From Publishers Weekly
Strause juxtaposes the caustic and the poignant in his first novel, a pitch-perfect teenage take on human failings and superhuman spectacle in central Ohio. Monroe Anderson, stealing away to smoke pot before his senior prom, discovers his vivacious, sensitive 11-year-old sister, Annika, face down in their pool. He saves her life, but she remains in a coma. A crowd of well-wishers pray beneath Annika's hospital window, and it's not too long before the miracles begin: rose petals rain from the sky; Annika's hands bleed like stigmata. Soon Annika is inspiring letters, pleas and pilgrimages from the nation's sick and grieving, whom Monroe alternately pities and scorns, as he does the family priest who promotes Annika as a latter-day Jesus. The media fuels the frenzy, and Monroe's mother dolls Annika up for her visitors with feverish optimism. Monroe's workaholic father and loutish older brother also reveal their fragilities in the crucible of Annika's prolonged coma, an estranging rather than unifying force. The metaphysical runs up against the mundane with darkly comic ambiguity. "If Annika had the power to heal, wouldn't she heal herself first... and go into the kitchen and make everyone pancakes?" Monroe thinks. Monroe's barbed detachment and biting sarcasm, tempered by the awe that steals over him at unguarded moments, hold the reader even when the plot crawls.
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From Booklist
Strause's debut is narrated by 17-year-old Monroe Anderson, who, on the night of his prom, goes out to the pool house to smoke a joint and discovers his younger sister Annika, floating in the pool, not moving. Monroe pulls her out and saves her life, but when Annika is rushed to the hospital, the doctor tells Monroe and his family that she is in a coma, and they can't be sure when she'll wake up. What begins as a family tragedy is writ large when miraculous events start occurring around Annika: rose petals fall from the sky, a stain on a hospital wall takes on the visage of Jesus, and Annika's hands begin to bleed from the palms. Monroe's mother embraces Annika's newfound religious status, his father withdraws from the family, and Monroe isn't sure what to make of it all. Monroe's voice draws the reader in, even if the other characters never quite achieve the depth and complexity he possesses. Crisp writing and a multifaceted, likable central character distinguish this first novel.
Kristine HuntleyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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