The Storyteller

February 20, 2012
In the dreary winter of an East German town, a small girl is in danger and a teenage girl is in love. Seventeen-year-old Anna Leemann is a "little lamb," a good girl, teased by her friends for being distanced from reality, who longs to break through her "soap bubble." Something in the cold blue eyes of the schoolyard drug dealer, Abel Tannatek, slices through that bubble and draws Anna in. Abel wants nothing to do with her; his smiles are reserved for his six-year-old sister, Micha, whose mother has disappeared and whose nefarious father is known to be lurking. Kind and gentle Anna uncharacteristically stalks them, refusing to take no for an answer, enthralled by the whimsical yet dark fairy tale she overhears Abel telling Micha. Anna succeeds in forcing her way into their lives, her innocence blinding her to the truths in Abel's shadowed narrative until it's too late. Michaelis's prose gets a top-notch translation, its dreamy, introspective quality shining through in a story about difficult love that will appeal most to readers who, like Anna, are on the brink of adulthood. Ages 16âup. Agent: Andrew Nurnberg Associates.

January 15, 2012
The course of true love definitely doesn't run smooth when it's a relationship with a self-abusing and abused drug dealer. Anna's initial attraction to moody, secretive classmate Abel firms up when she sees his total devotion to his little sister Micha and, with her, becomes wrapped up in a multi-episode tale he spins about a young Princess on the run from scary pursuers. There are warnings aplenty: Her friends caution her, Abel is obviously struggling to get by while claiming that his absent-for-weeks single mother would be back any time and the murders of Micha's violent, jailbird father and an insistent social worker. Nevertheless, Anna steadfastly sticks with him until, at last, he responds to her amorous advances by raping her--and confessing that he had been molested for years as a child. Anna finds her feelings for him unchanged, even after it comes out just how he had been supporting himself and Micha. Awarding Abel with the usual fate given fictive teens bearing so many inner (and outer) scars, Michaelis stirs snowy weather, Leonard Cohen lyrics, multiple corpses and an unusually rich array of lovable, hateful, loyal and treacherous supporting characters into a grim, bitter story that will leave all but the hardest readers shocked and sad. An unsettling tapestry of ugly secrets, violence, suspense, twisted motives and love's unfathomable ways. (Fiction. 14-18)

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March 1, 2012

Gr 10 Up-In this novel set in contemporary Poland, Anna is a serious student living with her stable, loving parents. Abel is a mysterious outsider and the official drug dealer at their high school. When Anna decides to break out of her bubble by learning more about his life, she finds out that he's also a mesmerizing storyteller and sole caregiver for his six-year-old sister. Anna is quickly drawn into the fairy tale that Abel weaves to both entertain and protect Micha. Soon Anna becomes part of both the didactic tale and Abel's desperate attempts to keep Micha safe from her transient, predatory father and from being taken away by social services. As murder victims begin to pile up, Anna has to question what Abel might be capable of and whether or not that will change her budding love for him. Abel comes across as a sympathetic character, so his date rape of Anna comes as quite a shock. The scene is well written: graphic enough to be realistic, without being gratuitous. More disturbing is the second sex scene. Moments after confessing that he is an abuse survivor, murderer, and male prostitute who has come to equate sex with violence, Abel and Anna are suddenly having a sweet and pure sexual experience. This unrealistic turn of events is an unsatisfying conclusion to their difficult, if somewhat compelling, relationship. The fairy tale is beautifully woven in and out of the contemporary scenes and the characters are well composed. However, the dialogue in the contemporary scenes is stiff and awkward. The unrealistic plot makes this a book that will be hard for teens to relate to or enjoy.-Sunnie Sette, New Haven Public Library, CT

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Starred review from February 15, 2012
Grades 10-1 *Starred Review* Eighteen-year-old Anna has always been the good girl, but her sudden fascination with the school's bad boy brings her face-to-face with a world she could never have imagined. Dark and mysterious, Abel, called the Polish Peddler by fellow students, alternately broods and sleeps in school, only to surreptitiously care for his six-year-old sister, Micha, between his studies and jobs. As Anna draws closer to the pair, she becomes fascinated by the fairy tale Abel spins for Micha, a tale that includes all three of them and foretells tragic events that will change the course of their lives. Michaelis, whose previous titles include the Batchelder Honor Book Tiger Moon (2008), crafts a beautifully written, carefully constructed mystery and love story that will capture both the reader's imagination and heart from the first page. With a German winter setting as cold and bitter as the brother and sister's situation and characters well-intentioned but misguided and misunderstood, the novel weaves a sad and loving spell. Its complexity of plot and intricacy of language mirror Abel and Micha's poverty and Anna's luxury, and it's a struggle to meld one with the other to solve everyone's loneliness and paucity. Too realistic to produce a happy ending, yet authentic enough to provide a reasonable resolution, this suspenseful, often-violent read will haunt readers long after its final page is turned.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)