Karma for Beginners

by Jessica Blank

Overview

14-year old Tessa navigates adolescence, first love, and her damaged relationship with her mother, while living live on a New Age ashram in upstate New York. A hugely compelling and highly original coming-of-age story from the author of Almost Home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781423143475
Publisher:	Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publication date:	07/23/2010
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	428 KB
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

About the Author

Jessica Blank is a young writer and actress who has worked in television and film as well as in theaters throughout New York. She wrote the award-winning and hugely successful play, The Exonerated, about death row inmates who have been falsely convicted and then released after being found innocent. The film version starred Susan Sarandon, Aidan Quinn, Danny Glover and Brian Dennehy.

Editorial Reviews

Blank (Almost Home) pens a second tale involving drug abuse, absentee parenting and neglected teens flouting authority. As in her debut, she sets her sights on a fringe community-this time, a hippie cult-and catalogs life there, with mixed results. Many of her descriptions of communal life border on the cliché: waifish, beatific followers in flowing skirts and white robes, chanting sessions, daily seva ("selfless service," aka chores), a lecherous TV-watching guru, and touchy-feely mantras about surrendering desires and "Purity of Being." But 14-year-old Tessa's flight from her mother, who is desperate for a spiritual makeover, despite Tessa's misery on the commune, and into the willing arms of Colin, a 20-year-old who fixes broken VW buses on the ashram, strikes a nerve. While Tessa's clandestine relationship may initially seem deliciously rebellious and romantic to some, things quickly spiral out of control, both for Tessa and her mother, whose sexual connection to the guru is revealed. Eventually, wayward mother and daughter reunite, but not before unfortunate (and implausibly wrapped-up) lessons are learned on both ends. Ages 13-up.
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Publishers Weekly

Gr 9 Up—It's 1987 and Tessa's mother takes her out of ninth grade in Ohio to live at an ashram in the Catskills. Once there, Sarah leaves her daughter alone most of the time and begins staying overnight "in service" to the ostensibly celibate guru. The 15-year-old and 20-year-old Colin, a townie who fixes the ashram's fleet of VW buses, become friends, and then lovers. All the while what Tessa really wants is her mother to act like one. Blank's take on selfishness disguised as spiritual journey is deep and detailed. Tessa's arguments with Sarah will resonate with teens; Sarah gets calmer and more condescending as Tessa gets angrier and louder. Colin is well drawn and appropriately fallible, and his romance with Tessa is sincere and frustrating as it veers into a drug-induced haze and the authorities get involved. Blank's writing is fluid and readable, and the well-paced story is told with humor and empathy. The plot moves steadily toward a frenzied but believable climax, but Sarah's final turnaround is hard to swallow. While readers will sympathize with Tessa's situation, they, too, will long for a responsible adult to surface and put an end to all of the bad behavior.—Johanna Lewis, New York Public Library

School Library Journal

After a promising debut in 2007's Almost Home, Blank strikes out. Fourteen-year-old Tessa trails after her hippie mother, Sarah, from town to town, boyfriend to boyfriend, searching for meaning. Sarah swears the Ashram in the Catskills will be different. There, unsupervised Tessa finds comfort in the arms of 20-year-old Colin, who introduces Tessa to sex and drugs. Sarah finds herself (while ignoring Tessa), but the genuinely powerful guru uses his charisma for personal gain and Sarah reverts to form and becomes his lover. The blink-and-you'll-miss-it resolution comes after Tessa's clumsy use of her blossoming sexual power while tripping on LSD ends with a sexual assault, and Sarah's relationship with the guru simultaneously comes to light, concluding their parallel journeys through confusion and misguided relationships. Tessa tells her mother how she feels (neglected, hurt, angry) and the two ride off into the sunset. The soundtrack of classic rock and '80s New Wave is pretty awesome, but the trite messages-sex doesn't fulfill; guys are trouble-are hardly worth the journey. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews