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Library | Audience | Home Location | Material Type | Shelf Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Central | Teen/Young Adult | Open Stacks Fiction | Open Stacks Teen Book | HOBBS | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A hopeful -- and tender -- look at family and growing up. When Liv was born, her mother died. Her father, Mark Trager, handed her over to her grandmother "like a bundle of laundry." Now her beloved Gran has died and Mark is the only family Liv has. All she knows is that he lives in California and dives for abalone. She has to leave New York to live with him, but that doesn't mean she has to forgive him for abandoning her. Samantha, his girlfriend, is an unexpected gift, someone Liv can really talk to, but even Sam can't bring father and daughter together. There's Brian Spinuchi, too. He's her father's tender, responsible for his lifeline as he dives, but not the type she could ever fall for. Or is he? When Spinuchi breaks his arm, Liv, a city girl, must become her father's tender. Once the two head out to sea, they find themselves confronting a reality that will change their relationship forever. Valerie Hobbs's latest novel is about overcoming the fears that isolate us.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-Fifteen-year-old Liv's life undergoes seismic upheaval when her grandmother, the strong, urbane woman who raised her, dies and leaves her to reconnect with her estranged father. Understandably bitter as well as grieving, the teen must leave New York City, her best friends, and her usual haunts and habits to meet the man who deserted her when his wife died in childbirth. The tiny coastal hamlet near Santa Barbara, CA, and her father, an abalone fisherman of extraordinarily few words and apparently fewer emotions, present Liv with so many psychological and physical challenges that looking back becomes a luxury. As she did in Carolina Crow Girl (2001) and Charlie's Run (2000, both Farrar), Hobbs gives readers a strong and personable protagonist caught in a complex series of events that offers contemporary echoes of folkloric themes. Here, Liv is a kind of banished princess, but it is her father who must be awakened from a 15-year-long disenchantment. As she struggles to come to terms with her new home, Liv befriends her father's girlfriend as well as a young man her own age who may or may not offer a romantic possibility in the future. The title, besides the obvious play on the characters' emotions, refers to the job she takes aboard her dad's boat. Hobbs's storytelling pace is quick without feeling rushed, drawing readers in immediately and inextricably. Each character becomes a person whom teens will understand, whether with sympathy or hesitation, and by book's end, Liv's future looks as though it will continue to be interesting.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Fifteen-year-old Olivia goes to live with her father, an ocean diver, who left when she was a baby, after her grandmother dies. "Those seeking a thought-provoking, emotionally stirring read will become intimately involved in Olivia's quest to understand herself," wrote PW. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(High School) When her beloved grandmother dies, fifteen-year-old Liv Trager must go live with her father, who abandoned her when her mother died in childbirth. Forced to deal with life in a small, beat-up coastal town in California, New York City-bred Liv has a difficult time adjusting. Although she likes her father's girlfriend Samantha, she and her father, a professional diver, are unable to connect. When her father's dive tender breaks his arm, Liv fills in, watching over her father's air compressor while he gathers abalone on the reef. Readers will relate to Liv's mood swings and flare-ups and to her contradictory needs to both escape from her father's cold presence and grow closer to him. The confusion of adolescence is truthfully rendered, and Hobbs fills out the central father-daughter theme with the development of Liv's friendship with Samantha as well as a budding romance with her father's former tender, Brian. In the end, Hobbs offers readers the promise of a better relationship between Liv and her father without the glibness of problems solved overnight. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A sad, but ultimately hopeful story about missed connections and the opportunity for second chances. Poor Liv: her mother died when she was born and her father flew the coop, leaving her in the custody of her maternal grandmother who dies when Liv is 15. A cosmopolitan New Yorker who was brought up to appreciate the finer things, Liv goes into culture shock when she's sent to live with her father, Mark, a socially primitive man who resides in a bleak one-bedroom apartment in a desolate California beach community. Mark's girlfriend, Sam, tells Liv that her dad is "not exactly an easy person to get to know," and she's not kidding. Things slowly begin to turn around when Mark, who makes his living as a diver harvesting abalone, hires his daughter to work as his tender-the person who keeps the diver safe by making sure the air compressor on the boat is up and running. Although he can barely manage a social conversation, Mark is a treasure trove of knowledge about all things relating to the sea, and their days together give father and daughter a chance to develop the beginnings of a tenuous relationship. A nascent romance, an illness, and an unexpected accident round out the tale and further illuminate the theme. The characters, while not precisely likable, have a genuineness, and the narrative is smooth and elegant. A leisurely paced, somewhat gloomy story, but one that is, in the end, rewarding. (Fiction. 12-15)
Booklist Review
Gr. 8-12. Fifteen-year-old Liv's mother died giving birth to her, but she's been lovingly raised by her eccentric, self-confident grandmother. When her grandmother dies, Liv must leave New York City and live with a father she has never met--a gruff, solitary abalone diver--in a tiny California coastal town. The culture shock and shattering loss of her grandmother are lessened somewhat by her father's girlfriend, Sam, who sees past Liv's prickly exterior and wins her confidence. Liv begins dating Brian, her father's "tender" (whose job is to monitor the compression tank during dives) and slowly starts to build a relationship with her father, as he teaches her to dive. Then Sam is diagnosed with cancer, and Liv's world starts to fall apart again. Hobbs' characters are wonderfully human and fully realized, and she brings to life the insular, sometimes stifling, world of a small town. As Liv and her father learn to give and take from each other and from those who love them, the wordplay of the title becomes self-evident but very satisfying. This is a quick read, with loving undertones that will linger. --Debbie Carton
