four best friends were all conceived after their parents read Lady Chatterley's Lover for their book club. Wren has that blend of worldly knowledge and social naïveté sometimes found in children raised in wealthy Manhattan families. Her father is the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Wren is a talented artist. Just before one of the Met's extravagant openings, Wren meets Nolan, a boy whose divorced mother allows him lots of freedom. Soon Wren is hopelessly in love, valuing her relationship with Nolan even above her long-cherished dream of studying art in France. There is a lot of telling here; descriptions of conversations, clothing, and background filler may slow some readers. Still, there is much to recommend about this touching story of first love, betrayal, and friendship. Recommend to fans of Lauren Myracle's Eleven series.--Colson, Diane Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Wren Noorlander, who has a sweet naïveté that often seems younger than her 15 years, occupies a sophisticated, insulated sort of Manhattan existence. She attends a private girls school on the Upper East Side. Her father is the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her 10-year-old sister is a TV chef and their big, happy family resides in a five-story brownstone. Before Wren, who is dyslexic and a talented artist, meets Nolan, her focus is on family, the friends she's grown up with and working on her application to an art program in St.-Rémy, France, next to the asylum where van Gogh painted "Starry Night." But after Wren and Nolan kiss at a museum party, everything changes. "Starry Night" is a love story, though it's not the kind you might expect: It's laden with the rawness, emotional bewilderment and bad decision-making that come with infatuation and heartbreak, all the more intense when it's experienced for the first time. As Wren explains wistfully on the first page, "I am not sure why the person that I was in love with ended up not wanting to be in love with me anymore." Though the life she leads is one of privilege, she faces a common problem: the threat of losing herself over a boy. Gillies handles this novel about finding one's strength and growing up deftly and evocatively.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Wren has dreamed about spending the fall semester of her junior year at the exclusive Saint-Remy art school in France ever since she first learned about the program. Wren wants to look up at the same sky and stars that influenced Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night, her favorite painting. Her parents support her dream and try not to put too much pressure on her to finish the application while maintaining the grades required-Wren has a learning disability and they understand her creative process. Her father is the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and she is finally invited to attend a special gala event. Even before the night begins, she can feel that this party might bring her something extra special. At dinner Wren is seated next to Nolan, the hottest guy she has ever seen up close. He's a senior in high school, but kind of famous already because of his band. That night they make a connection that might change everything she thinks she knows about herself, her friends, and love. Gillies's work as a memoirist certainly influences Starry Night, which is written with a perspective that only an adult's hindsight can bring. The conversational style will give readers the feeling that the protagonist is a close friend sharing her deepest secrets. The author's YA debut is best as an aspirational pick for younger teens; older readers will find a smarter and more intense story of first love in Lauren Myracle's The Infinite Moment of Us (Abrams, 2013).-Joy Piedmont, LREI, New York City (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
An actor and memoirist's debut novel for teens explores the exhilarationand heartbreakof passionate first love. Fifteen-year-old Wren attends a life-changing party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (her father is its director), where she connects with her older brother's new friend, the charismatic, talented musician Nolan. Though they've just met, the two feel a magical connection and slip away to another dance party with Nolan's friends, ruining Wren's borrowed designer gown and upsetting Wren's parents, who promptly ground her. Smitten Wren persists in seeing Nolan, despite her parents' wishes. Gillies captures the impulsive nature of teen love and its consequences along with nicely detailed secondary characters (little sister Dinah's a cutie with her own cooking show; Wren's parents draw sympathy with their real-time reactions to Wren's relationship). Authentically depicted mother-daughter clashes allow readers to empathize with besotted Wren and outraged Nanespecially when Wren abruptly abandons long-cherished dreams of attending an art program in France to be near Nolan. Occasionally, amateurish moments disrupt (some dialogue sounds stilted; some transitions are announced at chapter beginnings). Still, readers willing to overlook such moments will find themselves engaged by Wren and her headlong dash into love; the lack of tidy happy endings underscores the grittily real feeling of the story's emotional affairs. An imperfect but authentic look at teen love and betrayal that will entertain and touch readers. (Fiction. 12-16) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.