Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking

May 7, 2007
S
weeney's debut novel centers around Miranda Donnal, who grows up on Maine's lonely Crab Island, where her father decides to hunker down and work on his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses
. Shortly after their arrival from New York, Miranda's mother dies in a boating mishap, leaving Miranda in the care of her withdrawn father, who is content to keep his nose in his books. A half-Indian local fisherman, Mr. Blackwell, becomes something of a father figure to Miranda, taking on an unusually devoted caretaker role—cooking for the Donnals, taking Miranda to school and serving as her confidante. Yet secrecy also shrouds Mr. Donnal and Mr. Blackwell's evolving relationship. When Miranda graduates from high school, her father dispatches her to New York City and a job at the classical studies institute he was molded by. There she begins to peel away myth after myth of the father she thought she knew as she falls in love and has her own revelations about intimacy and connections. Sweeney's prose effortlessly conveys her characters' isolation and evolution, and her portrayal of the aftermath of life's slights—big and small—make this coming-of-age better than most.

June 15, 2007
Miranda Donnal, wise beyond her years, lives on remote Crab Island with her brilliant but troubled scholar father, who is translating Ovid's "Metamorphoses". She has almost no friends except Mr. Blackwell, who shows her how to fish and pilot his boat. Although authorities from the mainland believe that her father is endangering her education, by typing her father's handwritten translations Miranda in fact makes all the magical stories and myths part of her life. Miranda imagines her passage in their boat from the mainland to the island to be Phaë thon's ride in his father's chariot. In time, her father arranges for her to work at the Institute for Classical Studies in New York, where she is inevitably drawn deeper into her father's mysterious past. At the same time, she finds a whole new world in the glamour of Manhattan, and she pictures herself as Galatea, the statue who turns to flesh in her creator's hands, undergoing her own change after leaving the island. First-time novelist Sweeney has written an amazingly rich and complex coming-of-age novel. Highly recommended for all public libraries.Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2007
Miranda Donnal is an infant when her parents move from New York City to a remote island off the coast of Maine so her father can complete a translation of Ovids Metamorphoses. When her mother takes a boat to town and never returns, Miranda is raised by her reclusive father. She grows up primarily in solitude, save for a friendship with Mr. Blackwell, a fisherman who often acts as Mirandas surrogate father. This endearing bond is complicated by the mysterious relationship between Mr. Blackwell and Mirandas father. After Miranda graduates from high school, her father arranges for her to return to New York to work in the classical-studies library that he helped establish years before her birth. It is here that Miranda begins unraveling the mysteries of her fathers past, while pushing beyond the threshold of isolation to discover her own enthralling path in life and love. In Sweeneys debut novel, an accomplished coming-of-age tale, her subtle prose elevates the moments when Miranda shrugs off another layer of loneliness.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)