Strings Attached

joanne_s - This is a story about Kathleen Corrigan, nick named as Kit, who is a seventeen year old girl. Her mother died while giving birth to her, her brother and her sister who were triplets. They lived with their father and got a lot of help from their aunt Delia, who treated them as if they were her sons and daughters. Then, aunt Delia moved away and they didn’t know where she went from then on. Kit had a boyfriend named Billy, who gets angry and jealous with Kit and moves her away. He later enlisted in the army with Kit’s brother, Jamie. Kit later moved to New York City, being a showgirl/chorus girl and having barely enough to live. She met Nate Benedict, Billy’s father. He offered her clothes and an apartment that she didn’t have to pay. He told her that if she accepted what he offered, she would need to write to Billy, persuading him to return before he goes to the Korean War. She agreed after all because she still loved Billy and she needed an apartment. Nate Benedict gave her a hand to being a Lido doll and later asked her to do favors. While being at the apartment, the apartment revealed mysteries about the relationship between Nate Benedict and her aunt Delia. I really liked this character because she’s strong, beautiful and smart. This book contains mysteries, love, murder and surprises, and it is an astonishing book.

Starred review from January 17, 2011
The New York City mobster scene during the 1950s is vibrantly brought to life in this saga of a poor dancer who pays a high price for the breaks she gets. When the story opens, 17-year-old Kit Corrigan has left her Providence, R.I., family for the lights of Broadway and still has mixed feelings about her hotheaded ex-boyfriend, Billy, who has since joined the army. Then Kit receives an offer she can't refuse: become a snoop for Billy's gangster father in exchange for a much-needed Manhattan apartment and a nightclub gig. Kit almost immediately regrets her decision but is unable to prevent a future tainted by heartache, deception, and murder. Past tragedies suffered by Kit and her Irish-American family are artfully woven into the plot; if the book is a little slow-moving at first, National Book Award–winner Blundell (What I Saw and How I Lied) successfully constructs a complex web of intrigue that connects characters in unexpected ways. History and theater buffs will especially appreciate her attention to detail—Blundell again demonstrates she can turn out first-rate historical fiction. Ages 13–up.

February 1, 2011
Caught up in dreams of dancing on Broadway, Kit Corrigan unwisely accepts an apartment and a nightclub job from mob lawyer Nate Benedict in exchange for keeping tabs on his son Billy, who's enlisted in the Army along with Kit's brother, Jamie. Kit broke off her relationship with Billy after his last jealousy-fueled outburst. Nate starts calling in favors, and Kit becomes entangled in a web of secrets and lies. Like her Aunt Delia before her, she came to New York to escape a suffocating life in Providence and what Jamie calls "the Irish form of advancement—you don't dare do better than those before you." Kit's father had scraped together a living off the novelty of his motherless triplets, the Corrigan Three, in a home with psychic and emotional "undertows, things we didn't understand, and jokes and stories passing for truth." Layers of deception are peeled away in a jumbled sequence of events that echoes Kit's confusion as she discovers the extent of her family's connection with the Benedicts and realizes that her own actions at the age of 12 set in motion a chain of events that end in murder. National Book Award–winner Blundell (What I Saw and How I Lied, 2008) delivers a brilliantly conceived novel set against the backdrop of the 1950 Kefauver mob hearings and the Red Scare with a story of redemption and truth at its core. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2011

Gr 7 Up-November 1950 in New York City: a time and place in which everything changes for Kit Corrigan. After dropping out of high school in Providence to pursue dancing and acting, a breakup with Billy Benedict, a college boy and the son of a powerful mob lawyer, propels her to the Big Apple. A fraternal triplet whose mother died in childbirth, Kit has been raised by a working-class father with the sometime help of his sister, Delia. Her brother, Jamie, and Billy have enlisted in the Korean War. In New York, Kit's talent and gorgeous red hair help land her in the chorus of a quick-to-close Broadway show. Her money is disappearing when Mr. Benedict shows up to dangle a carrot she can't ignore: a cozy apartment and an audition to be a Lido Doll. Is it so much just to tell him when she hears from Billy, help with the occasional package, and chat with certain men who frequent the Lido? Goings-on at the club get increasingly sinister, Kit's neighbors are being persecuted as Reds, and somehow Aunt Delia's disappearance is linked to the teen's current New York life. Evoking the glamour, grit, and gusto of the era, Blundell has produced a compelling narrative with well-crafted characters who bring different ambitions, fears, and memories toward tragic collisions. Circling back and forth through the years of Kit's life, readers dip into her Great Depression childhood, her family's bootlegging past, and the stark revelations of the adult world.-Suzanne Gordon, Lanier High School, Sugar Hill, GA

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2011
Grades 9-12 Blundell, a National Book Award winner for What I Saw and How I Lied (2008), returns to themes of lies and secretsand this novel has plenty. Its 1950, and 17-year-old Kit Corrigan has left Providence, Rhode Island, for the bright lights of New York, where she intends to make it as a dancer. When her estranged boyfriends father, Nate, offers her an apartment and arranges a job for her as a Lido girl, Kit doesnt understand all the ramifications. Sure, Nate wants news of his son, Billy, when Billy comes home from the army on leave, but though Kit knows Nates involved with the mob, she doesnt foresee how all that can touch her. Oops. Theres really not much of the teen about Kitshe could be 21 as easily as 17but her voice neatly propels the action, even through the occasionally annoying back-and-forthing in time. One part Jackie Collins novel, one part melodrama (had this been a 1950s movie, Douglas Sirk would have been perfect to direct), and all Blundell, this book is hard to put down.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)