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Narrated by Christy Carlson Romano
Garret Freymann-WeyrUnabridged — 3 hours, 16 minutes
Narrated by Christy Carlson Romano
Garret Freymann-WeyrUnabridged — 3 hours, 16 minutes
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Ellen loves Link and James. Her older brother and his best friend are the only company she ever wants. She knows they fight, but she makes it a policy never to take sides. She loves her brother, the math genius and track star. She is totally, madly in love with James, his face full of long eyelashes and hidden smiles. "When you grow out of it," James teases her, "you will break my heart."
Ellen knows she'll never outgrow it. She'll always love James just the way she'll always love Link. Then someone at school asks if Link and James might be in love with each other. A simple question.
Link refuses to discuss it. James refuses to stay friends with a boy so full of secrets. Ellen's parents want Link to keep his secrets to himself, but Ellen wants to know who her brother really is. When is curiosity a betrayal? And if James says he loves her, isn't that just another way of saying he still loves Link?
My Heartbeat is a fast, furious story in which a quirky triangle learns to change its shape and Ellen, at least, learns the limits of what you can ever know about whom you love.
In this story of 14-year-old Ellen's attraction to her brother's best friend, complexities more far-reaching than just sexual concerns come to the fore, when Ellen asks the two about the nature of their relationship. In PW's Best Books citation, we called it "a thoughtful approach to the many confusing signals that accompany awakening sexuality." Ages 14-up. (Dec.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Gr 8 Up-Garrett Freymann-Weyr's novel (Houghton, 2002) about a teen's maturing understanding of friends, family, and self is brought to vivid life in Christy Carlson Romano's fast-paced reading. Fourteen-year-old Ellen has known James most of her life, as he is her older brother Lincoln's long-term best friend. Just as she realizes that she has developed a romantic crush on James, he and Linc appear to have a significant falling out. The revelation that James is gay not only plays havoc with Ellen's romantic designs-although they do manage to consummate their youthful admiration for each other with honestly drawn sexual encounters-but pits Linc into a silent war against his former bosom buddy. Ellen and her circle are moneyed New Yorkers, but their story is relevant and resonant beyond culture and class. How friendships pause and then restart, how teens let themselves peek a little at a time into their own and their families' souls are among the truths eloquently played out here, with humor as well as angst. Romano's youthful tenor fits Ellen just right, making this a bit like listening to a young friend share her observations and experiences.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
In this lovely and passionate story, told in the first-person present, the questions of love are repeated over, under, around, and beneath: how do parents love their children? How do friends care for one another? What do love and sex have to do with each other? Ellen is 14, and the two most important people in her life are her older brother Link, a high-school senior, and his best friend James. In a world of privilege, private schools, Manhattan locales, and summers in Maine, Ellen wrestles with her deep love for her brother and the intensity of her feelings for his best friend. Are James and Link a couple? Ellen wrestles with that, too, with what it might mean to be gay. When Link begins dating a girl, James and Ellen try to find what they are to each other without Link, Ellen sees her brother's talents, her parents' differing desires but very real concerns, and James's complex emotional life as puzzles to be solved with intensity and with desire. "A mind with its own heartbeat" is the favorite phrase of Link and Ellen's dad, and Ellen's mind beats across the tangle of feelings of all these beguiling, intelligent, and complicated folk. Breathtaking in the purity of its emotions and in its refusal to pigeonhole any of its characters, it will engage teen readers to the very last page.
"Narrator Ellen learns about love, family and 'society's unwritten rules' in this sophisticated but gentle novel." Publishers Weekly, Starred
"A tightly constructed novel about love, family, and the ambiguities of sexual identity." School Library Journal, Starred
"Freyman-Weyr writes an astonishing combination of delicacy and clarity of the genuine complexity of family (and all) relationships." The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Starred
"Freymann-Weyr sets up a riveting love triangle. As in the author's first novel, When I Was Older, one of the standout qualities is the protagonist's fresh, vital tone." Horn Book, Starred
"The fast, clipped dialog will sweep teens into the story, as will Ellen’s immediate first-person, present-tense narrative, 'curious, careful, kind, and intense.' The family dynamics are just as compelling as the love and friendship drama, especially Ellen’s bewilderment about the unwritten laws that can make people strangers even within the family they love." Booklist, ALA, Starred Review
"...it will engage teen readers to the very last page." Kirkus Reviews —
When three characters are closely linked in a story, it’s imperative that the narrator select unique voices for each person. My Heartbeat is a love triangle, delicately unfolded by young Ellen, who adores her older brother, Link, and falls from puppy love into intimate love with Link’s best friend, James. Yet high school rumor has it that James and Link used to be more than friends. As Ellen tries to figure out all the relationships in her life, she comes to realize that sometimes you just can’t know everything about a person. Christy Carlson Romano is a tender Ellen--changing from a sweet naïf to a mature young woman while never losing her thoughtful introspection. Unfortunately, it’s hard to distinguish Ellen’s inner thoughts from Link’s and James’s when voice changes are too subtle. M.M.O. Winner of 2004 ALA/ YALSA Recording © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
| BN ID: | 2940169379839 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 01/28/2003 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
