Alarm Girl

February 1, 2016
Grades 9-11 Indigo Taylor and brother Robin leave their modest English home for Cape Town, South Africa, where their dad has emigrated after their mom died. The transition is anything but smooth: 11-year-old Indy and 13-year-old Robin are given alarms to wear around their necks for safety. Dad has moved on with his girlfriend, Beautiful, while Indy is fixated on the cause of her mom's mysterious death, on her ninth birthday. This debut novel of British playwright Vincent has tones of despair and loneliness as the Taylor family crawls toward a new normalcy. Alternating passages with mother Karen's accounts of meeting her husband, starting their family, and falling into depression with Indy's reluctant adjustment to swank African life, which includes bed-wetting, pondering conspiracy theories, and the killing of the family dog, are written for an attentive audience. Vincent's style has the sparse, quiet voice of some other South African writers, lending subtle nuance to this disturbing family saga.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)