Aftercare Instructions

May 1, 2017
As Pipkin’s sensitive and big-hearted debut opens, 17-year-old Genesis Johnson has been abandoned at Planned Parenthood by her boyfriend, Peter, while she’s getting an abortion. After, Genesis veers from place to place and friend to friend seeking solace, grieving, despairing, and raging at Peter, who seems to have disappeared at the most vulnerable moment of her life. Pipkin’s chapters are framed by postabortion instructions (“Talk to Someone If You Experience Feelings of Detachment”), and screenplay-style scenes, interspersed throughout, recount how Genesis and Peter fell in love. These dueling formats powerfully underscore what feels like an unbridgeable divide between then and now for Genesis, while amplifying the role theater plays in her life: downtown New York City shows were
a point of
connection between her and her late father, and she auditions for a role at the urging of a boy she hooks up with during an anger-fueled bender. Genesis’s conflicted relationships with her mother, grandparents, and friends are as engrossing as her breakup with Peter, and her story packs a big emotional punch. Ages 12–up. Agent: Emily van Beek, Folio Literary Management.

May 1, 2017
Pipkin's debut leads readers on a journey through grief to hope again.Genesis is a high school senior on the cusp of her 18th birthday in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City. At the open readers find her in the immediate aftermath of an abortion, left alone in Manhattan by her boyfriend, Peter. Classmate Rose and cousin Delilah form the primary emotional support system for Genesis as she grapples with the compounding losses in her life. First, her father's death, then her inconsolable mother, lost to grief, once-close friendships, and finally the baby and the first love who helped make it. Nevertheless, Peter's abandonment becomes a fulcrum on which Genesis' life turns, compelling her to identify her own values and dreams. Despite several trips, falls, and unwise decisions on the way, the payoff is ultimately hopeful. Chapters of first-person stream-of-consciousness narrative are interspersed with short scenes written as a play that flash back to the events leading up to that moment alone in a clinic in the city. At times this narrative style begins to feel narcissistic, as other characters' motivations are not revealed until the final moments. Ethnic identities of the characters are never explicit, and it would be easy to picture them with any number of combinations, though the overall impression is of predominant whiteness. Although Gen may be hard for readers to connect to, her story is interesting enough they may well stick with her anyway. (Fiction. 14-18)

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August 1, 2017

Gr 10 Up-A new voice in contemporary fiction introduces a cast of characters and a story line that will stick with readers long after they are done. Genesis struggles to put her life together when everything falls apart. She is adrift after her father dies tragically, but Gen thinks she has found someone to hold her broken pieces together once she meets Peter. After a year and a half of a seemingly harmonious relationship, the religious Peter vanishes while at Planned Parenthood, where the couple is terminating an unintended pregnancy. Following his departure, the protagonist must rely on her best friend, Rose, cousin Delilah, and baggage-heavy mother to see her through. While finding her way, the teen deals with issues from her past that she has kept buried deep. Readers will discover the story of Gen's past in the form of a script as she comes to terms with Peter's abandonment. Scenes involving theater in New York City are peppered throughout and add a refreshing twist to the setting. This novel will appeal to teens that are struggling to find themselves after a loss. This debut novel touches upon many heavy issues, including drug use, abortion, and suicide. A compelling and relatable novel with realistic characters and situations. VERDICT Purchase where contemporary YA fiction authors like Rainbow Rowell and John Green are popular.-Tegan Anclade, Lake Villa District Library, IL

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