The Ocean in My Ears

October 2, 2017
Set in the early 1990s, Macvie’s debut novel follows 17-year-old Meri Miller during her last year of high school in (very) small-town Soldotna, Alaska, yet the year turns out to be anything but uneventful. As she seeks a way to leave Alaska for college, she navigates her first sexual encounter, the loss of her grandmother, a friend who drifts away, and the stifling rules of her religious parents. The novel is interspersed with pages from Meri’s diary, as well as letters she exchanges with friends and family, demonstrating Meri’s careful work toward becoming a writer. The writing is raw and occasionally verges on melodramatic in its true-to-life capturing of an adolescent voice, as when Meri’s will clashes with her mother’s (“I want to tell Joquin the truth about dating Brett and what happened, but I don’t want to wreck what I have now with him”). As Meri learns to trust her gut instincts in a variety of situations, Macvie movingly explores the ever-shifting highs and lows of adolescence. Ages 14–up.

November 1, 2017
Grades 9-12 Small-town teens will recognize the hallmarks of Meri's life: church on Sundays, lunches at Dairy Queen, and an extremely limited pool of potential dates. But life in small-town Alaska in 1990 has a distinctive flair, with dipnetting, snowmachines, and gruelingly dark Decembers. As Meri begins her senior year, she's mostly thinking about a boy named Joaquin and college in Idaho with her best friend, Charlie. Over the course of that year, however, Meri gets entwined in a convenient relationship with an insensitive jerk and watches as Charlie drifts away from their shared college dream. Meri's first-person account is strikingly original, with frank discussion of sexual experiences, religious posturing, and stilted family dynamics. Occasionally, this engaging narrative is interrupted by fairly mundane entries from Meri's diary, which seem to merely speed up the passage of time. While the unique setting and time period will give contemporary readers a glimpse into a time when their parents were teens, Meri's struggles are nevertheless universal. Fans of Miranda Kenneally or Jennifer Echols should like this debut novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)